Investigating Uranium in Drinking Water with Geoprobe® Equipment and Direct Push Methods

What does a small community do when their public water supply is threatened by high concentrations of uranium? A Research and Development Team from Geoprobe Systems® quickly mobilized to the central Nebraska community of Clarks to see if direct push methods could provide information to formulate a solution to the problem.

A few years back, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services began testing all of the water supply wells across Nebraska to be sure they were in compliance with the new uranium-mass regulation promulgated by the U.S. EPA. This new regulation established a maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 30 ug/L for uranium in drinking water. Tom Christopherson, Program Manager for Water Well Standards of DHHS, soon learned that the old public water supply (PWS) wells in the small farming community of Clarks in central Nebraska were contaminated with uranium at concentrations between 100 to 200 ug/L. This was bad news for the approximately 375 residents of Clarks. After a difficult search, they installed two test wells about 1.5 miles northeast of town, and both wells were nondetect for uranium. Two new PWS wells were installed adjacent to the test wells, and initial pumping and testing found that the new North well was yielding water with uranium concentrations about 30 ug/L. After initial testing was done by the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, it became apparent that a modified, low-speed pumping program was not going to correct the problem. It was then that Tom Christopherson asked if Geoprobe Systems® would demonstrate direct push methods at the site, and assist the agency in understanding the cause of the elevated uranium problem at the Clarks well field.

Geoprobe® R&D Team Mobilizes
Led by Wes McCall, Geoprobe® Environmental Geologist, a team of Geoprobe® Research and Development Engineers mobilized equipment to Clarks in September 2007 and performed a 4-day expedited investigation at the new well field. According to Wes, “Going to sites such as this allows the Geoprobe® R&D team to test new techniques and tooling in ‘real world’ applications. Not only was this a great site to test our new tooling, but we were also able to help a small community in need of safe drinking water.”

[Read this complete article in the online Probing Times Newsletter. Click here to go to www.probingtimes.com]