Neighboring springs draining fractured-rock aquifers can display large differences in water quality and flow regime, depending on local variations of the connectivity and the aperture size distribution of the fracture network. Consequently, because homogeneous equivalent parameters cannot be assumed a priori for the entire regional aquifer, the vulnerability to pollution of such springs has to be studied on a case by case basis. In this paper, a simple lumped-parameter model usually applied to estimate the mean transit time of water (or tracer) is presented. The original exponential piston-flow model was modified to take land-use distribution into account and applied to predict the evolution of atrazine concentration in a series of springs draining a fractured sandstone aquifer in Luxembourg, where despite a nationwide ban in 2005, atrazine concentrations still had not begun to decrease in 2009. This persistence could be explained by exponentially distributed residence times in the aquifer, demonstrating that in some real world cases, models based on the groundwater residence time distribution can be a powerful tool for trend reversal assessments as recommended for instance by current European Union guidelines.

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Although pesticides are primarily degraded in the topsoil, significant attenuation can be expected in groundwater systems where the transit time of pesticides usually are orders of magnitude longer than in the soil. Because degradation and transport processes in the subsurface take place at time scales of months to years or even decades, direct measurements of natural attenuation are hampered by practical and logistical limitations (for instance the limited duration of sampling or a correct estimation of the pesticide flux into groundwater). Indirect methods such as measuring the changes in the ratio of degradation product to parent compound as a function of transit time in the aquifer, along a flow line provide a possible alternative. This paper presents a simple mathematical formulation of the relationship between transit time in the subsurface and changes in that ratio, and allows estimating the transformation rate of both parent compound and degradation product. The applicability of the method is illustrated in a case study investigating atrazine attenuation in a fractured sandstone aquifer.

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Removal efficiencies of micropollutants in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are usually evaluated from mass balance calculations using a small number of observations drawn from short sampling campaigns. Since micropollutant loads can vary greatly in both influent and effluent and reactor tanks exhibit specific hydraulic residence times, these short-term approaches are particularly prone to yield erroneous removal values. A detailed investigation of micropollutant transit times at full-scale and on how this affects mass balancing results was still lacking. The present study used hydraulic residence time distributions to scrutinize the match of influent loads to effluent loads of 10 polar micropollutants with different influent dynamics in a full-scale WWTP. Prior hydraulic modeling indicated that a load sampled over one day in the effluent is composed of influent load fractions of five preceding days. Results showed that the error of the mass balance can be reduced with increasing influent sampling duration. The approach presented leads to a more reliable estimation of the removal efficiencies of those micropollutants which can be constantly detected in influents, such as pharmaceuticals, but provides no advantage for pesticides due to their sporadic occurrence. The mismatch between sampled influent and effluent loads was identified as a major error source and an explanation was provided for the occurrence of negative mass balances regularly reported. This study indicates that the accurate determination of global removal values is only feasible in full-scale investigations with sampling durations much longer than 1 day. In any case, the uncertainty of these values needs to be reported when used in removal assessment, model selection or validation.