A status report on aquifer monitoring activities in the Valley East municipal well field

P. Richards, A. Naik

In the proceedings of: GeoMontréal 2013: 66th Canadian Geotechnical Conference; 11th joint with IAH-CNC

Session: Groundwater Management I

ABSTRACT: The Valley East well field is located in the northern part of the City of Greater Sudbury, and services a population of 36,000 residents. The well field is situated in a shallow unconfined aquifer and comprises a total of 13 municipal wells spanning two watersheds (The Whitson River and The Vermilion River). The well field extends over an a geographical area of approximately 60 km2 , and has an estimated groundwater capture area of 34 km2. The majority of the wells in the well field were constructed in the 1970s and the 1980s, with two new wells being brought on-line in 2012 in response to the ongoing development of the Valley Easy area. Prior to 2003 only limited information was available on the water levels in the Valley East aquifers. Previous hydrogeological information was related to water levels obtained from the pumping wells themselves (mainly taken as a part of routine well maintenance activities) plus a single Ministry of Environment monitoring well situated in the centre of the well field. Interest in further well field development in 2003 led to the installation of seven new monitoring wells throughout the eastern half of the Valley East well field, which became available for water level monitoring purposes. In addition, four wells associated with the original well field testing programs were identified as potential water level monitoring locations, expanding the coverage westwards across the well field. In 2005 the Valley East well field was the subject of a detailed groundwater modelling analysis under the municipal groundwater study program (funded by the Ministry of Environment). The model was subsequently revisited in 2006 during the development of the Valley East Source Protection Plan (by the Nickel District Conservation Authority), which established well head protection areas for the Valley East well field based on the best available data. One of the data gaps identified through the development of the source protection program was the lack of current water level information for the Valley East aquifer. Consequently, in 2012, the Nickel District Conservation Authority (in co-ordination with the City of Greater Sudbury) began a program to instrument and monitor the long term performance of the Valley East aquifer using eleven monitoring wells distributed across the study area. It was anticipated that the information gathered from the monitoring program will assist in refining the calibration of the previous groundwater model and will provide the City of Greater Sudbury with further guidance with respect to future well field optimization. For cost and logistics reasons, data loggers were selected which require periodic manual downloading of the data. The data loggers produced uncorrected head data, and values were corrected using a dedicated barometric logger installed in a centrally-located monitoring well. To date, the data have indicated seasonal changes in the water levels on the order of one meter or less. The well field appears to be in a state of dynamic equilibrium.

Please include this code when submitting a data update: GEO2013_456

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