Strategies for Designing Ground Water Monitoring Networks at Waste Storage Facilities with Multiple Source Areas

Abstract

AbstractThe objective of this study was to devise and evaluate methods for configuring ground water monitoring networks at waste storage facilities with multiple contaminant source areas. These methods allocate monitoring wells to compliance boundaries lagged hydraulically downgradient of potential contaminant sources such as landfills and lagoons. Alternative design methods separately monitor or integrate potential sources and space wells uniformly in the direction (1) along the compliance boundary or (2) perpendicular to ground water flow. In an application of four design methods, a computer model simulated potential contaminant releases distributed throughout multiple sources with a combined area of ∼5000 m2, computing the detection capability of each monitoring configuration. A network without monitoring redundancy in overlapping source areas, with wells spaced uniformly perpendicular to ground water flow, outperformed alternative layouts. Perpendicular networks were also more robust to uncertain model parameters. For a base case, the most efficient network of 10 wells detected 99.4% of >5000 simulated contaminant releases, whereas alternative networks detected from 85.4% to 96.1% of releases.