GEOMORPHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO TOXIC TRACE METAL DISTRIBUTION IN THE PARK RIVER WATERSHED (HARTFORD, CT)

The Park River is an urban river flowing through the city of Hartford, Connecticut and surrounding western suburbs. Sediment taken from the Trout Brook, a major tributary of the Park River was analyzed for total mercury and other heavy metals with a focus on Pb, Cu, Cd, and Zn, that are known to be contaminating the river. Using a geomorphological approach, we sampled a section of the Trout Brook that contains numerous vegetated bar/islands and channel deposits within the confines of a rip-rap controlled channel to observe the distribution of toxic elements within the various depositional environments. For trace metal analysis we use an ICP-OES and for mercury we use a Milestone DMA-80 Total Mercury Analyzer. The sampling sites of the Trout brook, located near an SSO, are mapped using ArcGIS with special attention paid to the sediment along the island bodies within the river. It is hypothesized that the island and bar deposits create significant sediment traps for fine particles and are therefore most likely to contain the highest concentration of toxic metals.