Client

A large residential dwelling  

Services provided by our experts:

• Incident response & mitigation

• Contamination assessment and remediation

• Groundwater well treatment programme  

• Re-connection to existing drinking water abstraction well following treatment programme

• Project management

The Incident

A single skinned plastic oil storage tank failure allowed an escape of kerosene to occur less than 3m from a domestic drinking water well. The escape of oil led to contamination impacting both soils and groundwater in the vicinity.

The site in Co. Wicklow was located in an area with extremely high groundwater vulnerability.

The Solution

The Seed Environmental team were called in to carry out a site investigation to assess the extent and severity of the contamination plume. Seed deployed light non-aqueous phase liquid (LNAPL) skimmer pumps to remove the heavy surface contamination from the abstraction well before commencing an in-situ remedial groundwater treatment programme.

The Outcome

Following the successful in-situ remedial groundwater treatment programme, Seed restored the drinking water supply to safe drinking water standards in the existing abstraction well. This removed the need for a new drinking water abstraction well to be drilled on the site.

The pump, filter systems and associated pipework linking the well to the dwelling were replaced in their entirety due to the presence of hydrocarbon contamination in the system.

The well was monitored over a period of time to ensure continued compliance with generic assessment criteria for drinking water. The monitoring and laboratory analysis has confirmed that the water in the well is free from kerosene contaminants and is safe for human consumption.

During reinstatement works on the site, a new OFTEC compliant, bunded oil storage tank was installed at a new suitable location, downgradient of the well. This reduced any future risk of hydrocarbon contamination impact to the groundwater/well.