CONTACT: Nancy Kinner
603-862-1381
WRITER: Suki Casanave,
603-862-3102
Last fall, Nancy Kinner went to Sweden as a Fulbright Scholar--and wound up in the middle of an environmental scandal or two.
It started innocently enough. The associate professor of civil engineering at the University of New Hampshire went to Sweden to pursue research in her field--bioremediation, the use of naturally occurring organisms that live in the ground to clean up contaminated water and soil. "It's a method that works," says Kinner, explaining that bioremediation offers a less costly and more effective solution than traditional pump-and-treat systems that pump ground water to the surface leaving residual contamination.
Part way through her stay in Scandinavia, Kinner was summoned to help resolve an environmental disaster that was making international headlines. The story begins with a giant hill in southern Sweden, known as the Hallandsas formation. Still very rural, the area is a popular resort destination and supports many working farms. It is also lies directly in the path of a major rail route. Last year the railroad began building a 9-kilometer tunnel beneath the Hallandsas.
Construction workers blasted rock away to form the tunnel, then pumped the fractures full of acrylamide, a liquid that hardens to plastic (polyacrylamide). Its purpose is to keep ground water from seeping into the tunnel through fractures in the bedrock. In spite of the polyacrylamide, some water continued to seep through the tunnel walls, severely depleting the ground water supply on top of the mountain. To solve the problem, the construction company pumped the water seeping into the tunnel back up to a stream serving the mountain top farms. It seemed like a good resolution. Except that, before long, the cows died. So did the fish. And the tunnel project came to an abrupt halt.
That's when Kinner was called to join a group of Swedish scientists charged with assessing how to clean up the problem. "I went to the site and stood inside a blasted area roughly the size of my office," says Kinner. "It was literally raining in there. At least 10 liters of water were pouring down." Apparently, the polyacrylamide had not solidified properly, leaving behind toxic liquid acrylamide. The water seeping down through the mountain was being contaminated en route.
Today, Kinner, who will return to Sweden this summer, continues her efforts to help determine whether bioremediation will clean up the residual acrylamide. Meanwhile, the Swedish press continues to follow the scandal closely, and Kinner can't talk much about her research because of ongoing legal action.
Until the Hallandsas formation scandal broke, Kinner was busy dealing with another environmental problem. During the cold war, the Swedish government blasted the bedrock to create 50-60 caverns to stockpile supplies of petroleum. Now the country faces a daunting challenge: how to clean up the residual oil that has leaked into bedrock fractures around the caverns, contaminating the ground water.
To continue the current pump-and-treat clean-up effort is tremendously expensive. And how do you get oil residue extracted from every tiny fracture deep in the bedrock? "They could add a chemical to destroy the petroleum," says Kinner, "but how do you get it uniformly distributed? What if there's a pocket of oil and it leaches out into the water? It's a hydrologic nightmare."
The challenge is that in bedrock, water travels through a convoluted series of fractures that are currently almost impossible to map. "It's almost impossible to predict how the water will flow from point A to point B," says Kinner.
Kinner is helping to assess the feasibility of bedrock bioremediation to clean up the residual petroleum. The question, Kinner explains, is whether naturally occurring organisms living in the rock fractures can do the job. "Can the microorganisms degrade the hydrocarbons and finish the clean-up process? And can they do it effectively at colder temperatures, where microbial metabolic activity is slower?"
To answer the question, Kinner worked with her Swedish colleagues to modify a laboratory permeameter (usually used to determine how permeable certain types of soil are to water) to study bioremediation in the lab. During coming months, as contaminated ground water is pumped through a fracture in a core of bedrock inside the permeameter, researchers in Sweden will watch this chunk of rock with bated breath. They'll be comparing the contaminated water being pumped in, to the water coming out the other side of the fracture.
"If the rate of biodegradation is faster than the speed of the contaminated water through the fracture," says Kinner, "then bioremediation can work. If it's not, another solution will have to be found."
"Nancy has provided valuable expertise," says Per Lindmark, an environmental researcher at the Swedish Geotechnical Institute where Kinner was working. "We think that it has been a very valuable cooperation, and we hope that it can be expanded during the coming years."
Kinner's work in Sweden could have significant impact in the United States. "Many contaminated sites in New Hampshire and across the nation cannot be fully cleaned up because contaminants have reached the bedrock where they are difficult to contain, collect, or treat," says Kinner. "I hope the in situ bioremediation research begun in Sweden can help solve that problem." Supported primarily by the Fulbright Foundation, Kinner's recent work in Sweden was also funded in part by the American Scandanavian Foundation.
Nancy Kinner is a senior member of UNH's Environmental Research Group in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. She specializes in biological remediation of contaminated aquifers and the removal of radon from drinking water. She has led efforts to find cost-effective solutions to a host of environmental problems for communities and businesses across New Hampshire. Currently, Kinner serves on New Hampshire's Waste Management Council and the state's Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers. Kinner also acts as an advisor to the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services on bioremediation of contaminated ground water in New Hampshire.
Kinner is a past recipient of two of the university's Teaching Excellence Awards. In 1991 she was also awarded the university's first three-year Davison professorship, which honors distinguished UNH faculty members, especially those in civil and environmental engineering.
Photo Caption:
ROCK SOLID? University of New Hampshire professor and Fulbright Scholar Nancy Kinner of Lee demonstrates a method for studying bioremediation of contaminated bedrock in the lab. Working with colleagues during her recent stay in Sweden, Kinner modified a laboratory permeameter (usually used to determine soil permeability). Contaminated ground water is pumped through a fracture in a bedrock core sealed inside a permeameter (like the one shown here), simulating the natural flow of water through the ground. Researchers in Sweden are studying a chunk of rock in their lab, comparing the contaminated water being pumped in to the water coming out the other side of the fracture. "If the rate of biodegradation is faster than the speed of the contaminated water through the fracture," says Kinner, "then bioremediation can work. If it's not, another solution will have to be found." (UNH photo: Doug Prince)