Designing Groundwater Monitoring Programs for Rights-Of-Way Facilities

Boyd Allen III

A challenging hurdle for rights-of-way and associated facilities is assessing potential impacts on groundwater resources. Measuring these impacts is both a scientific and public perception issue. Some impacts may not be quantified until several years after construction or initial operations. The general public’s basic understanding of groundwater is often limited; their concerns focus on impacts on something they physically cannot see. Too often, industry monitoring programs become reactive responses to concerns raised by the public in the review and comment period. A proactive monitoring program presented in the initial planning stages of a project can reduce public skepticism and defuse fears about impacts on private wells, public water supplies and other groundwater resources. This paper considers several limited monitoring program approaches potentially applicable to linear facilities and stations (i.e., pipelines, gas compressor stations, oil pumping stations, etc.) that measure potential impacts on groundwater resources stemming from blasting, construction dewatering and wastewater discharge. These programs emphasize economical hydrogeological monitoring approaches and screening and indicator compound oriented chemical analyses. Such programs can minimize impacts on project costs while still providing timely technical information to evaluate impacts on groundwater resources.

Keywords: Groundwater, monitoring, construction, right-of-way, environmental impact, linear facilities, screening parameters