A Nickel-Iron Wall Against Contaminated Groundwater

摘要

Deep beneath the sparse macadam landscape of the Massachusetts Military Reservation (MMR), known familiarly by its Cape Cod neighbors as Otis Air Force Base, lie at least 10 plumes of tainted groundwater that have contaminated large portions of the Cape's sole-source aquifer. Under pressure from EPA, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and Cape Cod property owners, the Department of Defense must find a way to clean or contain these plumes before they further threaten the Cape's drinking water. This fall, the Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence, the lead agency charged with remediating this Superfund site, began a test of a promising new technology designed to passively clean ground-water contaminated with chlorinated compounds. The technology: a permeable reactive wall made of zero-valent iron filings enhanced with nickel plating. Although a number of private and government sites around the nation have field tested reactive iron filing walls, the MMR test is the first to attempt to place such a wall so deep—to depths of 120 feet—and the first to test a nickel-plated iron wall in situ.