Denis LeBlanc Gives 2007 Freeman Lecture

Ground-water contaminant plumes at and near the Massachusetts Military Reservation in February 2005. (Click on image for larger pdf version)

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientist Denis R. LeBlanc gave the 2007 John R. Freeman Lecture, "Cape Cod's Billion Dollar Ground-Water Cleanup: The Hydrologic Story," on April 9, 2007. LeBlanc presented a summary of several decades of research by the USGS and the Department of Defense and its contractors on the fate of contaminant plumes on western Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and its impact on how ground-water cleanup has been conducted. He is coordinator of the Cape Cod Toxic Substances Hydrology Research Site, Massachusetts. The annual Freeman Lecture is sponsored by the Boston Society of Civil Engineers and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Abstract

The cleanup of ground water at the Massachusetts Military Reservation on Cape Cod is one of the most visible and expensive of the Department of Defense's environmental restoration projects. More than two dozen plumes of industrial solvents, explosive compounds, fuel compounds, and perchlorate extend up to several miles from the reservation toward coastal streams, ponds, and wetlands. In 2007, more than 20 years after the cleanup effort began, about 20 million gallons per day are pumped from 68 wells to contain and remediate the plumes. The cleanup is the product of many years of complex interactions among scientists, engineers, water managers, regulators, and the public. Everyone agreed that sound science was necessary to support the cleanup, but they also wanted quick action to protect "Cape Cod's Quabbin." The speaker, a hydrologist who has served for more than thirty years with the USGS, will examine how studies to understand the Cape's hydrology were interwoven with the cleanup's engineering and policy decisions, and how cleanup actions sometimes outpaced that understanding. When the aquifer will be "clean enough" remains an unanswered, potentially controversial question.

More Information

• 2007 Freeman Lecture Video, Video of Denis LeBlanc's lecture (220K, 1h 10min, requires RealPlayer)
• Lecture Slides
• Freeman Lecture
• Costly Cape Cod Cleanup has Advanced Groundwater Hydrology Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology News
• Sewage-Contaminated Ground Water, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

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