A Beautiful Day at the South Wellfield

HYDRO25 the class. On a beautiful fall day the class investigated the South Wellfield – the mission was to take water levels from 15 observation wells and sample the groundwater, surface water and water emanating from the airstrippers. Isotopic analyses of these waters are pending. The photo above is the Falls at Apple Creek aka Effluent from an Airstripper.

HYDRO25 – here is a photo of the hand-picked teams assigned the tasks described above. The team is united by the bucket auger that was used to auger down to the confining layer of the Wooster Aquifer.

The confining layer is that far down – this group made short work of the task and brought up the pristine lake clay that is the confining layer.

Here is the clay brought up by the team. It is organic rich and we really should pick it for organics.  Radiocarbon ages of the organics will help us understand the timing of the lake that existed in the valley – Glacial Lake Killbuck.

Our primary objective was measuring water levels in the confined Wooster Aquifer, however here we are measuring the water table that is a perched aquifer on top of the clay. Just a kilometer aways is a BTEX plume on top of the clay that is actively being remediated.The observation wells are all completed in the confined Wooster aquifer, and here the team is sneaking up on observation well #4. The levees to Apple Creek are in the background.

We also had a team in the Apple Creek measuring discharge and probing the bottom of the stream for the clay confining layer. What a welcoming team of stream gaugers.

The team bailed a few of the wells to sample the water.  We will obtain the stable isotopes of the various waters sampled to investigate the origin of the waters. This was last done by the USGS decades ago.

The airstrippers, installed to remove VOCs from the water, are filled with these “wiffle balls” designed to atomize the waters which are then “stripped” of contaminants via compressed air blowing through the column.

One last shot of the Auger team under a big Wooster sky with their feet firmly planted in a recently harvested no-till soybean field with the water treatment plant and its anaerobic digested in the far background.

Special thanks to our bus driver Bud and to the Water plant for permission to enact this lab for HYDRO25.