The use and misuse of hysteria

This week has been an interesting week with news concerning the H1N1 influenza novel circulating about, the arrival of the vaccine at the health department, some differed knowledge about rabies, more information and misinformation on the Scofieldtown dump and surrounding wells and several unrelated well water issues.
The news about the influenza is that there are deaths, which is not surprising, all flues kill an amazing number of people. The issue is that this flu is particularly dangerous for Healthy individuals. the vaccine is here and we should be fore armed with it.
The rabies info had to do with a scratch of someone pregnant. I do not know the issues with the rabies vaccine and pregnancy. I deferred that info to more qualified persons. The person calling called the incident minor ( a scratch by a raccoon), but I had to say that because a raccoon is a major vector of rabies, it is still serious.
The hysteria about the dump is currently very difficult to manage, there a lot of erroneous information being spread by word of mouth that only heightens fear and serves basically none one. The most ridiculous one was that the water company uses the water from the Rippowan river for drinking. that was a malicious lie and anything else that person spreading that lie should also be disbelieved.
The demand for heavy metal testing is one I can understand because most people do not understand metals. in the environment, especially here in Stamford a well drilled 50 feet away from from a well high in the normal metals found in the area (iron and manganese) will not have any.
The reason is because metals tend to turn into not just insoluble compounds of oxides, chlorides, carbonates, sulfates and the like, but these compounds actually bind with the surrounding soil making it almost impossible for them to move through the ground. This is true of most of the metals found at the dump. they will be carried above ground by rivers and streams and rain, but in the ground they do not move well at all.
Of course because of the real concerns in the Hannah's Road, Very Merry Road and Larkspur Road, many people are becoming aware that they need to have their water checked.
Well's have seals that over time can fail, about 5% in a 30 year period. When the water does not taste "right" suddenly, check for bacteria.
Such was the case this week and it was contaminated with bacteria. The issue is that the seal on the well can deteriorate and allow surface water into the well and also the bacteria it carries. It is not an underground problem, it is an above ground issue, soil carried the bacteria we look for, wells should not have it. Of course the question was first asked by the homeowner, "We do not live anywhere near the dump, how could this be?" Of course it had nothing to do with the dump.
The final story had to do with a plumber/ well person calling me hysterical because I called Hydrogen Sulfide dangerous. Strange, you can look in any hazardous chemical book and find out how dangerous it really is. the source may be very simple, a uncared for "swimming hole" which was full of decomposing organics (leaves and such) creating an anaerobic (without oxygen) situation where bacteria creates hydrogen sulfide. The well was close to this spot and so would draw it down. the battery of treatment units on the water did not remove the problem. There were other issue with the home, but the constant head aches can be linked to constant exposure to the hydrogen sulfide at low levels over time.
The good news? Water company water is readily available.

Other issues had to do with bacteria being found in homes with carbon filters. Carbon filters do NOT remove bacteria, but the tests were done by outside labs but when I repeated the test, there was no "coliform" bacteria. There were a few non-coliform colonies which the people will take the info to their doctors because of special situations. the bacteria may have been introduced by plumbing work (most likely).

So endeth the lessons.

What goes in the ground....

The protection of well water.
We will start with what people do not want to hear first and go from there.
If you are on a well, I would never add man made fertilizer or insecticides or herbicides to the lawn. Period.
It will get into the well.
A well draws in a manner that can be almost considered conical. That deep water "aquifer" that seems to be a prevalent notion is not all that is talked about.
Bedrock is not a solid impermeable mass that keeps surface water from deep water. It is full of cracks and crevices and areas where the water from top goes down into the water bearing rock.
The recharge area for a well can be describe as a direct relation between its depth and yield. The deeper a well or the more yield it has, the further the draw range of the well.
Rain water provides a good portion of the water that comes from a well, so what you put on your lawn, you drink.
Soils filter out a great number of things - bacteria, very quickly and many common items that are nutrient based.
Gasoline and oils, not at all. And pesticides. even though they are not generally water soluble, will slowly find their way to a well.
If the well is near a river, what is in the river, what is dumped in the river, will also find its way into the well. A river will skew the conical draw of a well with it giving more to the well than the rain.
Then there are septic systems, usually put on the other side of a house, but septic systems are considered the primary recharge for wells. All the normal stuff is well filtered out by 25 feet, but what if you clean out your oil based paint brushes in the slop sink leading to the well? Right into your drinking water.
How far is this influence of a recharge zone? Deepends on the draw of the well, the depth and yeild, but it can be up to 200 yards, easily.
What about a dump?
It could effect wells near it.
Here though is also where the idea of an "aquifer" comes to play. Ground water and subsurface water slowly seeps in a down slope manner.
In Connecticut, the Glaciers created a general movement North to South.
You look to the south of a dump for the worst of the situation here.
How much well contamination is from homeowners? Most.
How much from dumps? Too much.

