Viewing groundwater across the Bay State you might not think of its many aquifers as small, especially the aquifers beneath Cape Cod and along the Connecticut River, but they are small compared to aquifers located throughout the western United States. Cape Cod, the largest aquifer in the Commonwealth, has a surface area of roughly 880 km2 including the non-aquifer moraine deposits. The aquifer beneath my house in New Mexico, the Albuquerque Basin, is ten times larger. I work in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, thirty times larger, the Central Valley of California, 65 times larger, and the Ogallala, 500 times larger (these systems are also stressed by a much drier climate). Most aquifers in the Bay State are much smaller than Cape Cod. What special challenges and opportunities are associated with Bay-State aquifers? Small aquifers are fast. By groundwater standards of behavior, Bay-State aquifer water levels and discharges respond quickly to perturbations of hydrology created by climate variability and change, and human impacts affecting recharge (e.g., land use) and discharge (e.g., pumping). Response times can be as short as months and is seldom longer than a few years. This sensitivity means that while groundwater quantity is resilient in the face of very short-term climate fluctuations or human pumping decisions, the impacts of longer-term climate signals and land use changes are effectively instantaneous. Small aquifers respond almost as quickly to perturbations of water quality, especially when the perturbations are associated with recharge and distributed in space, for example due to land use changes or the reuse of water. Understanding and managing fast responding systems require frequent observations, excellent data records, active recognition of feedbacks, and integration across hydrologic, disciplinary and policy boundaries. In the Bay State these issues are complicated by a growing dependence on bedrock aquifers, increasing interbasin water transfers (did you know the Albuquerque Basin partly relies on the transfer of Colorado River water?), and a newfound trust in large-scale water reuse, especially along the coastline (not unlike Orange County, California). This presentation will explore these and other Bay-State challenges and opportunities and contrast them to the state of affairs in the western United States

Protecting A Drinking Water Aquifer and an Estuary System A Massachusetts Contingency Plan Success Story
Anthony Urbano, P.E.
Stormwater Recharge Effects on Groundwater Levels in Boston's Groundwater Conservation Overlay District
John Kastrinos

Limiting Water Quality Impacts Due to Large Scale Blasting
Charles Crocetti, PhD, PG
Three-Dimensional Plume Evaluation to Restore a Sole Source Glacial Aquifer in Western Cape Cod
Grady Dante
Modernization of Groundwater Protection Area (Zone II) Delineations: A Case Study
Brent V. Aigler
Effluent Recharge to Groundwater and Wastewater Planning – Finding Acceptable Recharge Sites
Karilyn Heisen, P.E.

No one can control, manage, or sustain what is not measured, so monitoring is the first step needed to ensure success. In terms of groundwater, monitoring can identify aquifers being used in an unsustainable manner and that information can then be used to find remedies to sustain the systems, as well as the industries and businesses that rely on them. One example of this, which will be discussed in this lecture, is the deep sandstone aquifer of northern Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin, where decades of overpumping have created one of the largest cones of depression in the world. Both states have conducted detailed studies of the aquifer and have begun regional planning to control the human and environmental impacts. (The McEllhiney Lecture Series is made possible by a grant from Franklin Electric.)

Impacts of Climatic Variability on Groundwater Resources of Massachusetts
David F. Boutt, Ph.D.
The Federal Advisory Committee on Water Information and How It Benefits the Bay State
Robert P. Schreiber, PE, BCEE, D.WRE

Development and Implementation of the National Groundwater Monitoring Network in the Bay State
Robert P. Schreiber, PE, BCEE, D.WRE
Cape Cod’s Wastewater Management Challenge and 208 Plan Update
Tom Cambareri
Defining Groundwater Flow and Transport to Help Reduce Nitrogen Discharge to Cape Cod’s Coastal Waters
Denis R. LeBlanc
Groundwater a strategic resource when dealing with the climate change in the Czech Republic
Eva Novotna

This discussion focuses on the major push by states to regulate stream flow by putting limits on the amount of water its citizens use.

This will be an informal discussion time focusing on: • What is the most significant groundwater challenge facing the Nation? • What tools do groundwater professionals need to meet the challenge—technology, people, policy?