Anthropogenic Tracers as Indicators of Estuarine Pollution from OnSite Treatment and Disposal System

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Anthropogenic Tracers as Indicators of Estuarine
Pollution from On-Site Treatment and Disposal
Systems
In other words Detecting coliform and other
pollutants rapidly, on-site, and confirming their
human origins.
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Anthropogenic Tracers as Indicators of Estuarine
Pollution from On-Site Treatment and Disposal
Systems
OSTDS Hydrology Indicators Future
Research
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(No Transcript)
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On-Site Sewage Treatment and Disposal
Systems(OSTDS)

• Prevalence
• Structure
• Function

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OSTDSPrevalence

• 25 of homes nationally (EPA 2007)
• 33 of Florida (FL DOH)
• 75 of people nationally live within 80km of
  coastal waters (Colman 2004)

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OSTDSStructure
Anaerobic
Aerobic
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OSTDSFunction
75 NH4 25 NH3
Organic Nitrogen
Anaerobic Mineralization
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OSTDSFunction
Extent of denitrification occurring below the
drain field depends greatly on hydrologic
conditions.
But no matter what, youre getting some nitrate.
NO3-
NO3-
Aerobic
Bacterial Nitrification
NO3-
NO3-
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So what if it breaks?
Many ways in which failures can and do occur No
agency collecting failure data and efforts so far
have focused only on permit applications and
reported failures, not incidents of contamination
(EPA 2007) So for now, lets just assume theres
a failure. How does it pollute the water?
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Groundwater Hydrology

• Soil
• Aquifer
• Variables
• Submarine Groundwater Discharge

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Groundwater Hydrology
Soil

• Soils are diverse region to region and locally
• Distance traveled and residence time of
  biological contaminants is directly related to
  soil type and distance to water table
• Contaminants travel farthest in saturated,
  coarse-textured soils with large continuous
  pores (Hagedorn 2003)

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Groundwater Hydrology
Aquifer

• Eastern FL Two main aquifer systems
• Surficial (unconfined)
• Floridan (confined by the 30m thick
  Hawthorne Formation)
• North IRL Hawthorne Formation is absent
• Greater opportunity for groundwater to serve
• as vector for pollutant transport (Cable
  2004)

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Groundwater Hydrology
Aquifer
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Groundwater Hydrology
Variables
Long term decrease in potentiometric
surface Seasonal variations in depth to water
table All and more affect the way GW becomes SW
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Groundwater Hydrology
Submarine Groundwater Discharge

• All water flowing from the sediment to the
  overlying water regardless of its origin
  (Martin 2006)
• Separation of groundwater and recycled lagoon
  water must be quantified
• Benthic advective inputs are still critical
  terms to consider in biogeochemical loading to
  coastal water bodies (Cable 2004)

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Groundwater Hydrology
Submarine Groundwater Discharge
Low Tech Seepage Meter
May be susceptible to possible artifacts caused
by interaction of tides and waves although such
limitations have not thoroughly been tested
(Swarzenski 2001).
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Groundwater Hydrology
Submarine Groundwater Discharge
High Tech - Geochemical Tracers
222Rn / 226Ra 222Rn 100 -1000x more abundant in
GW Easy to collect Conservative behavior
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Groundwater Hydrology
Submarine Groundwater Discharge

• Other methods of measuring
• Thermal
• Chloride (Cl-)

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Groundwater Hydrology
Submarine Groundwater Discharge

• Large discrepancies often exist among meters,
  tracers, and models
• Discrepancies are likely caused by mixing in
  the sediments due to a variety of processes
• The most important of these processes in the
  IRL is bioirrigation
• (Martin 2004 Martin 2006)

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• So now that we know
• what it is
• where it comes from
• and how it gets there
• How do we
• find it
• and determine
• anthropogenic origin

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Anthropogenic Indicators

• Bacteriological
• Chemical

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Anthropogenic Indicators

• Bacteriological

(Bush 2003)
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Anthropogenic Indicators

