2007 Ground Water Summit

Monday, April 30, 2007 : 10:10 a.m.

Estimates of Road Salt Mass Loadings in Complex Urban Environments

David Rudolph and Ghulam Sarwar, University of Waterloo

In evaluating the impacts of legacy road deicing activities on municipal wells in urban environments, estimates of salt mass loadings to the water table are critical. The diverse nature of the road networks, salt application practices and subsurface geology lead to the highly variable nature of this form of non-point source contaminant loading. In this work, detailed monitoring of the vadose zone along typical road type settings within an urban centre is used to track applied surface tracers to estimate recharge rates and to estimate the stored salt mass in the near-curb areas in order to estimate annual salt mass loadings to the water table. These data are than used to define the surface source term for a 3-D regional flow and transport model that was developed to predict future impacts to a municipal well field and to evaluate the utility of alternative management practices.

David Rudolph, University of Waterloo Dr. Rudolph is a Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Waterloo specializing in regional hydrogeology and groundwater protection and management. He is a geological engineer graduating from the University of Manitoba and received his M. Sc. and Ph. D. at the University of Waterloo in Hydrogeology. Dr. Rudolph’s primary research interests relate to the regional management of groundwater resources and he has worked extensively with municipal authorities in the development of groundwater protection and management strategies. Research applications have included assessing the impacts on water quality from raod deicing and agricultural land-use practices on the local and regional scale.


The 2007 Ground Water Summit