Full Description

The draft proposed Groundwater Disinfection Rule (GWDR) will exempt some public water supply systems from disinfecting if they can demonstrate that adequate "natural disinfection" occurs between potential sources of fecal contamination and wells. One way to determine that is to use a virus transport model such as VIRALT, which was developed for the Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water of the US Environmental Protection Agency. For this study, several sites were examined where virus contamination of groundwater has been documented. The necessary hydrogeologic and microbiological data from these sites were obtained and used as input values for VIRALT. The model's predictions were then compared with the measured virus concentrations in wells at the sites. It was found that the model generally underpredicted the virus concentration at the wells. A sensitivity analysis revealed that the model is extremely sensitive to the value of the virus adsorption coefficient and the virus inactivation rate. Includes 10 references, tables, figures.

Product Details

Edition: Vol. 87 - No. 2 Published: 02/01/1995 Number of Pages: 10 File Size: 1 file , 760 KB