Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-71). Also available on the World Wide Web.

When well water becomes contaminated to the extent that is does not meet EPA drinking water quality standards, it is considered unsafe for consumption. Nitrate and total coliform bacteria are both health contaminants and are both regulated in public water systems. A nitrate concentration of 10 mg/L or higher is considered unsafe, as is the presence of total coliform bacteria. Well degradation, inadequate well construction, and aquifer contamination can all result in contamination of well water. Factors such as well type, well age, well depth, treatment devices, population density, household plumbing pipe materials, and nearby pollution sources may affect household water quality. The specific objective of this study was to determine which factors influence nitrate levels and total coliform presence/absence of household well water. If possible, these influencing factors would be used to develop a relationship that would allow household residents to predict the nitrate level and total coliform presence/absence of their well water. As a result, a means of predicting the contamination risk to a specific well water supply under a given set of conditions, in addition to increasing awareness, could provide the homeowner with a rationale for further investigating the possibility of contamination. Existing data from the Virginia Cooperative Extension Household Water Quality Testing and Information Program were assembled for analyses in this project. The data consisted of 9,697 private household water supplies sampled from 1989-1999 in 65 Virginia counties. Initially, the entire state of Virginia was analyzed, followed by the five physiographic provinces of Virginia: the Blue Ridge, Coastal Plain, Cumberland Plateau, Ridge & Valley, and Piedmont. Ultimately, Louisa County was investigated to evaluate the possibility that better models could be developed using smaller land areas and, consequently, less geological variation. Least squares regression, both parametrically and non-parametrically, was used to determine the influence of various factors on nitrate levels. Similarly, logistic regression was used to determine the influence of the same parameters on nitrate categories, presence/absence of total coliform, and risk categories. Using stepwise model-building techniques, based primarily on statistical significance (p-values) and partial coefficient of determination (partial-R2), first and second-order linear models were evaluated. The best-fitting model only explained 58.5% of the variation in nitrate and none of the models fit well enough to be used for prediction purposes. However, the models did identify which factors were, in a statistical sense, significantly related to nitrate levels and total coliform presence/absence and quantified the strength of these relationships in terms of the percent of variation explained. / Master of Science

5 pp. / 1. Drinking Water Wells; 2. Private Water Well Components; 3. Do Deeper Wells Mean Better Water; 4. Maintaining Your Private Well Water System; 5. Private Well Protection; 6. Well Water Testing and Understanding the Results; 7. Obtaining a Water Sample for Bacterial Analysis; 8. Microorganisms in Private Water Wells; 9. Lead in Private Water Wells; 10. Nitrate in Private Water Wells; 11.Arsenic in Private Water Wells; 12. Matching Drinking Water Quality Problems to Treatment Methods; 13. Commonly Available Home Water Treatment Systems; 14. Hard Water: To Soften or Not to Soften; 15. Shock Chlorination of Private Water Wells / This fact sheet is one in a series of fifteen for private water well owners. The one- to four-page fact sheets will be assembled into a two-pocket folder entitled Private Well Owners Guide. The titles will also be a part of the Changing Rural Landscapes project whose goal is to educate exurban, small acreage residents. The authors have made every effort to align the fact sheets with the proposed Arizona Cooperative Extension booklet An Arizona Well Owners Guide to Water Sources, Quality, Sources, Testing, Treatment, and Well Maintenance by Artiola and Uhlman. The private well owner project was funded by both the University of Arizonas Water Sustainability Program-Technology and Research Initiative Fund and the USDA-CSREES Region 9 Water Quality Program.

