Water Quality and Emerging Contaminants

Results of recent investigations indicate that certain pharmaceutical compounds and their metabolites are frequently detected in the aquatic environment and that concentrations are greatest in areas of dense population and in streams whose flow is composed partly of effluent from wastewater-treatment facilities. USGS personnel together with NJDEP staff scientists will select surface- and...

As a result of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Toxic Sediment Reduction Program, contaminated sediment in the Lower Passaic River has been identified as being an environmental problem that will require a substantial investment in a clean-up program. To aid in assessing the impact of proposed dredging of contaminated sediments from the Passaic River, the US Geological Survey...

Newark Bay and Hudson River are important port terminals in the northeast United States. These waterways require constant remedial dredging to keep them open for shipping. The sediments in these harbors, however, are known to be contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyl's (PCB's), dioxins/furans, poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH's), metals, and other compounds. In order to reduce future need for...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has been tasked by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) with assessing the economic and technical viability of specific remediation enhancements at the Lipari Landfill Superfund Site (Lipari) located in Mantua Township, NJ. This work includes determining the source of current groundwater contamination in aquifers underlying the landfill and...

The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in cooperation with the US Geological Survey (USGS) has developed a work plan to investigate the hydrogeologic framework of the Cornell-Dubilier Electronics Superfund Site (CDE) in South Plainfield, New Jersey. The objective is to collect and analyze a suite of borehole geophysics data from selected offsite monitoring wells in conjunction with...

Wetlands restoration projects have often been unsuccessful because the effects of changes in the hydrology and water quality on plant communities are poorly understood. The overall goal of the project is to evaluate the effects of the modification of the flow regime in an urban wetlands area on the hydrogeology, water quality, soil characteristics, and plant communities over a thee-year period...

Distribution system EWS would, in the most optimal case, detect contamination events quickly and with very low rates of false positive and negative reports. The objectives of this collaborative effort between the EPA/NHSRC.

The NY/NJ CARP program attempted to determine the loads of dissolved and sediment bound contaminants of concern that entered the Newark Bay through the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers. Towards this goal, a sampling station was established on the Passaic River at the Passaic Valley Water Commission Plant located at Little Falls, NJ. The USGS recently proposed to the USEPA a sampling program to...

The goal of this project is to assist EPA in hydrogeologic investigations and perform a groundwater flow assessment in the Pohatcong Valley area to determine probable source of contamination of wells.

The primary threat to water quality and ecologic communities in the DEWA region is residential development. The five counties surrounding DEWA have experienced some of the most rapid residential development in the United States during the past several decades. This project will provide baseline data and an understanding of water-quality in streams entering the Delaware Water Gap NRA.

Various questions arise on whether or not realistic stream restoration goals can be established with our current understanding of watershed indicators and major controlling factors of aquatic ecosystem health. State-of-the-art statistical, GIS, and hydrologic modeling approaches at multiple levels of data stratification will be extensively used to evaluate the AMNET assessment methodology...

The USEPA wants USGS to evaluate available hydrogeologic and groundwater-quality data to determine if there is sufficient data to develop a model to estimate contributing area of water to the wells. The goals of this project are to determine if available data is sufficient to develop a groundwater flow model to estimate contributing area of water to wells and to determine what data needs to be...