A WATER QUALITY ANALYSIS OF HUNTERS LAKE (SULLIVAN COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA)

Hunters Lake (Sullivan County, Pennsylvania), surrounded by Marcellus Shale gas drilling prospects, provides an opportunity to obtain pre-drilling baseline data on water quality. We chose 17 sampling sites around the lake. Temperature, pH, turbidity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and major anions and cations were determined for each sample. In the near future, metal concentrations of each sample will be measured using the new Geosciences Teledyne/Leeman Profile ICP-OES. The ionic species content was determined and quantitated using a Dionex ICS-2000 ion chromatography system with AS-DV autosampler. The pH was near neutral in all samples, ranging from 6.8-8.3. Dissolved oxygen was near saturation at 7-9 mg/L. All other parameters measured were very low: turbidity (0.7 - 3.6 NTU), conductivity (24-32 µs/cm), acidity (0 - 5.1 mg/L as CaCO₃), and alkalinity (11-17 mg/L as CaCO₃). The only anions that were above the detection limit of the ion chromatograph were chloride, bromide, and sulfate. Likewise, the only cations were calcium, sodium, magnesium, and potassium. In all cases, the concentrations of these ions were less than 2 parts per million. It is obvious that the water in Hunters Lake is in pristine condition; therefore, any contamination due to drilling in the Marcellus Shale should be easily discerned.