GEOL 585: Contaminant Transport and Fate

Instructors: Drs. J.P. Buchanan and J. Hoffman
Winter Quarter 1996

Text:		The book, Contaminant Hydrogeology, by C.W. Fetter, 1993 is a required text and
 		is available in the EWU bookstore.

Expectations:  Your performance in this class will be evaluated in the following manner:
			Midterm exam			25% of total course grade
			Final exam				25%
			Weekly assignments			50%

Tentative course outline:
This course will meet every Wednesday afternoon, from 2 to 5:30 pm in the Science Building at the
EWU campus in Cheney.

Week		Date		Topic                                                        Reading

1		3 Jan		Introduction to course		                                Ch. 1

2		10 Jan		Review of basic hydrogeology				        Ch. 1

3		17 Jan		Inorganic chemicals in groundwater				Ch. 6

4		24 Jan		Organic chemicals in groundwater				Ch. 7

5		31 Jan		Ground water and soil monitoring				Ch. 8

6		7 Feb		Mechanisms of solute transport				        Ch. 2

7		14 Feb		Solute transport (continued), discussion			Ch. 2

8		21 Feb		Transformation, retardation and decay			        Ch. 3

9		28 Feb		Transformation, retardation and decay (continued)		Ch. 3

10		6 Mar		Estimating aquifer properties

11		13 Mar	        Regulatory issues, solute transport modeling		        Ch. 9

12		20 Mar	        Final exams

Required field trips:  Two field trips are anticipated as part of this course.
An afternoon field trip will be made to downtown Spokane, sometime in early January,
to investigate the oil spill related to the WWP power plant.  On 24 February,
a half-day long trip to the Colbert Landfill will be made to look at the hydrogeology
and the groundwater remediation strategy at the site.

Weekly Assignments:

Problem sets:
On occasion (usually weekly!), homework assignments will be made that
require the solution of a set of problems.  This will usually be done in context
with the lecture topic, and follow example problems in the textbook.

Case studies:
There will be several case study problems in the course.  All of the case
studies involve real data, collected as part of real research or consulting
projects and from which regulatory policy or decisions have been made.
All case study projects require a written report (format specified below).


Written Report Format:
The reports will be in the format of a technical document and must be
typewritten (or at least very, very neatly handwritten in ink).  Note that
word processing software is installed on most, if not all, the computers
in the computer lab in the Geology Department (Room 114).  A cover
letter should accompany the report.  Concentrate on accuracy, brevity
and clarity rather than cutting and/or padding the report to a
predetermined length.  

Reports will be graded on the basis of grammar, organization, style
and readability, as well as content.  All reports are due in an acceptable
form pending an incomplete grade for the course.