LSPA Continuing Education Webinar:

LSPs and other practitioners regularly conduct subsurface investigations to obtain information for evaluating, reducing, or removing contamination during remediation efforts. However, certainty of fate, transport, and attenuation can seldom be achieved because of unknown or unanticipated subsurface conditions.  At some sites, cost benefit analyses may even indicate that a complex, expensive, and time-consuming effort will not yield an outcome better than a simpler approach. 

Part I of this series, “Using Simplicity to Address Contaminant Problems Under Conditions of Uncertainty, AKA Keeping It Simple,” was delivered by Professor Siegel to the LSPA in February 2022.  That course focused on how fundamental uncertainties in understanding Darcy’s Law can lead to equivocal results with respect to forecasting contaminant migration. 

This course offering, Part II of the series, explores how common misunderstanding of the hydraulic potential (head), and surface water and groundwater interactions also lead to false or equivocal understanding of groundwater flow and contaminant transport.  For example, groundwater and surface water exchange can develop flow paths that literally cross what many presume are no-flow boundaries. Combining water levels from piezometers at multiple depths in unconfined aquifers to make a potentiometric surface map not only is wrong but leads to incorrect interpretations of vertical migration of contaminants.   

It is not necessary to have previously taken Part I of this series to fully appreciate and participate in Part II.  To view the course agenda, please click here.

Last year’s LSPA evaluations cited Professor Siegel’s course as “Very interesting and well presented - nice approach,” “Excellent seminar topic and speaker,” “Fun course, and Dr. Siegel is an excellent lecturer,” and “Very useful and practical.  More like this.”

Please review the LSPA Cancellation Policy here.