Ground Water
1996 Book Reviews
The following full-text reviews are available: (Pricing and ordering information was correct at date of publication; please contact the publisher or the NGWA Bookstore for updated information.)
Complex Confining Layers: A Stochastic Analysis of Hydraulic Properties at Various Scales
Dense Chlorinated Solvents and Other DNAPLS in Ground Water
Geological Aspects of Hazardous Waste Management
Handbook of Bioremediation
Introducing Groundwater
Monitoring and Remediation Wells--Problem Prevention, Maintenance, and Rehabilitation
Geological Aspects of Hazardous Waste Management
Reviewed Marvin (Nick) Saines, Senior Project Hydrogeologist, OHM Remediation Services, 1587 Figueroa Dr., Las Vegas, NV 89123March/April 1996, Vol. 34, No. 2, p. 370
Steven M. Testa coauthor of Restoration of Petroleum-Contaminated Aquifers (1991), is the author of Geological Aspects of Hazardous Waste Management. Steve is president and founder of Applied Environmental Services, Inc., San Juan Capistrano, CA. His new book focuses on hazardous waste management and the role of the geologist. From the Preface: this book "maintains adequate technical depth and mathematical treatment to serve as a textbook suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental science, environmental geology with an emphasis in waste disposal, and hazardous waste management certification programs."
The 537-page book contains 13 chapters and three appendices. Chapter 1 (Introduction, 14 pages) presents the waste problem and the role of the geologist in addressing this problem. Chapter 2 (Regulatory Framework, 40 pages) discusses the major regulatory programs where geologic input and application are required, including discussion of environmental site assessments, and their application to oil fields and geothermal areas.
Geologic principles are presented in Chapter 3 (46 pages), focusing on sedimentary environments and the hydrogeological significance of fractures and faults. Included is a table on hydraulic conductivity of various sedimentary/hydrogeological facies.
Hydrogeologic principles within the vadose and saturated zones, hydrodynamics, and water quality are discussed in Chapter 4 (44 pages). Solved problems include utilizing Fick's Law for diffusion, and seepage velocity and actual velocity. Included are a discussion of analyzing pumping tests in fractured rocks, and a brief section on radius of influence in vertical and horizontal wells.
Chapter 5, Techniques for Subsurface Characterization (44 pages), covers conventional techniques, and includes discussions of vertical horizontal wells, and soil vapor monitoring. Geoprobe, Hydropunch, and related methods are not included. Chapter 6 (36 pages) covers geophysical techniques of subsurface investigation, including 24 pages on geophysical logs.
Classification of soils and ground water as hazardous or toxic wastes is discussed in Chapter 7 (22 pages). The predominant physical, biological, and chemical subsurface processes which affect the constituents and contaminants are discussed in Chapter 8 (48 pages). Advection, dispersion, and diffusion are discussed on one page whereas 12 pages are devoted to biological processes.
LNAPLs and DNAPLs are covered in Chapter 9 (34 pages), including excellent discussions of the apparent thickness in a well versus the actual thickness in the aquifer, although no quantitative methods are presented in this book.
Chapter 10 covers landfill disposal (45 pages), including design, siting criteria, vadose detection monitoring, and ground-water detection monitoring. Two excellent case histories are presented. Chapter 11, Underground Injection (31 pages ) covers well classifications, siting criteria, hydrogeologic considerations, monitoring, and geochemical fate. Some equations are presented but no worked-out examples.
Underground geological repositories are discussed in Chapter 12 (34 pages) organized by host rock types. Also discussed are design considerations. The final chapter covers ocean disposal of hazardous waste (30 pages), including types of waste, ocean environments, and processes, and marine geological processes.
Appendix A presents metric conversions. Appendix B is a glossary of regulatory terms. Appendix C is a detailed chemical analysis reference chart that contains details on container size, preservation, and holding time for soil and water samples.
Geological Aspects of Hazardous Waste Management (1994), authored by Stephen M. Testa, is published by Lewis Publishers.
Handbook of Bioremediation
Reviewed by Mary Mast, USPCI a Laidlaw Company, 5565 Flatiron Parkway, Boulder, CO 80301
March/April 1996, Vol. 34, No. 2, p. 370
The Handbook of Bioremediation (1994), authored by Noris, Hinchee, Brown, and McCarty, is a well-organized introductory text for soil and ground-water professionals. The book provides a forthright and easily understandable approach to familiarizing one with the basic concepts of bioremediation as well as current technologies. The book focuses on soil and ground-water contamination by petroleum hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents. The detailed Executive Summary accurately portrays the contents of the 11 major sections of the book.
