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Kyle Blasch
3162 Bozeman Ave
Helena, MT  59601
Phone: (406) 457-5901
Fax: (406) 457-5990
kblasch@usgs.gov

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Montana WSC News

USGS Hydrologist from the Montana Water Science Center honored with 2008 Environmental Achievement Award

The Department of the Interior (DOI) recently honored a team of USGS scientists and partners with the 2008 Environmental Achievement Award for the significant improvements they made to a contaminated aquifer in northeastern Montana. The Environmental Achievement Award recognizes DOI employees and partners who have cleaned up contaminated land and attained exceptional achievements in strengthening federal environmental, energy, and transportation management.

Since the 1970s, billions of barrels of brine, which was seven times saltier than ocean water, began infiltrating shallow aquifers and contaminating privately owned wells and the nearby Poplar River. In one area, crude oil also was entering aquifers, which is the sole source of water to the area’s residents. To address the contamination, the team developed a remediation system that includes a network of wells that pump the contaminated ground water to a disposal well 7,000 feet deep. An abandoned oil well—which had been identified as a major source of contamination, leaking both oil and brine into shallow aquifers—also was plugged.

“Before remediation, scientists carefully mapped an image of the contaminated area by determining the groundwater’s salinity, rate of movement, and preferred gravel channels for groundwater flow,” said Joanna Thamke, hydrologist for the Montana Water Science Center. “We determined that the contamination could threaten the City of Poplar’s water-supply system, which is less than three miles away. The remediation system has and will continue to remove contaminated ground water from the aquifer, which is currently the only source of drinking water for Poplar residents.”

The team began working on the remediation study in 2003, which expanded on a series of earlier USGS studies that started in the 1980s.

Team scientists are:
Richard Healy, USGS, Denver, Colorado
Charles Heywood, USGS, Ridgeway, Colorado
Michael Jacobs, Pioneer Natural Resources, USA, Inc., Midland, Texas
Brent Lewis, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Denver, Colorado
Tom Morris, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Denver, Colorado
Dr. Bruce Smith, USGS, Denver, Colorado
Joanna Thamke, USGS, Helena, Montana
Christa Tyrrell, Fort Peck Tribes Office of Environmental Protection, Poplar, Montana
Nathan Wiser, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Denver, Colorado

For more information about this remediation project and a list of publications,
visit http://mt.water.usgs.gov/ and http://www.fortpeckoep.org/activities_east_poplar/project_3.html.

To learn more about the awards, visit http://www.interior.gov/greening/awards/eaa.html.