Evaluating the environmental consequences of groundwater contamination: 4. Obtaining arid utilizing contaminant arrival distributions in transient flow systems

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Abstract
The versatility of the new contaminant arrival distributions for determining environmental consequences of subsurface pollution problems is demonstrated through application to a transient flow system. Though some of the four phases of the hydrologic evaluations are more complicated because of the time dependence of the flow and input contaminant concentrations, the arrival distributions still effectively summarize the data required to determine the environmental implications. These arrival distributions yield two graphs or tabular sets of data giving the consequences of the subsurface pollution problems in a simple and direct form. Accordingly, the public control authorities would be able to use these results to choose alternatives or to initiate corrective actions, depending on the indicated environmental consequences.