Seasonally varying highway de-icing agent contamination in a groundwater plume from an infiltration basin

Abstract

This research documents the seasonal variation of de-icing agent contamination by measuring the specific conductivity of runoff and groundwater from an infiltration basin that serves a highway drainage system in southeast Massachusetts. The order of magnitude of the winter maxima of the runoff and groundwater specific conductivities over a 9 year period of record is lOmScm"'. The groundwater specific conductivity decreases by 1-2 orders of magnitude to its fail minimum, which is an order of magnitude higher than the fall minimum of the runoff. This warm weather source behaviour impiies slow, seasonal dissolution of de-icing agent soiids deposited in the infiitration basin during the winter. A completely mixed reactor idealization of the basin models this postuiate as a coupled balance of dissolved and solid de-icing agents. The data suggest that 13% of the de-icing agent soiids applied to the highway deposits in the basin, where it dissolves into the infiltrating groundwater with a first order decay rate of 0.0035day \

Emerging indirect and long‐term road salt effects on ecosystems

“…At even smaller scales, there are good examples of plumes of salt-contaminated waters moving slowly away from salted roadways. 6,8,9 Concentrations near a roadway may be several grams per liter, but of course these will decrease as the water mixes with other waters. Streams in urban/suburban settings typically show elevated chloride.…”

Bacterial Diversity in Soil Exposed to Highway Runoff and De-icing Agents

“…Extensive research was previously conducted at the site, and the hydrology as well as the contaminant transport and fate are well documented (Ostendorf et al 2008(Ostendorf et al , 2009a(Ostendorf et al , 2009b. Also, a study focused to isolate and characterize Fe(III)-reducing microorganisms, specifically Geobacter species was conducted in 2004 Nevin et al 2005).…”

Spatial Heterogeneity of Bacterial Communities in Sediments from an Infiltration Basin Receiving Highway Runoff

“…This work extends on previous work which, based on a limited set of five sediment samples, could not provide a comprehensive image of the relation between bacterial community structure and environmental conditions [49]. The hydrology and contaminant transport of the site were previously documented [39][40][41]. During acetate-based de-icing agents application, anaerobic iron reduction was the major process in the contaminated plume, and Geobacteraceae spp.…”

“…A detailed description of the site was presented previously [39,40,49]. In addition to groundwater monitoring, three microbiological studies were conducted at the Plymouth site.…”