REMEDIATION CHALLENGES FOR WATER RESOURCE PROTECTION AND REMEDIATION IN THE AGE OF CLIMATE SHIFT

As shifting climatic conditions influence our hydraulic future, sea level rise, snow level rise, rising temperatures, and “seasonal pendulum swings” relate strongly to water resource protection. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), suggest a continuing trend of high heat events and intense rain events, less total rainfall, more rain than snow, and longer dry periods in arid and semi-arid areas such as California and much of Australia. These conditions challenge our ability to develop effective and robust protection measures for groundwater resources and engineer reliable and durable contaminant clean up measures for impacted areas due in part to resultant perturbations to groundwater level and flow conditions and challenging hydrochemical changes (including increase in salt and nutrient content, reduced dissolved oxygen levels, and increases in soluble metals). The technical convention of assessing and designing "30-year" groundwater protection and clean up remedies no longer seems relevant; the reality is that our remedial and protection strategies for drinking water sources could benefit from adaptive approaches to both passive and active restoration concepts.

Important stressors that impact the reliability and security of water resource quality include hydrochemical shifts for chemical constituents as geochemical conditions (e.g., aerobic or anaerobic) in a groundwater system that also change with changing hydraulics. We know that stress on water resources due to drought or rapid urbanization may cause a shift from the use of groundwater to surface water, or vice versa, with impacts to users of the water as water quality and chemistry of those sources may be different. This presentation will focus on:

• Climatic influence on hydrologic systems and impact to environmental projects
• Designing environmental remedies to withstand extreme events (including flooding)
• Innovative remedial approaches adaptive to long-term climate/hydraulic shifts
• Geochemical changes resulting from climate and hydraulic shifts – applicability to bioremediation and passive remedial measures
• Research and development needs reduce the negative impact of climatic impact remediation methods.