Abstract |
In June 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA), Office of Research and Development (ORD)/National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) in collaboration with EPA Region 10 under the Regional Applied Research Effort (RARE) Program issued a Statement of Work (SOW) under Contract No. EP-C-04-034 (Work Assignment No. 4-19) that tasked Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure, Inc. (Shaw) to provide technical support and coordinate activities to evaluate the fate and effects of leachate contamination on Alaska's tribal drinking water sources. Subsequently, this work was continued under Contract No. EP-C-09-041 (Work Assignments No. 0-07, 1-07, and 2-07). Overall, the individual SOWs required Shaw to coordinate with EPA and the Alaskan tribal communities to identify and select five suitable Alaskan tribal landfills/dump sites and perform suitable water quality sampling and analysis to identify chemical and microbial contaminants of concern (COCs) that could potentially impact the local drinking water sources. The goals of this research were to characterize the general surface water quality and groundwater quality in the vicinity of the selected Alaska's rural landfills, identify water contamination levels, and collect information that can be used to improve the management of the approximately 200 open tribal dump sites throughout the State of Alaska. This final report summarizes the activities, findings, and recommendations based on the approximately three years of this collaborative research. |