Former Town Dump
In the 1980s and 1990s, I worked at many former dump sites, sampling groundwater wells to understand how past disposal practices had affected the subsurface. This particular dump operated in the early 1900s and served a small village in rural New England. Before modern waste regulations were established in the latter half of the twentieth century, materials that would now be considered hazardous were commonly discarded in such locations.
Groundwater studies at this site have detected trichloroethylene (TCE), a solvent widely used beginning in the 1930s as a metal degreaser. Over time, TCE became one of the more common contaminants found in groundwater across industrial and small-town settings.
When approaching sites like this, I am interested first in understanding the geologic framework and the direction of groundwater flow. From there, monitoring well data help define the extent and relative concentration of contaminants. In this image, the groundwater is represented by a faint blue overlay, while colored fields indicate interpreted areas of TCE concentration. The purple areas represent the highest concentrations within the plume.