The impact of climate evolution on contaminated groundwater resources: solving a solvable human and ecological health crisis in the making

The manifestation of evolving and rapidly changing climatic conditions will negatively impact communities in developing nations much more than conventional wisdom recognizes. The environmental and economic health of many global communities is linked to the security of fresh water resources and the implementation of reliable and protective groundwater restoration and water resource protection measures. With the continued progress of climatic shifts that manifest into extreme hydrologic events, the stress on existing groundwater and surface water protection measures, and the ability to design new protection and clean up approaches, particularly in communities that do not have the economic or political means to implement technology, will continue to increase dramatically. The continued stress and inability to protect fresh water resources from contamination could dramatically increase likelihood that extreme health degradation may occur. As the United Nations (UN) most appropriately surmises, water is critical for socio-economic development, food production and human survival itself. It also is the crucial link between society and the environment and thus is at the heart of impact from climatic change (United Nations, 2019). From UN reporting, with over 2 billion people lacking access to safely managed drinking water infrastructure, and 4.5 billion people lacking safely managed modern sanitation, the likelihood of even greater distress from a lack of clean water due to extreme climatic events (drought and flood) will no doubt increase. Even now, the economic distress due to massive health issues related to water resource limitations may not be fully captured; an increase in this condition could cause further economic and health impacts that lead to instability of communities and governments. Contamination from industrial sites, landfills, and even natural conditions where extreme erosion can increase sediment loading to surface water bodies could become exacerbated due to extreme climatic events. Erosion and degradation of protective soil and vegetation covers at closed landfills and former mine locations could lead to additional contaminant loading to water and ecological receptors; floods can overwhelm surface-based holding tanks and ponds containing harmful chemicals; and, extended drought can create conditions where only contaminated water is accessible, where groundwater depths increase dramatically such that saline water replaces fresh water. Additionally, the related shifts in subsurface hydrologic conditions may also render groundwater treatment systems – including passive systems that rely solely on advective groundwater flow to route contaminated groundwater into the treatment system; and active systems that are designed to hydraulically control contaminated groundwater – potentially ineffective, or at least severely degraded in performance - if changes in hydraulic gradient direction and velocity are outside the performance design metrics of the installed remediation system. (author)