HEAVY METALS IN SEDIMENTS FROM ILLEGAL BURN PILES ON THE BANK OF THE POULTNEY RIVER, WEST HAVEN, VT

Over the past few years, illegal garbage burn piles have appeared on the banks of the Poultney River on property owned by the Nature Conservancy in West Haven, Vermont. Remnants of the burned materials remaining in the piles have included circuit boards, smoke detectors, electrical wiring and metal cans. The piles are very close to the Poultney River and contamination of the river water due to heavy metals from these burn piles is a concern. Several of these illegal burn piles were sampled between 2011 and 2015 and analyzed for heavy metals. The piles were cored so that sub-surface samples could be collected and intact cores were obtained for leaching experiments.

Chemical analyses of the soil samples beneath the burn piles show elevated levels of several toxic metals, including copper, lead, zinc, chromium, barium and arsenic. In some samples, levels of many of these metals are over 1000 ppm. These elevated concentrations were found in samples as deep as 90 cm from the surface, indicating that the metals are moving downward toward the groundwater system. Since these burn piles are literally only meters from the Poultney River, once the metals reach the groundwater, they will move to the river in a short period of time.

Metal bioavailability was determined for some of the samples containing high levels of barium, zinc and lead using a sequential leaching procedure. Fortunately, none of the samples analyzed in this way contained easily soluble/exchangeable metals, but several of the samples contained metals the following forms: acid soluble, surface complexes, and occluded, and could become mobile and bioavailable under the correct chemical conditions.