Movement and fate of solutes in a plume of sewage-contaminated ground water, Cape Cod, Massachusetts: U.S. Geological Survey toxic waste ground-water contamination program

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has begun a nationwide program to study the fate of toxic wastes in groundwater. Several sites where groundwater is known to be contaminated are being studied by interdisciplinary teams of geohydrologists, chemists, and microbiologists. The objective of these studies is to obtain a thorough quantitative understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological processes of contaminant generation, migration, and attenuation in aquifers. One of the sites being studied by the USGS under this program is a plume of sewage contaminated groundwater on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The plume was formed by land disposal of treated sewage to a glacial outwash aquifer since 1936. This report summarizes results obtained during the first year of research at the Cape Cod s under the USGS Toxic-Waste Ground-Water Contamination Program. The seven papers included in this volume were presented at the Toxic Waste Technical Meeting, Tucson, Arizona, in March 1984. They provide an integrated view of the subsurface distribution of contaminants based on the first year of research and discuss hypotheses concerning the transport processes that affect the movement of contaminants in the plume. (See W89-09053 thru W89-09059)