AMD Mitigation
The Arizona Water Quality Improvement Grant Program program strives to fund projects that implement sufficient, economically and scientifically sound management practices that result in quantifiable improvements to surface water quality.
- Location: Patagonia, AZ
- Client: ADEQ
- Commodity: Water
About this Project
Testing and Implementation of Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) Mitigation Upper Alum Gulch and Cox Gulch-3R Canyon. Reduction of zinc, cadmium, lead, and copper in upper Alum Gulch and Cox Gulch-3R Canyon, SE Arizona utilizing gabion retaining wall and footer structures combined with zeolite material adsorption.
Services include:
Several large removal actions and expensive mine portal closures implemented in the area have had little effects on the loading characteristics of the concerned watersheds, therefore, Consortium partners, working under Geografx, LLC. by direct in-stream treatment methods, seeks to reduce the heavy metals loading of zinc, cadmium, lead, and copper and raise the pH of several AMD – impacted tributaries flowing into Sonoita Creek and Patagonia Lake.
Project implementation will be carried out in the following stages:
—Water quality data will be compiled from previous studies including aqueous invertebrate inventories/analysis
—We will run model simulations of surface flow using geographical base data sets.
—Develop Column tests for materials: Column testing refers to the measurement of the transport parameters describing the migration of chemical species through porous media under controlled laboratory conditions.
—Construction of a series of gabion retainer wall structures and stream-bed footers with integrated zeolite materials will be placed in favorable areas downstream of perennial spring discharge points which are the sources of loading in the streams.
—Continue monitoring water quality inflow and outflow, soil chemistry and aqueous invertebrate community health upstream and downstream of the implementation for overall effectiveness and continuity.
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