Simulated Effects of Salt-Mine Collapse on Ground-Water Flow and Land Subsidence in a Glacial Aquifer System, Livingston County, New York.

摘要

The bedrock ceiling in parts of the Retsof salt mine in the the Genesee Valley, Livingston County, N.Y. collapsed on March 12, 1994 and water from overlying aquifers began to flow into the mine at a rate of 5,500 gal/min (gallons per minute), and the rate increased to as much as 20,000 gal/min after a second collapse 3 weeks later in April 1994. Efforts to save the mine were abandoned by the end of 1994, and the mine was completely flooded by January 1996. The Genesee Valley (including the tributary Canaseraga Valley) is about 40 miles long and contains as much as 750 feet of glacial sediment and recent alluvium, which rest on mostly carbonate bedrock along the valley axis near and north of the collapse site, and on shale in areas farther south. The mined salt bed lies within Silurian shale and is overlain by 600 feet of Devonian shale and limestone. Rock-rubble zones and fractures that formed within units overlying the collapse resulted in about 45 feet of subsidence at the bedrock surface and the formation of sinkholes as much as 70 feet deep at land surface.