LATERAL CHLORIDE MIGRATION FROM A LANDFILL IN A FRACTURED CLAY-RICH GLACIAL DEPOSIT

A plume of chloride (100 to > 1000 mg/L) was found to extend up to 40 m laterally from the edge of a landfill located on a thick sequence of clay-rich glacial deposits. The plume is mainly confined to the seaso nally saturated highly weathered and fractured zone (upper 3 to 4 m) o f the deposits. in the high concentration region of the plume there wa s good agreement between chloride concentrations determined from piezo meter water samples, which were expected to sample fracture pore water , and pore water extractions from continuous core samples, which were expected to be dominated by pore water from the fine-grained matrix. T he pore water extractions provided much better lateral and vertical re solution of the plume than was obtained from the piezometer water samp les. The length of the plume based on the data from the piezometer wat er samples was 12 m less than the length determined from the core samp les, apparently because the piezometers were located above or below th e relatively thin plume, or were above the water table at the time of sampling. Chloride concentrations in many of the deeper piezometers we re higher than measured in core samples. This was likely due to inflow from the shallow highly contaminated zone during drilling, as indicat ed by declining concentration values measured in many of these piezome ters over a 10-month period. The core samples were protected by a line r and were not significantly influenced by drilling-induced contaminat ion. Downhole electrical conductivity profiles measured,vith a Geonics EM-39 correlated well with chloride concentration profiles determined from the core samples. Surface measurements of electrical conductivit y with a Geonics EM-31 were effective at detecting the edge of the was te (which was buried under 2 m of clay), but were less effective at de tecting the lateral extent of the chloride plume. Based on this and pr evious investigations, it is expected that an equivalent porous medium (EPM) approach will be appropriate for simulating lateral contaminant transport in the highly weathered and fractured zone. However, predic tive modeling of the behavior of the chloride plume will be complicate d by the presence of multiple possible sources of chloride and uncerta inty concerning the hydraulic conductivity distribution, as well as by difficulty in predicting the influence of large seasonal variations i n the elevation and slope of the water table.