Dartmouth College Installs ‘Pump And Treat’ System To Treat Water Contamination.
This weekend, residents of a Hanover neighborhood near a Dartmouth College hazardous waste site went to check out a system designed to clean up their groundwater.
The pump and treat system went online in early February.
It was designed specifically for the Hanover contamination of the chemical 1,4-dioxane, a probable carcinogen which has been found in local drinking water.
The chemical was left over from a mid-century hazardous waste burial site where Dartmouth research labs had previously dumped materials.
Currently, the system pumps over 1,400 gallons of contaminated ground water a day – but that will likely increase in the future.
Jim Weick is a water geologist and the manager overseeing the project.
He explained to neighbors how the $2 million system will work over the next five-plus years.
“It’s a filtration type of system,” Weick said on the Rennie Farm property recently.
“The media that is in it — a synthetic resin — passes through that material … [it] is capable of filtering out the 1,4-dioxane where it’s difficult for a lot of other media to do it.” Weick and Dartmouth are exploring the possibility of creating a second pump and treat system to mitigate the plume, which has reached about a mile away from the original waste site.