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7540 Main Street
Suite 7
Sykesville, MD 21784
410-795-4626 phone
410-795-4611 fax
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Three Geologic Terrains, Seven Clients and Eight Water Systems: A Project Management Nightmare Becomes a Wellhead Protection Success Story in Cecil County, Maryland
Presented at the 2000 MDE Groundwater Symposium
by Mark W. Eisner, P.G.,
Advanced Land and Water, Inc.
Designing and implementing effective wellhead protection at a countywide scale is an exercise in education of stakeholders, consensus building between regulators and the regulated community, and efficient project management supported by sound science. In 1999, Advanced Land and Water, Inc. (ALWI) was contracted to develop a wellhead protection program for Cecil County, specifically to include wellhead protection plans for each of eight publicly-owned groundwater systems located there.
Wellhead protection includes three basic components:
- The delineation of the area to be protected based on sound hydrogeologic principles (typically with a multi-zoned approach).
- Identification of existing and potential sources of contamination in the delineated area.
- Management and contingency plans for addressing matters such as future spills, water supply shortfalls, etc.
It sounds straight-forward to do wellhead protection, but its not always. When the project is managed by a multi-headed hydra comprised of the consultant, the County planning office (the real client, contractually), the owners and operators of the eight water systems, and the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) (providing both regulatory guidance and funding assistance), consensus can be elusive. When the typical constraints of time and money are added to the mix, it is easy to lose sight of the essential goals of the project: to be pragmatic, defensible and easily implemented.
At the outset of the project, ALWI recognized that it would be necessary to identify commonalities if the eight plans were to be completed with timeliness and cost-effectiveness. Wide differences in the geologic terrain necessitated differences in the delineation techniques used. Though in the end commonalities were identified, the process of executing the project contained certain lessons for other similar projects. These are summarized as follows:
- Rising Sun The delineated area extended beyond the corporate boundaries. This necessitated the cooperation of a differing entity (the County) for effective land use control in the delineated area.
- Meadowview The delineated area was close to but outside heavily industrial areas. The system owner’s desire to expand the area to include the industries had to be tempered by the uncertain technical defensibility of such an expanded delineation.
- Elkton In semi-confined settings, a numerical groundwater flow model was used to support the delineation; then return to Elkton. The numerical model is sensitive to certain parameters not well constrained (hydrologic properties, connection of the aquifer to the Bay, present and future competing water uses, etc.). The stakes are high given the number of existing and potential contaminant hazards. The Town sought definition of the protection areas with razor-sharp precision. ALWI’s outermost protection zones are as much uncertain halos as they are ultimate contribution areas.
- Cecilton This seemed straight-forward until the Town, when reviewing the draft report, advised for the first time of plans to relocate the wellfield. This underscored that wellhead protection plans are dynamic documents that must be kept current to have defensibility and relevance.
The project was successful because of frequent dialogue with MDE and the affected Towns. This dialogue enabled advance regulatory buy-in on the delineations and other critical decisions. Despite the geologic and system owner variability, ALWI ultimately developed a management scheme that provided similar recommendations in similar protective zones across the County, regardless of location and terrain. This parallelism will greatly aid the understanding and use of the plans and makes the effort an internally consistent countywide program that is both technically defensible and feasible to implement.
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