Compliance monitoring of contaminants in public drinking water supplies results in publicly available data sets that are maintained by state agencies and useful for investigating changes in water quality. In this study, spatial and temporal trends in naturally occurring combined radium (226 and 228) concentrations in groundwater from the Midwestern Cambrian–Ordovician aquifer system were evaluated with a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources compliance data set. Average combined Ra from 2000 to 2018 in the Midwestern Cambrian–Ordovician aquifer system increased from 5.5 to 7.9 pCi/L in the confined region and from 4.8 to 6.6 pCi/L in the unconfined region. On a local scale, the data demonstrate increasing radium in the communities of Sussex (n = 98) and Brookfield (n = 35), and a decreasing trend in nearby Waukesha (n = 176). This study demonstrates the utility of compliance data sets for investigating water quality trends and the importance of geographic scale in examining such data.

Spatial and temporal variability of radium in the Wisconsin Cambrian–ordovician aquifer system

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.