Water woes

There will be a couple of posts to clarify the main subject of this post.
This first one will deal directly with what I believe are import elements when searching for contamination in the ground.
I will focus first on the searching at Scofieldtown dump area.
Lots of things were dumped there, so a review of what should not be looked for is important.
The first 2 are metals, arsenic and mercury. They are not good things period and may or may not have been dumped at the site, but guaranteed they are in the soil. Why?
Arsenic was the primary insecticide for apple trees for years. Guess what Connecticut used to (and still does in some parts) grow abundantly? Apples.
Do I expect to be able to find arsenic in wells? Yes. Is it related to the dump? No.
Is it important? Very and my predecessor will have a machine to be able to do those surveys. I just could not coax the necessary sensitivity out of the 1985 Perkin Elmer graphite furnace AA that I got for our lab.
Mercury. the reason we have to be careful of the fish we eat is mercury and in Connecticut its main source is the Ohio coal burning electric power plants that the EPA refuses to regulate.
Right now of course the big furor is over pesticides and the residents have every right to be concerned, they are dangerous, but did it come from the dump? I doubt it.
The pesticides found were used extensively for years. Are they dangerous? Yes.
Do they get into wells after years of not being used, Yes again.
The wells in question are only a few feet from the homes, but that is a topic for another day.
The city needed to help the people. That was my push. They did.
So what should one look for?
Solvents. VOCs is the technical term, but when I find methyl ethyl ketone or toluene or trichloroethylene or any oil cutting solvent in any of the test results, that is definitely coming from the dump.
Chromium would be anothwer one, but all the past and recent tests do not show it even at the dump site.
That is my thinking.

The H2S Issue

Now that we have some time to digest what we found, I can share.
We took 2 sediment samples from one point off of Todd's Point and one in Stamford harbor.
Both reasonably deep water (30 feet)
They were black and heavy, they did not smell of Hydrogen Sulfide.
The initial test I forgot to take a pH, we will do that again.
Adding acid released a lot of H2s and CO2.
When I did the actual test one came back with 2 mg/L (they were suspended in Sound water) and the other 5 mg/L
They were trapped in the carbonate material which was released during the first part of the test.
Sulfate (SO4) was 2,000 mg/L and 4,300 mg/L respectfully.
The H2S smoking Gun did not prove itself.

The Theory, the pitfalls, the execution, intial results

I now have enough samples with some that do not fit the mold to understand what I am seeing.
The Theory - was that pH would allow me to tell if fresh water (and thus water with bacteria) was influencing the beaches.

The pitfalls - Although it is a determined fact that the pH of fresh water in this area is more acidic than the Estuary of Long Island Sound, there are other factors which will affect the reading.
Temperature will drive CO2 out of the water and you will get a more basic reading.
Fresh water does indeed "float" on top of the saltier and denser Long Island Sound Water.
There maybe still another temperature defendant reaction which makes the water more basic as the temperature climbs.

Because of these variables, I have also been measuring chlorides (simple way to measure salinity) and there is a good correlation between the intrusion of fresh water and pH.

Measurements were conducted of beach water (3 feet deep), shellfish waters (up to 20 feet deep) and spots in the Sound itself (up to 80 feet deep).
Outfalls from treatment plants and rivers were also measured.
This is a minimum of 20 samples a week.
All samples are taken at about 1 foot depth.
Samples were measured for pH and chlorides along with the normal bacteria densities I would perform.
Duplicate samples were used to determine validity of samples and testing and that is where the first surprise occurred. On one sample set. there was no duplication between either chloride of pH.
Since we also maintain a log of rain events and weather conditions, we could see that a 0.2" rain the night before had not mixed yet.
Tides are known and added in to the mix.
pH and chloride levels matched with information we already had deduced on tidal currents in 2 places.

Initial results - What I believe is this is an excellent method to determine flow and current in the shoreline.
Since the flows in the shoreline is difficult at best this provided a tool to assist determining this for different tide levels.

What it feeds

Rain that is. June 16th we had one of those heavy rains - 3 + inches. I said then things may improve.
I was right!
Before this there seemed to be nothing living in the Sound. There was no algae, there were no small bunker (peanut bunker), there were no small game fish. There were no big fish. The jelly fish that started early in the year had also disappeared. The Sound appeared to be a dessert.

July 13th Art Glowka told me that he was suddenly seeing some algae and seaweed around. I said 3 or 4 weeks for life to come from the food that was washed into the Sound, lets see when the fish come.
This last weekend apparently the cycle came to fruition and everyone was catching, well everything!
Listen to the creatures and what they say!

Learning

Approaching a new idea is not always an easy road and there are many pitfalls. So it is with my understanding of what pH and chloride levels mean in the water.
I already have maybe 40 or so samples in a week and I think I am seeing patterns of flow from the results.
I will keep looking and see what shows.