3 pp. / 1. Drinking Water Wells; 2. Private Water Well Components; 3. Do Deeper Wells Mean Better Water; 4. Maintaining Your Private Well Water System; 5. Private Well Protection; 6. Well Water Testing and Understanding the Results; 7. Obtaining a Water Sample for Bacterial Analysis; 8. Microorganisms in Private Water Wells; 9. Lead in Private Water Wells; 10. Nitrate in Private Water Wells; 11.Arsenic in Private Water Wells; 12. Matching Drinking Water Quality Problems to Treatment Methods; 13. Commonly Available Home Water Treatment Systems; 14. Hard Water: To Soften or Not to Soften; 15. Shock Chlorination of Private Water Wells / This fact sheet is one in a series of fifteen for private water well owners. The one- to four-page fact sheets will be assembled into a two-pocket folder entitled Private Well Owners Guide. The titles will also be a part of the Changing Rural Landscapes project whose goal is to educate exurban, small acreage residents. The authors have made every effort to align the fact sheets with the proposed Arizona Cooperative Extension booklet An Arizona Well Owners Guide to Water Sources, Quality, Sources, Testing, Treatment, and Well Maintenance by Artiola and Uhlman. The private well owner project was funded by both the University of Arizonas Water Sustainability Program-Technology and Research Initiative Fund and the USDA-CSREES Region 9 Water Quality Program.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 446-474).

Proactive drinking water programs assist communities in the long-term protection of their water supply. The 1986 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) seek to protect groundwater sources of public drinking water. 42 United States Code Section 300h-7 created the Wellhead Protection Program. The 1986 SDWA Amendments require all states to submit a Wellhead Protection Program for public groundwater drinking sources. The 1996 SDWA Amendments require all states to submit Source Water Assessment Plans for both groundwater and surface water sources. The 1986 and 1996 SDWA Amendments aim to protect public health by preventing contamination of drinking water sources. <p> This paper compares and contrasts the effectiveness of groundwater Wellhead Protection Programs (WHPP) in Virginia and Massachusetts. These states take different management approaches to protect public groundwater drinking sources. Virginia encourages local governments to participate voluntarily in wellhead protection activities. Massachusetts requires all municipal and private suppliers that provide public drinking water to adopt a WHPP. The relative success achieved by Massachusetts and Virginia was evaluated with two measures: percentage of wellhead protection programs implemented and the percentage of state reported drinking water quality violations. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

The Safe Drinking Water Act includes provisions for state wellhead protection programs which address wellhead protection areas. In Utah, these areas are called drinking water source protection (DWSP) zones. Zones Two and Three are delineated according to analytical or numerical techniques, which are based on hydrogeological and time-of-travel data, as well as recharge information, accumulated through the use of hydrogeologic and hydrochemical techniques. The primary conclusions of this research are: 1) A fence diagram and site hydrostratigraphic diagram show that the hydrogeology is more complex than previously has been thought . The principal aquifer at the target well site comprises a sequence of mostly coarse-grained units interspersed with thinner fine-grained units. The supposedly unconfined shallow aquifer is confined in most parts of the valley, including the target well site. 2) The recovery rate of water levels in the monitor wells in response to pumping of the target well indicates that horizontal groundwater flow velocities are low at the target well site. X 3) Interpretation of major ions relative to the depth of uppermost open interval of the various sample wells indicates that the deeper of the three major water-bearing zones (below 300 to 350 feet [91 to 107 meters]) is not well connected to the upper two zones. 4) The chemical evolution of the water along the westernmost of three discrete flowpaths indicates a change from young calcium bicarbonate water to moderately mature sodium-sulfate water. 5) Sample waters recharged from the northern Wasatch Mountains have higher total-dissolved-solids (TDS) contents then sample waters recharged from the southern Wasatch Mountains . 6) The discrepancy between many of the δ18O, δD, and tritium data as to the probable recharge area(s) indicate that the sample wells must be evaluated on an individual basis regarding the source of recharge water. 7) The tritium data demonstrate that those wells located farthest out into the valley or having the deepest uppermost open interval furnish the lowest tritium values. 8) Based on the 14C dating technique , the groundwater at the target well site appears to be between 1300 and 5300 years old. 9) There is little risk of contamination at the target well site, in terns of the 15-year time-of-travel DWSP zone (Zone 3).

Thesis (M.Sc.(Environmental and Engineering Geology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-106).

