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Road Salt Transport at Two Municipal Wellfields in Wilmington, Massachusetts
Citation:
HEATH, D. AND M. BELAVAL. Road Salt Transport at Two Municipal Wellfields in Wilmington, Massachusetts . JOURNAL OF AMERICAN WATER WORKS ASSOCIATION. American Water Resources Association, Middleburg, VA, (2013).
Impact/Purpose:
This paper illustrates how other Source Water Protection Areas impacted by dense road networks and rising salinities may be monitored to identify and track sources of road salt for future reductions through better management.
Description:
Beginning in 2010, the USEPA and the Town of Wilmington collected monthly samples of wellfield raw water and surface water for inorganic analyses. Dataloggers recording temperature and specific conductivity every 15 minutes at key locations in streams and in the raw water taps of the two wellfields show that saline runoff from I-93 and secondary roads flows past each well field in highly concentrated pulses after winter storm events. Saline pulses containing as much as 5,470 mg/l sodium and 8,200 mg/l chloride required average times of 3.7 and 9.2 hours to flow from the interstate highway to the Browns Crossing and Barrows Wellfields, respectively. (Note: This article was published elsewhere; see Record Number 266756.)