CORRESPONDENCE_1982-1983 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

As stated earlier, Mr. Lee Hall, Registered Sanitarian with the San Joaquin Local Health District has supplied BAX with the over-all dimensions of the ponds. According to Mr. Hall, four of the ponds occupy an area 4001 x 3501 . Within that area are four berms, and if they are 204 wide, the net area of the ponds is about 4001 x 2901; making the pond area about 2.6 acres. Again, accord- ing to Mr. Hall, the ponds are five feet deep when full, so the sides of the pond presents an additional sorptIve surface beside the pond bottom. The sides of the ponds constitute an additional .4 acre, so added to the area of the pond bottoms makes a total of about 3 acres of sorptive surface. (As stated earlier, BAX has not seen the ponds, although SAX personnel have been all around the site, Whether the area calculations are exactly correct is unimportant, as will become apparent.) M the ponds were all full, and had a perm- eability of 8z10-6, they would leak 8,096,130 gallons per year into the groundwater system. what effect would 8 million gallons of brine have on the ground- water near Stockton? Is this a "relatively low degree of hazard'17 Perhaps the easiest evaluation Is in tezws of domestic water supply. Assuming the brine to contain a modest 10,000 parts per million total dissolved solids,* 8 million gallons would be enough to ruin one year's domestic water supply for about 42,000 persons-- Hardly a "low degree of hazard*', W hastens to point out that this calcu- lation represents the worst case as far as oil well brines are con- cerned, and that to date, only about 5.5 million gallons of brines have been delivered to Forward, Inc, (only two of the four ponds have been used) Nevertheless, 3AX respectfully points out that it Is the duty of staff members of the State and Regional Boards to evaluate the worst case, Nothing In the record indicates that this was done. BAX now will evaluate the impact of what has actually occurred at the site of Forward, Inc. Once brines have been put into the ponds, they can only do one of two things: evaporate or soak away. If the evaporation does not account for the disappearance of the water, it has seeped into the groundwater system. Based on this premise, BAX has obtained evapora- *011 well brines often are higher than this in salt content 7