Flexible borehole liners are now used for a wide variety of site characterization measurements. Those include contaminant distribution of NAPL and the dissolved phase on the 6″ scale, transmissivity/conductivity profile on the 6″ scale, head distribution on the 10 ft scale and multi-level ground water sampling and head recording for days to years. These measurements have been performed for numerous superfund sites as well as for many petroleum contaminated sites. The especially attractive feature of these measurements is that the transmissivity measurement is completed in wells up to 1000 ft in an hour or two. The head distribution measurement is done in a few hours. These measurements replace the traditional use of water wells or straddle packers. This presentation provides examples of all of the above measurements performed in a single well at the Naval Air Warfare Site near Trenton, NJ. While substantially different than traditional measurements of hydrologic characteristics, these measurements have been performed in hundreds of wells at sites from the US, Canada, Sweden, Denmark,… to South Africa, Brazil and Australia. A particular advantage is that these measurements are most often done in boreholes sealed with a continuous liner even as the liner is being everted into place.

Primary Author / Conference Presenter:
Carl Keller
Principal Scientist
FLUTe
Alcalde, NM, USA

Co-Author:
Ian Sharp, FLUTe, Albuquerque, NM