Water-resources activities of the U.S. Geological Survey in Utah, October 1, 1996, to September 30, 1997

Abstract

The following report describes the many data-collection activities and interpretive investigations in which the Utah District is involved. Although all these activities are providing important data and information, I would like to take this opportunity to briefly discuss two in particular. These are "Assessment of brine shrimp population and nutrients in Great Salt Lake" and "Field demonstration of in-situ chemical barriers to control uranium contamination in ground water." Although these investigations are quite different in technical direction and scope, I believe they provide an insight into how the Water Resources Division and the Utah District provide relevant information to help assess and manage water resources.The harvesting of brine shrimp from Great Salt Lake has, during the past decade, become a high-tech, multimillion dollar industry. Spotter aircraft and high-powered boats are used to maximize harvest, and competition between individual companies is intense. However, no one understands the population dynamics of the shrimp nor the amount that can be annually harvested without threatening the resource. The Utah District, in cooperation with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and Utah State University, is helping provide answers to these questions. Information provided from this work is being used by Wildlife Resources to manage the harvest on an almost realtime basis. For those of you with additional interest in this work and in the ecology of brine shrimp, please visit our Great Salt Lake web site at wwwdutslc.wr.usgs.gov/greatsaltlake/saltlake.html Uranium has been mined throughout large areas of the Colorado Plateau in southeastern Utah since about the time of the Second World War. A legacy of this effort is the hundreds of abandoned mines, upgrading facilities, and mills. Many of these sites have contaminated the underlying ground water with uranium and other metals that are hazardous to health. Traditionally, contaminated ground water has been mitigated by the so-called "pump-and-treat" method, which is costly and maintenance intensive. For this reason, only large and highly contaminated sites could be mitigated; smaller or less contaminated sites were simply abandoned and forgotten. At Fry Canyon, the Utah District, in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Bureau of Land Management, is experimenting with new and less costly technologies for the mitigation of uraniumcontaminated ground water. Several reactive barriers have been installed within a plume of contaminated ground water. The barriers contain materials that react with the uranium and remove it from solution. Although these removal reactions have been known for many years and can be demonstrated in the laboratory, the performance and longevity of the barriers in actual field settings are unknown. Results from this work may provide a cheaper and minimal-maintenance technology to help clean up uranium-contaminated sites throughout the United States. For those with additional ...