Currently, the USEPA supports wellhead protection as a means to protect and preserve our groundwater resources. At Hazlett-Kincaid, we think that this is a step in the right direction. However, we support and encourage a broader, ounce-of-prevention approach, known as aquifer protection. 

We all know of instances where wellhead protection programs have failed to address actually protecting the aquifer from which the wells are drawing. The obvious shortcoming here is that if the aquifer is contaminated, even at considerable distance from the well, over time the well will likely be impacted by that contamination. This is particularly true with non-point source contamination consistently introduced to the aquifer over long periods of time.

Why aren't people up to speed on aquifer protection? I can think of many reasons, but two stand out; groundwater is unseen and moves slowly (sometimes). As with most things we humans experience, most people either don't believe or don't understand something until they see it with their own eyes. Groundwater, by definition, is a subsurface phenomena and until we evolve ground penetrating eyesight, most people don't know or don't care about it. This being said, take note that, by all accounts, groundwater represents by far the largest component of fresh water available on the planet. Rather astonishingly, most water studies focus on surface water, a more easily seen and understood phenomena. 

Groundwater also can flow quite slowly, which means in many instances, that contaminants also move slowly. The prevailing attitude that stems from this observation is that contamination in an aquifer will stay localized to the source of contamination. This may be true over relatively short time scales (50 or even 100 years) but given enough time, even the slowest moving contaminants have the ability to impact water supplies. Couple this consideration with the fact that most aquifers being used as water supplies are not low-permeability units and you have a recipe for long-term, pervasive contamination at wells and springs sourcing from anywhere up the hydraulic gradient.

Hazlett-Kincaid not only supports the aquifer protection concept, but is actively taking a role in developing modeling approaches to address related planning issues. The power of our modeling approach is that it gives people a picture of what is happening underground, both geology and fluid flow. Opening up the "black box" of the subsurface environment and spot-lighting it with the quantitative light of modeling allows us to tackle large-scale, long-term water related issues that no doubt will be among the greatest societal concerns of the 21st century. §

When many people think of groundwater modeling, they think of environmental contamination or perhaps water resource topics. However, each of these topic areas comprise just one facet of the science of hydrogeology. Hydrogeology is naturally interdisciplinary, calling upon expertise in not only geology, but higher mathematics, fluid and continuum mechanics, chemistry, biology, and computer programming, to name a few. As a result, quantitative hydrogeologists can and do engage problems as wide-ranging as radioactive decay and transport, saline intrusion, hydrothermal resource evaluation, pathogen transport, ore-deposit formation, petroleum and natural gas flows, dewatering subsidence, and slope stability analysis.

The modern quantitative hydrogeologist attacks these kinds of problems using a systems approach, considering each major component of these complex systems and how these components interrelate. Feedbacks within the system are valued, not just thrown casually aside as being irrelevant to the problem or "too complex" to understand. The power of the systems approach is grounded (no pun intended) in the fact that science (or life) can not and does not occur in a vacuum. By this, I mean that crucial planning decisions, based on a non-systems approach, made every day around the world are woefully failing us, in both intent and outcome. 

One example of this is the contamination of the Floridan aquifer and Florida's many springs by (mostly) non-point source pollution. Karst conduits carrying up to 1 billion gallons per day (BGD) are excluded from modeling efforts (using the too complex argument), making model results all but meaningless, in many instances. Surface water and groundwater freely and rapidly exchange in Florida, yet they are regulated separately, a piecewise approach that has led to very nearly disastrous consequences for Florida's most precious natural resource. Other examples of the failure of a piecewise approach to hydrogeology and planning include the dwindling water resources of the American west, salinification of the aquifers in California's central valley, and human pathogenic contamination of most aquifers worldwide.

With the advent of desktop computing and with ever increasing computing power available to the average user, a true systems approach to hydrogeologic problems is not only warranted, but a day-to-day reality for those of us at Hazlett-Kincaid. Our hydrogeologic models are setting standards in model-based planning and are changing the way people look at things. Our systems models embrace complexity today, for a well-planned tomorrow! §

Visit http://www.hazlett-kincaid.com/Q&E/Q&E_main.htm to view some of our systems models.

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