Sewage-Contaminated Ground Water -- Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Community waters are treated and disposed either to surface waters or ground water. These wastewaters include water from both domestic and industrial/commercial uses. Domestic wastewater includes chemicals that are typically used in and discharged from the household. The wastewaters from industrial, commercial, institutional, and similar facilities can have a varied chemical character. Even after treatment, wastewater discharges can contain a wide range of organic chemicals, and inorganic chemicals including metals and nutrients. The complex mixture of contaminants in wastewater effluent provides an opportunity to study a myriad of chemical and microbial reactions in the subsurface.

The Toxics Program is investigating a wastewater plume in a shallow sand and gravel aquifer near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The ground-water plume is about 2.5 miles long, and contains chlorinated hydrocarbons, detergents, metals, nitrate, and microbes. Detailed sampling of the plume and large-scale tracer experiments have provided an opportunity to demonstrate a fundamental approach for characterizing the heterogeneous nature of subsurface contaminant plumes. The data also are being used to develop models that enable scientists to design monitoring strategies, to predict how contaminants spread in the subsurface and to estimate how quickly contaminants in sewage degrade to less toxic compounds. These methods are being used at other contaminated sites nationwide.

Project Headlines

• Measuring How Nitrogen Transforms in Groundwater
• Zinc and Phosphate Come Back to Haunt Aquifer
• Monitoring Volatile Organic Compounds in Ground Water with Diffusion Samplers
• Hydrogen Measured in a New Test for Determining Subsurface Microbiological Activity at Contamination Sites
• What Mobilizes Arsenic in Ground Water
• Decades Required for Natural Processes to Clean Wastewater-Contaminated Ground Water
• New Information on the Long-Term Fate of Ammonium in Ground Water
• USGS Patents Bioreactors that Treat Nitrate and Methyl Bromide Contamination
• USGS Develops Geophysical Methods to Improve Remediation Monitoring and Site Characterization
• Land-Use Activities Release Naturally Occurring Arsenic
• New Diffusion Samplers Track Contamination Entering Lakes and Ponds
• Phosphorus Doesn't Migrate in Ground Water? Better Think Again!
• Can a Sewage-Contaminated Aquifer Naturally Clean Itself?

More Information

• Cape Cod Toxics Site Home Page -- The Cape Cod research team maintains its own home page that contains additional information about the Cape Cod Toxics Site.
• Project Bibliography
• Abstracts from Selected Meetings/Conferences
• Project Photo Gallery
• Partitioning of Solutes between Solid and Aqueous Phases
• Bacteria-Contaminant Interactions
• Microbial Transformation of Dissolved Organic Carbon in Aquatic Environments
• Ground-Water Solute-Transport Simulation -Simulation of Phosphate Transport in Ground Water
• Geophysical Research
• Mapping Aquifer Heterogeneity: Integrated Analysis of Geophysical and Hydraulic Data, 2004
• Mapping Aquifer Heterogeneity: Integrated Analysis of Geophysical and Hydraulic Data, 2003
• Mapping Aquifer Heterogeneity: Integrated Analysis of Electrical-Resistance Tomography, Tracer Tests, and Hydraulic Data, 2002
• Mapping Aquifer Heterogeneity: Integrated Analysis of Electrical-Resistance Tomography, Tracer Tests, and Hydraulic Data, 2001
• For additional information about the Cape Cod Toxics Site please send e-mail to Denis Leblanc at

New Publications

• Impact of fluorochrome stains used to study bacterial transport in shallow aquifers on motility and chemotaxis of Pseudomonas species: Toepfer, J.A., Ford, R.M., Metge, D., and Harvey, R.W., 2012, FEMS Microbiology Ecology, p. n/a-n/a, doi:10.1111/j.1574-6941.2012.01355.x.

Project Remediation Related Activities

• Subsurface Reactive Barrier
• Nitrate Remediation
• Natural Aquifer Restoration
• Phosphorus Plume Remediation

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