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y _ <br /> Binayak Acharya Project 2074-001.01 <br /> May 1 S, 1995 <br /> Page 3 <br /> MODELING PROCEDURES <br /> EMCON has modeled the potential transport of the compounds found in the soil and how <br /> these compounds could migrate to groundwater. For this assessment, a relatively simple <br /> transport model was selected because the stratigraphy of the unsaturated zone appears to <br /> be a relatively simple series of alluvial deposits of clayey, silty, and gravelly sands <br /> (EMCON, 1994). The model accounts for the major processes governing transport of <br /> dissolved constituents while requiring only a minimum of assumptions. The assumptions <br /> that were made, however, were made conservatively, so model predictions tend to <br /> overestimate rather than underestimate chemical concentrations at the surface of the water <br /> table. <br /> The vertical and horizontal spread (VHS) model was chosen to estimate the vertical <br /> infiltration of the chemicals detected in the soil at this site downward toward the <br /> groundwater. The details of the modeling are discussed in Appendix A. In general, <br /> however, the modeling used the concentration of each chemical detected in the soil samples <br /> to estimate its concentration in soil-pore liquid just before it enters the groundwater <br /> underlying the site, approximately 59 feet (1 S meters) beneath the zone of impact. The <br /> modeling used the average precipitation for Stockton (about 14 inches per year) and <br /> assumed that the site would remain paved but that a portion (2 percent) of the precipitation <br /> would infiltrate through the pavement. The soils encountered in borings B-1 and MW-1 <br /> were mostly clayey, silty, and gravely sands. Therefore, values for porosity and bulk <br /> density typical of sands were used. <br /> A sensitivity study was conducted by varying the value for the cross-sectional dimension of <br /> the source. The soluble concentration of each chemical are presented in Table 3. <br /> Maximum contaminant levels (MCLS) are also presented, where available, for comparison. <br /> The results in Table 3 show that, even for the worst-case scenario of an unrealistically large <br /> release (164 feet or 50-meter cross section), the concentrations of chemicals detected in <br /> site soil would not impact groundwater at levels in excess of their respective MCLs. The <br /> results in Table 3 also show the time estimated for each compound to reach the water <br /> table. The modeling results show that the compounds will take more than 20,000 years to <br /> reach the groundwater; due primarily to the low infiltration rate. This long migration is <br /> consistent with the limited vertical extent of impact detected in the soil borings, and <br /> provides ample time for degradation to further lower the concentrations of each compound <br /> during migration. <br /> It should be noted that the concentration of each chemical in groundwater would be <br /> expected to be much lower than the estimated concentrations, for the following reasons: <br /> JASSCT%P72120740010.1 BR-9511jt:2 <br />