Good morning! Warning: I am not a chemist, nor am I a water quality professional. I'm a volunteer leader of a volunteer corps of ad hoc individuals, taking an interest in our local river.
A familiar story: an abandoned machine-tool factory continues to exhibit contamination of the soil and groundwater, many years after the solvent TCE was used in active service. There are groundwater monitoring wells on-site that have been monitored off and on over the decades, and now our local Regional Planning Commission is applying for a grant to conduct Stage 2 of a Phase II environmental assessment on this site. The RPC has asked me to share with them any water monitoring data we can pull together of the Black River, which runs along the street where the factory building (and the contamination) is located. I've been researching since last fall, looking into monitoring methods that will 1) be financially feasible for a budget-less group to conduct; 2) be practical and feasible in the field for volunteers; and 3) yield useful data. I know, I know, it's like asking a pig to dance the Lindy Hop whilst you paint its hooves. Thus far, I've been in touch with the RPC, the environmental contractor who did the original Phase I assessment and groundwater wells, the State of Vermont's water quality department, and a couple of environmental contractors who have conducted similar work with TCE detection in other rivers around the country. What I'm coming up with is two possible options: 1) a push-point sampler, which actually may not work, given that our substrate in this particular area is probably too cobbley and rocky to work the thin metal tube down into the pore water below; or 2) passive diffusion bags, which we could potentially bury under the cobbles and rocks, marking their locations with construction rods (those orange-and-white striped fiberglass rods) and leaving them in place for 2 weeks or so. I'm open to other suggestions...again, bear in mind I'm not doing the TESTING myself, but I could collect pore water and follow protocols with lab-certified bottles, and ship the samples off to an accredited lab for VOC testing. Thank you kindly, Kelly Stettner (you can email me directly, [email protected])
