Numerical Groundwater Model of the Inarajan and Tinaga River Basins in Support of a Potential Landfill Inarajan, Guam

Geomatrix conducted a hydrogeologic assessment of the Inarajan and Tinaga River basins in southern Guam to develop a conceptual understanding of groundwater flow and occurrence in support of design, construction, and operation of a regional municipal landfill. Few previous hydrologic studies have focused on southern Guam, and thus this study provided the first detailed comprehensive assessment of groundwater and surface water conditions in the area. Data collected from an extensive field program, along with previous investigations were used to develop a hydrogeologic conceptual model describing regional and site geology, hydrostratigraphy, and groundwater and surface water flow. A three-dimensional numerical groundwater flow model of the system was developed using MODFLOW-SURFACT. The model was used to test various alternative conceptualizations and to provide a tool to evaluate landfill design and potential impacts to water resources from construction and operation of the landfill. The nature of the local watershed systems allowed for design of a basin-scale model. Historic USGS daily discharge measurements on the Inarajan and Tinaga Rivers coupled with historic precipitation records facilitated the basin scale approach. The model was calibrated to both steady state and transient conditions allowing for simulation of groundwater flow under a variety of conditions. Following calibration, predictive simulations were conducted to assess various aspects of landfill construction. The primary finding of the predictive assessments was that elimination of areal recharge resulting from construction of the landfill will cause a dramatic lowering of the water table in the weathered and fractured pyroclastic units that underlie the site. In addition, construction of the landfill will likely result in some reduction in stream base flow. Discharge of storm water runoff from the landfill into adjacent wetlands will mitigate some of the predicted impacts to base flow and replenish storage within the wetland sediments that will slowly discharge to streams during the dry season.