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Groundwater Impacts on Surface Water and Sediment—Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, New York
Author(s) -
McDonald Shane,
GbondoTugbawa Solomon,
Prabhu Chitra,
Mahoney Eileen,
Garvey Edward,
Frederick Jeffrey J.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
remediation journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1520-6831
pISSN - 1051-5658
DOI - 10.1002/rem.21485
Subject(s) - groundwater , sediment , environmental remediation , surface water , environmental science , estuary , contamination , hydrogeology , hydrology (agriculture) , environmental chemistry , geology , environmental engineering , oceanography , chemistry , geomorphology , geotechnical engineering , ecology , biology
The Gowanus Canal Superfund Site in Brooklyn, New York, is an approximately 1.5‐mile (1.61‐km) long estuary that was historically converted into a canal for industrial and commercial purposes. Three manufactured gas plants (MGPs) were formerly located on the Gowanus Canal and discharged waste into it. Surface sediments remain highly contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) long after the MGPs were razed. A hydrogeologic assessment indicates that groundwater passes through the deeper coal tar–contaminated sediment prior to discharging to the canal. This study was undertaken to investigate if groundwater passing through coal tar–contaminated sediment could be responsible for the ongoing contamination of both surface sediments and surface water in the canal. PAH compound distributions in surface water samples collected from the tidal canal at low tide were compared with PAH compounds found in adjacent groundwater‐monitoring wells, point sources (combined sewer overflows [CSOs]), and surface sediments. The results indicate a strong correlation between PAH contaminant distributions in groundwater, sediment, and surface water, indicating that contaminated groundwater passing through the deeper coal tar–contaminated sediments is the primary mechanism contributing to the contamination of both surface sediment and surface water in the canal. Therefore, any sediment remediation efforts in the Gowanus Canal that fail to evaluate and control the upward transport processes have a high chance of failure due to recontamination from below. ©2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.