• Chemical - Generic

• Chloride (Cl-)
• Used as a reference to check if other
  parameters can be used to indicate pollution
  (Alhajjar 1990).
• Electrical Conductivity (EC)
• Like Cl-, can be used as a reference and general
  indicator suggesting further investigation.
• pH
• Nitrification is acid-forming (2H produced for
  every NH4 oxidized)
• Serve as an indication of pollution since STE is
  in the range of 20 - 130 mg/L NH4 (Alhajjar
  1990)

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Anthropogenic Indicators

• Chemical Organic Wastewater Contaminants (OWC)

• Antibiotics
• Human or veterinary medicinal (Kolpin 2002)
• Triclosan (toothpaste, shampoo, cosmetics, etc)
  (Weinberg 2005)
• Prescription / Nonprescription
• Persist in STE and percolate to surficial
  aquifer (Godfrey 2007)
• 75 reduced ltdetection after 2m percolation
  through vadose zone
• Concentration in GW well correlated with
  community prescriptions

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Anthropogenic Indicators

• Chemical biological compounds

• Coprostanol (Holm Windsor 1986)
• Formed by enteric bacterial reduction of sterols
• High incidence in sewage
• Stable in variable temperature and salinity
  (Bush 2005)
• Not human specific manatees and porpoises also
• Cholestanol (Bush 2005)
• CholestanolCoprostanol ratios
• Ratio gt 1 human origin
• Ratio lt 1 indeterminate

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Anthropogenic Indicators

• Chemical

• Caffeine
• Presence with pharmaceuticals and nitrate is
  clear, unambiguous evidence of anthropogenic
  pollution (Seiler 1999)
• Only detectable in limited circumstances or in
  the event of failure (Seiler 1999)
• Caffeine in surface water in Sarasota Bay system
  was positively correlated with fecal coliform
  abundance and with nitrate (Peeler 2006)
• Clearly, more study is needed.

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Anthropogenic Indicators

• Chemical

Fluorescence!
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Anthropogenic Indicators

• Chemical Flourometric

• Flourescent Whitening Agents
• General
• aka Optical Brighteners
• Get your clothes whiter than white
• 11 major families of highly substituted aromatic
  rings
• Thousands of formulations exist
• Conservative behavior
• Survives OSTDS
• Subject to photodecay (moving target)
• Sources
• Surfactants
• Some sterols (Steroid alcohols / amphipathic
  lipids)
• Naturally occurring fluorescence
• Some species of marine algae
• Some organic acids (fulvic, humic, tannic)
• Oil spills

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Anthropogenic Indicators

• Chemical Flourometric

• Fluorometric detection
• Alhajjar (1990) failed to detect at any
  reasonable distance
• Hagedorn (2005) reports great success
• Careful calibration
• Attention to wind and tide
• Small boat and motor
• Plumes are evident
• Linear concentration gradient is measurable
• Might be a good place to start testing

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Future Research

• GW / SW interface
• GW components of nutrient cycling
• Edaphic effects on flourescence
• Temporal effects on flourescence
• Triclosan?
• Caffeine?
• EDTA et al?

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Questions?
Thanks for your attention!

• Dale and Scott McGinnis
• North Carolina, 1974

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559-568. Bush, L., Kurz, W., Powell, L., Powers,
M., Putnam, G., Vandenburgh, E. 2003. Addressing
Microbial Pollution in Coastal Waters A
Reference for Local Governments. North Carolina
Estuarine Research Reserve Report to North
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Appendix 1, 41-47. Cable, J.E., Martin, J.B.,
Swarzenski, P.W., Lindenberg, M.K., Steward, J.
2004. Advection Within Shallow Pore Waters of
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1011-1020. Colman, J.A., Masterson, J.P., Pabich,
W.J., Walter, D.A 2004. Effects of Aquifer
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Hormones and Other Wastewater Contaminants in US
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Jaeger, J., Hartl, K., Smith, C.G. 2006.
Thermal and Chemical Evidence for Rapid Water
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Ground Water Discharge from Mixing of Pore Water
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Pharmaceuticals as Indicators of Waste Water
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