Chesapeake Bay Groundwater Toxics Loading Workshop Proceedings. Held inAnnapolis, Maryland on April 15-16, 1992

摘要

The workshop was held to assess the significance of toxic substances transportedby groundwater to the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries and to develop a strategy for quantifying these loads. The workshop was also one in a series of critical issue forums directed at developing a technical consensus on the nature, extent and magnitude of Chesapeake Bay Toxics problems, as part of the reevaluation of the Basinwide Toxics Reduction Strategy. A major accomplishment of the workshop was a summary of the current state of knowledge regarding the significance of groundwater as a transport mechanism for toxic substances and nutrients to Chesapeake Bay. The primary conclusions of the workshop were: Groundwater itself is not a source of toxic substances, rather, it stores and transports toxic substances and nutrients that have infiltrated to the groundwater from point and nonpoint sources; Groundwater delivers more than one-half of the freshwater that enters Chesapeake Bay; The majority of the groundwater flow to the Bay is transported from shallow aquifers that are most sensitive to anthropogenic impacts.