Groundwater contamination as a result of Light Non Aqueous Phase Liquid (LNAPL)
releases into the subsurface is a widespread occurrence across South Africa which threatens
current and future water resources within the country. Groundwater contaminant fate and
transport modelling are common elements of hydrogeological investigations and remedial
design methodologies in many developed countries where the models are used as
management and decision making tools. In South Africa this is not the case, with
contaminant flow and transport modelling rarely being employed as part of LNAPL
contamination investigations.
Over the last three years, the Beaufort West study area has had extensive investigative work
carried out with regards to the determination and delineation of LNAPL related
groundwater contaminant plumes which are present underneath a significant portion of the
town. As a result, an extensive data set has been generated with regards to aquifer
geometry, fracture network distribution, aquifer parameters and contaminant plume
concentrations and extent. The dataset should in theory provide an opportunity to construct
a groundwater contaminant fate and transport model for the area as a remedial
management tool. By means of collating previously existing data through a comprehensive
desktop study, and supplementing this data with a toolkit of field investigation techniques
such as diamond barrel core drilling, percussion drilling, electrical conductivity profiling,
fluid electrical conductivity profiling, aquifer pump testing, and low flow inorganic and
organic groundwater sampling, the conceptual model of the study area was updated and
refined to a point where the feasibility of constructing a groundwater contaminant fate and
transport model could be assessed.
Based upon the conceptual understanding of the study area as defined in the conceptual
model developed in the study, a groundwater contaminant fate and transport model is not
considered feasible for the study area with body of data currently available. This is
attributed mainly to the high level of complexity of the observed natural environment and the challenges in acquiring acceptable quality field data such as aquifer parameters given the
uncontrolled pumping environment which is present due to the high number of private
groundwater users. Potentially an even greater detractor to the construction of a model is
that considering the conceptual understanding of the study area, there are very few
questions of significance whose answers could be provided by a model, and this would
indicate that a model would not be an effective remedial management or decision making
tool in the current scenario
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-11112011-095131 |
| Date | 11 November 2011 |
| Creators | Möhr, Samuel |
| Contributors | Dr I Dennis |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-11112011-095131/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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