| What: Presentation of arsenic in groundwater research at annual water resources conference When: 9:45 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28
Where: Earle Brown Heritage Center, 6155 Earle Brown Drive, Brooklyn Center
Contact: Mindy Erickson, research engineer and CURA Faculty Interactive Grant co-recipient, (612) 624-7885, eric0984@umn.edu; Tom Scott, director, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, (612) 625-1551; Mike Greco, Communications Coordinator, CURA, 612-625-7501, curaweb@umn.edu
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (10/24/2003) -- Small municipalities in Minnesota could save millions of dollars in reducing the levels of arsenic in their drinking water, thanks to research partly funded by a grant from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA).
Mindy Erickson will present her research in poster sessions at 9:45 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. at the Water Resources Conference Tuesday, Oct. 28, at the Earle Brown Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center. Erickson was the co-recipient of the grant as part of CURA’s Faculty Interactive Research Program.
Erickson’s research on drinking wells, which could save communities throughout Minnesota up to $1 million each, builds on research from the early 1990s that turned up high levels of arsenic in hundreds of communities throughout western and southern Minnesota. Her research was also driven by results from the Minnesota Arsenic Study published in 2001, a study Erickson was involved with while working at the Minnesota Department of Health.
Erickson’s research is timely because the federal government recently tightened the Maximum Containment Level (MCL) for arsenic to 10 ug/L. That came in response to research showing that long-term exposure to low levels of arsenic increases the risk of adverse health effects such as skin cancer and disorders of the circulatory, nervous and digestive systems.
Communities will need to comply with the new MCL by Jan. 1, 2006. Many small communities throughout Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas have unique geology that contributes to concentrations of arsenic that exceed the new federal levels.
A new treatment plant can cost more than $1 million, which many affected communities cannot afford. Erickson’s research helps establish lower-cost compliance options, such as drilling an alternate well, which costs only one-tenth that of building a treatment plant.
One community that has already benefited from Erickson’s research is Neilsville, Minn., whose drinking well is higher in arsenic than the new limit allows. Erickson developed a site investigation protocol and then helped conduct a site investigation. As a result of her work, the Neilsville community will move confidently forward with drilling a new low-arsenic well next spring. Other communities Erickson has worked with include Cosmos, Climax, Frost, Ulen and Elizabeth.
Erickson is a doctoral candidate in the water resources science program at the University of Minnesota. She has been working under the supervision of civil engineering faculty member Randal J. Barnes, the project’s principal investigator.
The core of Erickson’s work resulted from a consortium of funding and is representative of the kind of support CURA has been providing to researchers and organizations for 35 years. CURA provided financial and other support, along with the Minnesota Department of Health, the Water Resources Center, the Minnesota Geological Survey, the U.S. Geological Survey and community partners around the state.
For an abstract of Erickson’s research, send an e-mail to eric0984@umn.edu. For more information on the Water Resources Conference, call the university’s College of Continuing Education at (612) 624-3492.
CURA has been connecting resources at the University of Minnesota with community and neighborhood organizations for 35 years. In addition to the Faculty Interactive Research Program, CURA supports more than a dozen programs that provide research support and technical assistance to community organizations and government agencies throughout Minnesota. CURA is on the Web at www.cura.umn.edu.
View an October 30, 2003 UMNnews feature story about this project.
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