The Impact of Sustained Drought Conditions on a Ground Water Pollutant: Relating the Rise in Trichloroethylene Concentrations in Ground Water to Diminished Flow

Cold Water Spring (CWS) located in the Ridge and Valley Province of the Southern Appalachian Mountains in northeastern Alabama is exhibiting the effects of a local sustained drought. CWS is fed by groundwater from the lower Paleozoic Knox Group, a regional carbonate aquifer. A precipitation-based metric of short- term meteorological drought, the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), calculated by the National Drought Mitigation Center depicts the magnitude of the drought as increasing in the region since early in the year 2003. Flow of the CWS has been diminishing since the onset of the local drought, and is linearly correlated at 0.6 to the PDSI. The CWS water is contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) suspected to be released from a nearby abandoned industrial source. There is a rise in TCE contamination as CWS started to diminish, however, a direct correlation of the TCE concentration to PDSI is not statistically evident. The lack of a statistical correlation between TCE concentration in ground water and the PDSI supports our hypothesis that mobilization of free-phase TCE and its dissolution during periods of drought are multifunctional processes. A lowering of the water table changes the balance of capillary and buoyancy forces which in turn mobilizes the TCE ganglia making it available for dissolution.