The technical sections are divided based upon contamination type and treatment technology. Sections 2 through 4 address bioremediation of soils and ground water contaminated by petroleum hydrocarbons. Section 2 describes the fundamentals of in situ bioremediation, while sections 3 and 4 are dedicated to treatment technologies. Sections 5 and 6 review technologies for contamination by chlorinated solvents. Technologies that use alternate electron acceptors (other than oxygen) are addressed in Sections 7 and 8. Sections 9 and 10 discuss natural bioremediation, and Section 11 examines the introduction of organisms for subsurface bioremediation.
The processes, case histories, costs, and appropriate applications are thoroughly discussed in each of the technical sections. The authors do not hesitate to discuss limitations of the various processes, and also address areas where more research is warranted. References as well as names of experts complete with addresses, phone numbers, and fax lines are included in several of the sections. One weakness I found with the book was that some of the simpler figures were confusing and required more scrutiny than warranted by the subject at hand. Handbook of Bioremediation is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in the subject and may also serve as a reliable reference book.
The book is published by Lewis Publishers.
The title, Introducing Groundwater, will probably not catch the eye of many people who consider themselves ground-water specialists and who thus do not think they need an introduction to the subject. From their perspective, a better title might have been Understanding Groundwater. Work in the ground-water field has greatly expanded over the last couple of decades, as a result of public and private efforts to eliminate ground-water pollution. This has resulted in many people obtaining jobs in the field, including many former petroleum geologists, who lack the necessary education and training and who therefore lack both the technical skills and the understanding of the basic aspects of ground-water hydrology needed to do competent work. This has led, at least in the United States, to the waste of huge sums of money for the collection of massive amounts of data which, more often than not, the investigators are incapable of analyzing.
Price's book will not only be invaluable to all of these people but also to the more experienced hydrogeologists and engineers who could usefully spend a few hours refreshing their memory of basic principles and concepts. In fact, everyone involved in ground-water development, regulation, or remediation will profit from a cover to cover reading of Price's book.
Introducing Groundwater is not, and was not intended to be, a technical reference book. There are many fine textbooks that meet this need. Instead, Price covers in an exceptional clear writing style the basic concepts and principles that form the basis for all ground-water-related work.
Those familiar with the First Edition of Price's book will find in the Second Edition a greatly expanded discussion of droughts and their effect of ground-water storage, water quality and microorganisms, and a new chapter on ground-water pollution. In fact, in the 39 pages devoted to the chapter on ground-water pollution, which he provocatively entitled "What goes down must come up," Price not only covers the physical mechanisms involved in the movement of pollutants but also the behavior of the principal pollutants, both the American and European efforts to deal with ground-water pollution, and the concepts of hazard, risk, and ground-water protection.
In addition to the wide scope of the topics covered, two other outstanding features of the book are the excellent diagrams that Price included to illustrate the principles discussed in the text and his description of the historical events that led to their discovery. Thus, in his discussion of elastic storage he not only includes three excellent diagrams that illustrate the concept but also discusses the classical study by Meinzer and Hard of the Dakota Sandstone in North Dakota in which such storage was first recognized.
If Introducing Groundwater has any deficiency, it is in the discussion of aquifer tests and the determination of transmissivity and storativity. However, in the few pages devoted to this subject Price covers most of the key topics, including an especially informative discussion of the delayed-yield phenomenon of unconfined aquifers.
Although the author of Introducing Groundwater intended it for the nonspecialist, it should be read by and in the library of every specialists. It should also be required reading for all students in beginning courses in hydrogeology and environmental science. Published by Chapman & Hall (1996, 278 pages), this book is available for $23.95 (paperback) from ITP, 7625 Empire Drive, Florence, KY 41042, Ph: 800-842-3636.
Every once in a while a publication comes along that is so timely, on-target, well-written, and well-illustrated that it makes a complex and misunderstood subject crystal-clear. Dense Chlorinated Solvents, a 522-page hardcover book edited by Professors James F. Pankow of the Oregon Graduate Institute, and John A. Cherry of the University of Waterloo, Ontario, is such a book. It is based on research carried out by the University Consortium Solvents-in-Groundwater Research Program. Principal research institutions participating in the industry-sponsored consortium include the University of Waterloo and Queen's University in Canada, and the Oregon Graduate Institute and Colorado State University in the U.S. The book has excellent background/overview chapters that summarize current knowledge, detailed papers that back up the syntheses, and a few illustrative case histories.
The book contains 14 chapters. Chapter 1 is a comprehensive 52-page introduction that gives the background and history of the DNAPL (dense, nonaqueous phase liquid) and dissolved plume problem. It includes a summary discussion of the properties of dense chlorinated solvents as related to their occurrence in the vadose and saturated zones. The chapter documents early ASTM and chemical company MSDSs recommending land disposal of chlorinated solvents.
