Groundwater in the Great Lakes Basin

Sewer, Niagara River. However, the data also show that
there are still sources of organic chemical contaminants
along the Niagara River (Richman, 2006).
New York included the entire length of the Niagara
River on its 1998, 2002, 2004 and 2006 303(d) lists
for not meeting beneficial uses of aquatic life and
fish consumption due to priority organics (U.S. EPA,
2008b). These priority organics are identified as
originating from contaminated sediments and from
hazardous waste sites (U.S. EPA, 2008b). The Niagara
River Toxics Management Plan (NRTMP) process has
identified hazardous waste sites as the most significant
nonpoint sources of priority toxics loading to the river
(U.S. EPA, 2008b). Total priority toxic loads to the
river have decreased more than 90%, from approximately
700 lbs/day to less than 50 lbs/day under the
NRTMP process (U.S. EPA, 2008b).
The sedimentary bedrock of the Niagara Frontier and
the western Lake Ontario basin contains a complex
intersecting network of fractures, tectonic faults and
karstic terrain, and the basin is also a region of intermittent
earthquake activity. Groundwater-borne toxic
contaminants emanating from hazardous waste repositories
have infiltrated this network and are entering
Lake Ontario via discharge to the Niagara River and
possibly also directly via upwelling through littoral
lake and river bottom sediment. Past usage, former
waste disposal practices and the continued presence of
these wastes in situ will continue to pollute the water. It
is not certain what effects these compounds will have
on the equilibrium of this large natural system.
In 1984, the Buffalo Avenue wastewater treatment plant
serving Niagara Falls, New York, had been described
in a joint U.S. and Canadian government report as “the
largest toxic polluter of the Niagara River” (Lisk, 1995).
They claimed that the plant was by-passing as much
as two million gallons of contaminated wastewater a
day into the river, and that this discharge frequently
contained 700-800 pounds of priority pollutants (Lisk,
1995). To address contaminated effluent issues from
the facility it was re-designed to use granular activated
carbon (GAC) to absorb the relatively small quantities
of soluble organics and inorganic compounds remaining
in the wastewater following biological or physicalchemical
treatment (U.S. EPA, 2000). Absorption
occurs when molecules adhere to the internal walls of
pores in carbon particles produced by thermal activation
(U.S. EPA, 2000). Typically, GAC absorption is
utilized in wastewater treatment as a tertiary process
following conventional secondary treatment and for
wastewater flows which contain a significant quantity
of industrial flow (U.S. EPA, 2000). GAC absorption
is a proven, reliable technology to remove dissolved
organics (U.S. EPA, 2000).
However, spent carbon, if not regenerated, may present
a land disposal problem, and wet GAC is highly corrosive
and abrasive (U.S. EPA, 2000). Variations in pH,
temperature and flow rate may adversely affect GAC
absorption and air emissions from the regeneration
furnace contain volatiles stripped from the carbon (U.S.
EPA, 2000). Therefore, afterburners and scrubbers
are usually needed to treat exhaust gases (U.S. EPA,
2000). The plant requires an inventory of more than five
million pounds of GAC (Lisk, 1995).
Current flow averages about 35 mgd, but the plant was
designated to handle up to 48 mgd. The flow carried
under the city to an outfall over a mile away in the
gorge down river from the falls. “Pumped and treated”
groundwater forms part of this flow. $110 million had
been spent during the GAC upgrade−twice the original
cost of the facility (Lisk, 1995). On a daily basis, the
facility receives approximately 800 pounds of influent
pollutants which are reduced by the treatment process
to 12 pounds in the effluent to the Niagara River (U.S.
EPA, 2000). Only 13 wastewater plants using the GAC
filtration/absorption technology are believed to have
been built in the United States, and Niagara Falls is the
largest of them (Lisk, 1995).
Currently however, the Niagara Falls, Buffalo Avenue
Waste Water plant has been out of compliance and has
not been meeting the requirements of its complicated
discharge permit for the last three years (U.S. EPA,
2008a).
In November 2000, the Science Advisory Board (SAB)
of the IJC hosted technical presentations from representatives
of the government agencies cooperating
under the NRTMP, conducted a tour of hazardous
waste sites on the U.S. side and held a public meeting
involving invited scientific presentations and interested
citizens (IJC, 2003). The following comments and
conclusions were reached by the SAB and submitted to
the Commission (IJC, 2003).
• Chemicals, such as PCBs, Mirex and dioxins from
the Niagara region not only can influence all of
Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River but also
can impinge on the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the
Atlantic Ocean. See, for example, Figure 5.
• Serious efforts are underway at each individual
waste site to contain movement of chemicals from
the sites, but the larger reality of the immense
geographical and temporal scale of the problem
needs to be recognized and acknowledged. For
example, approximately 80,000 tons of waste, some
of which is hazardous material, is contained at the
Hyde Park dump. By pumping and treating water
infiltrating the site, about eight pounds of chemicals
are removed and treated daily.
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