Celebrating 75 Years of USGS Science at the Idaho National Laboratory
This month, the USGS celebrates 75 years of hydrologic monitoring and studies at the Idaho National Laboratory in southeastern Idaho.
Established in 1949, the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho Operations (DOE-ID) office oversees work at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), one of 21 DOE-operated national laboratories and technology centers. The USGS began working at what is now the INL in 1949 by monitoring the amount of groundwater that was available for the facility and determining baseline groundwater chemistry prior to the development and implementation of nuclear reactor research on site.
In those early days, USGS scientists travelled to the INL either from USGS headquarters in Reston, Virginia, or from the Idaho district office in Boise. In 1959, it was decided to house a permanent office at the INL in the same building as DOE’s Radiological and Environmental Sciences Laboratory. USGS staff commuted out to the INL until 1998 when project offices were established in Pocatello and Idaho Falls.
Our USGS mission at the INL is to maintain a comprehensive groundwater monitoring and hydrogeologic studies program to evaluate the availability and movement of water in the eastern Snake River Plain aquifer to align with DOE’s strategic goal of safeguarding the environment.
We also are tasked with describing the processes controlling the fate of contaminants (advective transport, dispersion, adsorption, dilution, diffusion, radioactive decay, and chemical reactions), and provide independent reviews of hydrogeological data and reports submitted by DOE and its contractors to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Idaho.
Throughout this 75-year history, USGS scientists at the INL have been at the forefront of science development in groundwater flow modeling, geochemistry research, unsaturated zone research, and volcanic hazards assessments. The USGS INL Project Office has drilled or contracted to drill more than 300 wells, and has collected data from more than 475 sites, including 72,000 water-level measurements, 22,000 water samples, 1,500 geophysical logs from 137 sites, and 1,500 surface-water measurements. We have published our research in more than 385 scientific publications.
Roy Bartholomay is the Director of the Idaho Water Science Center. He previously served as the chief of the Idaho National Laboratory Project Office and as the water-quality specialist and chief of the Huron Programs Office of the USGS South Dakota Water Science Center. His scientific research involves studies on groundwater geochemistry and water quality.
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