Chapter 2, "Conceptual Models for the Behavior of DNAPLs in the Subsurface" (36 pages), discusses the occurrence of these contaminants in the vadose zone and in the saturated zone and in dissolved plumes. Physical and chemical principles are covered, and implications for site characterization, monitoring, and remediation are discussed. Occurrence below the water table is broken up into porous media, fractured, and layered systems.
Detailed technical papers include: Mechanics and mathematics of the movement of DNAPLs (31 pages); Numerical simulation (16 pages); Experimental studies of movement of DNAPLs (34 pages); Vapor migration in the vadose zone (23 pages); Dissolution of DNAPLs in the subsurface (30 pages); Sorption to aquifer materials (34 pages); Chemical and microbiological transformations and degradation of chlorinated solvents (43 pages); The effects of chlorinated solvents on the permeability of clays (24 pages); Physics governing the migration of DNAPLs in fractured media (18 pages); and Molecular diffusion in fractures (40 pages).
Chapter 13, "Diagnosis and Assessment of DNAPL Sites" (80 pages), addresses the problem of finding
DNAPLs in the source area. Types of DNAPL chemicals are reviewed, followed by a discussion of DNAPL penetration into the subsurface. A discussion on determining the presence of DNAPLs based on intrusive and nonintrusive field work is presented, followed by a section on chemical analysis of soil and rock. Dissolved plumes are discussed in a section that includes a New Jersey case history of plume regeneration after pump and treat.
The final chapter deals with concepts for remediation of sites contaminated with DNAPLs, and is followed by an appendix containing tables of physical and chemical properties.
Dense Chlorinated Solvents and Other DNAPLs in Groundwater (1996), edited by James F. Pankow and John A. Cherry, documents why TCE, PCE, TCA, and DCM will be around to haunt us for decades, if not centuries. This is a state-of-the-art reference book that should be read by everybody in the industry working in the investigation and remediation of DNAPLs and their dissolved plumes.
The book is available for U.S. $95.00 (CDN $125.00) plus shipping and handling, from Waterloo Educational Services, Inc., 2 Taggart Ct., Unit 4, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1H 6H8 . Ph: 519-836-3102. Fax 519-836-3381.
At first glance, one might presume that this volume, by Marc F. P. Bierkens, will be of interest to only a narrow group of scientists: those deeply concerned with heterogeneity of hydraulic properties of confining layers in the Dutch fluvial district. In fact, this book should reach a wider audience because it provides a useful case study of the application of stochastic analysis to a real world hydrological problem. One of the Bierkens' contributions in this volume is his acknowledgment that much data typically available for regional studies are what he calls "soft geological information" (or what I'd call "qualitative data") and presents methods for integrating such data into stochastic analysis.
Bierkens also provides a discussion of the difficulties inherent in extrapolating small, or core scale measurements to larger scales useful for numerical modeling. In particular, he focuses on methods available to preserve meaningful descriptions of parameter heterogeneity when scaling up from small scale measurements.
Much of this book is a review of the work of others; with the exception of an interesting treatment of cross-bedded sediments, Bierkens presents no new theory. For example, there are 25 pages on stochastic theory and nine pages on fluvial sedimentary deposits that present topics found in texts or review articles that many readers probably already have on their shelves.
Stripped of the review components, this work would constitute one or two good papers in a hydrology journal. Indeed, one is left with the impression that the hydrologic community would have been better served if a condensed version of this work had simply been published in a journal. This is because the truly new science embedded in this book would have been more widely circulated. It is apparently standard practice in the Netherlands to publish dissertations in book form, so my concern about format of publication may be more of a cultural issue than a technical one.
In spite of my concerns about the publication format of this work, I recommend Complex Confining Layers (1994) to anyone looking for an overview of the theory and application of random fields and stochastic simulation for modeling spatial variability of hydraulic properties. In addition, this book could be used as a text for classes in stochastic methods hydrology; it would be particularly valuable if used as a case study of the application of stochastic theory to a real world problem. Finally, of course, I recommend this book to all those concerned about the hydrology of the Dutch fluvial district.
It is available from Netherlands Geographical Studies, P.O. Box 80123, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands, Tel 31 30 532757, Fax 31 30 535523. Price: Dfl 39.00
From the Preface: There is a growing problem of performance degradation of wells and associated systems on sites where ground water is monitored or remediation is performed. It is getting to the point where people are beginning to doubt the validity of pump-and-treat as a method. This book is intended to be a guide in keeping monitoring and pumping well systems operating to their best capacity. What site managers are experiencing has long before been a headache for operators of water supply, dewatering, recharge, and hydraulic-relief wells. Monitoring wells are subject to greater deterioration effects than active pumped wells because they sit unused for long periods. This book is intended to address the need for and methods of environmental well maintenance and restoration. It is a guidebook to the causes of well deterioration, methods of well maintenance, and well restoration and rehabilitation methods.
