South Africa has only recently realized that organic groundwater contamination occurs in this country and
that it can have a serious effect on the groundwater quality. The Water Research Commission (WRC)
recently launched studies to investigate Non Aqueous Phase Liquid (NAPL) pollution, and Dense NAPL
in specific. The understanding of NAPL pollution problems, is however, still very limited. Hence
groundwater practitioners confronted with NAPL pollution problems have burning questions regarding
amongst others the characterization of the pollution, which is much more sophisticated than in the case of
inorganic pollution. While in this phase, groundwater practitioners can not even begin to consider
remedial efforts for contaminated sites, which continue to pollute the groundwater. It is therefore of
paramount importance to get up to speed with technologies and practices accepted worldwide for
characterization. Much improvement is still needed on these characterization methods, but South Africa
can learn from past mistakes made by other countries in addressing NAPL pollution.
In order to begin contemplating addressing NAPL characterization, it is important to understand the
nature of the problem, which is why Chapter 2 describes the current situation of organic groundwater
pollution and the associated vulnerability of aquifers in South Africa. The general understanding of
groundwater pollution by NAPL is distorted, not only in the eyes of the public, but also in the eyes of
experts in the groundwater field. A general misconception is that NAPL pollution only occurs at heavy
industries such as ISCOR and SASOL, but Chapter 2 clearly shows that organic pollution is much more
widespread and sinister in nature than would have been thought before. Smaller urban activities and small
industries have been identified to be just as large a contributor towards organic pollution as the heavy
industries. Shortcomings in the current understanding of NAPL pollution have been highlighted in
Chapter 2 and further studies can be focused on determining the current impact of various industries on
groundwater in South Africa, as well as delineating towns in which leaking underground storage tanks
may be a problem. In order to address the NAPL pollution problem, legislative tools have to be in place.
Gaps in legislation have therefore also been highlighted, of which several are listed in Chapter 3. These
concerns need to be addressed by making the applicable policies and regulations, and implementing these
regulations. In order to shed light on how site assessment and characterization can be performed in South
Africa, Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 address issues associated with site assessment and characterization. Risk
assessment has also been addressed (Chapter 8) and several shortcomings, to be addressed by
toxicologists and groundwater practitioners, have been highlighted.
It was clear from the investigations performed throughout this thesis, that several shortcomings exist in
association with site assessment, site characterization and risk assessment, which will need to be
addressed in the near future.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-07052005-140416 |
| Date | 05 July 2005 |
| Creators | Hohne, Surina |
| Contributors | Dr B Usher |
| 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-07052005-140416/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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