Thesis (Diploma (Civil Engineering))--Cape Technikon, 1986. / In rural areas in Southern Africa a nearby stream or spring is a village or kraal 's main water supply. The majority of these elementdry water sources are polluted. In this project the health hazard of polluted water and methods to protect water sources from pollution are discussed. The project consists of a report of fieldwork done in Southern Kwazula and compiling from the results a Technical Paper on water source protection.

Protection of groundwater sources has become an important issue in Canada. Over the last decade many approaches to the protection of groundwater sources have evolved. Some approaches provide qualitative information while others give quantitative values with respect to protection measures. The objective of the thesis is to examine the existing approaches of source water protection (SWP) using a complex geological setting, and introduce new methodologies towards the quantitative measurement of the various steps of SWP. The information obtained from the studies can be used to set up future guidelines for SWP. The first step in SWP is to assess the vulnerability of an aquifer. In this thesis, we compare three approaches for evaluating aquifer vulnerability: the Index Approach (Intrinsic Susceptibility Index, or ISI), the Hydraulic Resistance (HR) Approach (similar to the Aquifer Vulnerability Index, or AVI) and the Travel Time Approach (Surface to Aquifer Advective Time, or SAAT). The ISI approach uses the thickness and vertical hydraulic conductivity of the layers overlying an aquifer, and the vulnerability is expressed as a numerical score which is related to these parameters but is not physically based. The HR approach is physically based, uses the same parameters as ISI with the addition of porosity, and results are in the form of travel time under a unit gradient. SAAT extends the physically based approach by including the unsaturated zone and using the actual downward gradient; results are given in terms of advective travel time from surface to aquifer. These three approaches are compared, using two different aquifer systems. The second step in SWP is the delineation of wellhead protection areas (WHPAs). The WHPA delineates the area within which a source of contamination could have an impact on the well. The actual impact on the well depends not only on the source, but also on the characteristics of the groundwater system. Important considerations include the dimensionality of the system, the uncertainty in the system characteristics, and the physical processes that could affect the impact. The conventional approach is to define different time of travel (TOT) zones based on backward advective particle tracking. An alternative approach is to apply backward advective-dispersive solute transport modelling, in which dispersion can be taken as representing the uncertainty in defining the hydrogeologic characteristics (e.g. hydraulic conductivity) of the aquifer. The outlines of the TOT zones in the backward advective particle tracking approach is obtained by drawing an envelope around the respective tracks, which may require considerable guesswork. In the backward-in-time transport modelling, the outline of the TOT zones are developed using mass balance principles. The third step is the assessment of well vulnerability. Well vulnerability is based on the source-pathway-receptor concept which analyses the transport and fate of the contaminants along its path from the source to the receptor, and the interaction of the well itself with the flow system, and thus determines the actual impact on the well. The impact can be expressed in terms of the contaminant concentration in the well water. The mapping of the impact can be carried out by using a standard advective-dispersive transport model in either a forward-in-time mode (for a known contaminant source) or in a backward-in-time mode (for unknown sources). Thus, the well vulnerability concept goes beyond the conventional approach of WHPA, which is based solely on advective transport, neglecting dispersion and chemical processes. For any known point or non-point time-varying contaminant sources located arbitrarily within the well capture zone, the expected concentration at the well can simply be evaluated by convoluting the source mass with the results of the well vulnerability without further use of the model. Convolution is a well-known and effective superposition method to deal with arbitrary inputs in time and space for linear systems. The information of the contaminant concentration in the well water can be used to quantify the risk of a well becoming contaminated. Risk can be expressed in terms of the exposure value of the contaminant concentration exceeding the allowable limit and the time frame within which the well becomes contaminated. The exposure value can be integrated with the time element to set up a ranking of priorities, or to calculate the investment that must be made today in order to have the required funds available for remediation at the time it becomes necessary. The concept is applied to a well using hypothetical contaminant sources located arbitrarily within the capture zone. Well vulnerability maps can be used as a powerful tool to identify the optimal locations for Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs). A case study addressing the problem of elevated nitrate levels in a drinking water supply well is used to demonstrate the principle. The reduction of nitrate input concentration within the most vulnerable areas shows the largest impact at the well.