The 183-page hardcover book is divided into 10 chapters organized under three sections. Section I, "Causes," contains two chapters: a brief history of environmental well maintenance (2 pages) and a 35-page chapter on the causes and effects of performance deterioration. The chapter deals mainly with biofouling, but brief discussions of sanding and silting, yield and drawdown problems, chemical encrustation, corrosion, plastic deterioration, and well structural failure are included.
Section II, "Prevention and Maintenance," contains four chapters, Chapter 3 briefly introduces preventive maintenance monitoring. Monitoring and remediation well design and its relation to well deterioration are discussed in Chapter 4 (24 pages), and includes a section on well development techniques. Chapter 5 briefly discusses issues and procedures related to well maintenance, and includes a performance checklist which can be used to evaluate the performance of a well over time in order to detect evidence of deterioration. Chapter 6, "Maintenance Monitoring Program for Wells" (32 pages), describes decision-making considerations and recommendations for practical preventive maintenance monitoring. Visual examination and well and pump performance are discussed but the bulk of the chapter is devoted to physicochemical data, biological monitoring, and biofouling monitoring. What analyses to perform is addressed, and a handy summary table of maintenance monitoring is presented. Preventive treatments and actions are covered in Chapter 7 (12 pages). These include controlling sand pumping, controlling corrosion, and adding acids periodically to control biofouling. Costs are discussed in some detail.
The final section, Section III, "Rehabilitation and Reconstruction," is divided up into three chapters. Chapter 8, "Decisions on Rehabilitation Methods: After Things Go Wrong" (20 pages), addresses the following scenario: "Performance is already down. . .drawdowns are increasing, discharge lines are partially clogged, and filters are backwashing constantly. Now you have to save the system." The answer, as described in detail in this chapter, is to hire an experienced well-cleaning contractor. Also included in this chapter is a good example application of the cost of pumping equation. Chapter 9, "Rehabilitation Methods: Technical Descriptions" (14 pages), briefly covers convention physical agitation and recently developed methods including "fracking" and sonic techniques, then discusses acidizing in detail, including pros and cons of various acids. Also discussed are sequestering agents, chlorination, other oxidants, heat, and blended methods. A good summary of recommended rehabilitation procedures completes the chapter. The final chapter includes eight pages of case histories dealing with well deterioration and rehabilitation.
Monitoring and Remediation Wells--Problem Prevention, Maintenance, and Rehabilitation (1995) is a very important new book for those of us who have to deal with the problem of well deterioration. Some constructive criticism for the next edition: better quality diagrams and less repetition. Nevertheless, if you have well biofouling problems on your project, this book is essential. It is available for $65.00 (member), $81.25 (nonmember) plus shipping and handling from the NGWA Bookstore, Catalog #T471. Phone your credit card orders to 800-551-7379 or fax your order to 614-898-7786.
Click here to visit the NGWA Bookstore and order online! Introducing Groundwater
Reviewed by Ralph C. Heath, Consulting Hydrogeologist, 4821 Kilkenny Place, Raleigh, NC 27612
May/June 1996, Vol. 34, No.3, p. 566
This is the Second Edition of the book by Michael Price that was first published in 1985. It, like the First Edition, is intended by the author "to provide the non-specialist with a readable introduction to the subject." It is outstandingly successful in meeting this objective.
Dense Chlorinated Solvents and Other DNAPLS in Ground Water
Reviewed by Marvin (Nick) Saines, Senior Project Hydrogeologist, OHM Remediation Services, 1587 Figueroa Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89123
May/June 1996, Vol. 34, No.3, p. 566
Complex Confining Layers: A Stochastic Analysis of Hydraulic Properties at Various Scales
Reviewed by James T. Wells, Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 222 East Carrillo Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
May/June 1996, Vol. 34, No.3, p. 567
Monitoring and Remediation Wells--Problem Prevention, Maintenance, and Rehabilitation by Stuart A. Smith
Reviewed by Marvin (Nick) Saines, Senior Project Hydrogeologist, OHM Remediation Services, 1587 Figueroa Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89123
September/October 1996, Vol. 34, No. 5, p. 953
Lewis Publishers has come up with another timely, authoritative reference book for the environmental ground-water industry. Monitoring and Remediation Wells, subtitled Problem Prevention, Maintenance, and Rehabilitation was written by Stuart A. Smith, who is one of the nation's leading experts on iron biofouling of wells. He is the author or coauthor of over 100 publications, many of which deal with iron biofouling. He has his own consulting company in Ada, Ohio.
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