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Assessing and Managing Large-Scale Geochemical Impacts From Groundwater Replenishment With Highly Treated Reclaimed Wastewater TEXT SIZE: A A A

Reuse of wastewater through a combination of advanced wastewater treatment (AWT) and managed aquifer recharge (MAR) is an important water management option. As an integral part of any AWT-MAR system, the geochemical compatibility of the recharged water with the targeted aquifer must be assessed to avoid groundwater quality deterioration. Although short-term field experiments may uncover potentially concerning sediment-water disequilibria, an advanced analysis is often required to understand the long-term geochemical impacts of large-scale MAR. Here, we develop and apply a pragmatic approach to upscale and verify the previously derived local-scale geochemical understanding to the spatial and temporal scale required for assessing and managing large-scale and long-term impacts resulting from the recharge of AWT-processed water. We use Australia's largest MAR scheme, in which aerobic, purified water is injected into deep, anaerobic, pyritic aquifers as an illustrative example. In this case, the local-scale understanding was derived from a comprehensive field trial and the interpretation of the data through a trial-scale high-resolution reactive transport model (RTM). Based on (i) the trial-scale RTM, (ii) new data from the early phase of the full-scale MAR, and (iii) downscaling of an existing, regional-scale flow model, we developed an upscaled RTM to assess two critical issues for the large-scale groundwater replenishment of Perth deep aquifers, that is, the sustainability of native pH buffering processes and the dynamics of fluoride release and attenuation. In a final step we illustrate how the upscaled RTM can be applied to assess how changes in the AWT affect long-term groundwater pH changes. 

Publication name

 WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH Volume: 56 Issue: 11 Article Number: e2020WR028066 DOI: 10.1029/2020WR028066 Published: NOV 2020

Author(s)

 Sun, Jing; Donn, Michael J.; Gerber, Philippe; Higginson, Simon; Siade, Adam J.; Schafer, David; Seibert, Simone; Prommer, Henning

Corresponding author(s) 

 Prommer, Henning 
 henning.prommer@csiro.au
 - CSIRO Land & Water, Wembley, WA, Australia.
 -Univ Western Australia, Sch Earth Sci, Perth, WA, Australia.
 -Natl Ctr Groundwater Res & Training, Adelaide, SA, Australia.

Author(s) from IGCAS   SUN Jing

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