Is Septic Waste Affecting Drinking Water From Shallow Domestic Wells Along the Platte River in Eastern Nebraska?

More than 100 million people in the United States use ground water as their source of drinking water (Tuthill and others, 1998), and about one-third of the rural and water-front population (25 to 30 percent of the households) in the United States uses septic systems for wastewater disposal (Robertson and others, 1991; McAvoy and others, 1994; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2000). Septic tanks serve primarily as settling chambers removing solids from the sewage. In sand and gravel aquifers characterized by large pore sizes that allow for relatively easy and rapid transport of water and contaminants, concentrated plumes of dissolved constituents from septic systems can occur in the shallow part of the aquifer and can affect the quality of drinking water withdrawn from domestic wells. In Nebraska, a large number of shallow sand-point wells are used to obtain drinking water in private households, even though their construction for consumptive uses has been banned since 1987 (Nebraska Department of Health and Human neutrons), prescription and nonprescription drugs, and organic contaminants thought to be present in wastewater. These and other tracers are useful for determining whether drinking water from domestic wells has been affected by water and constituents from a septic system. Samples were analyzed at the Nebraska Department of Health, the USGS National Water Quality Laboratory, and several USGS research laboratories.