Colorado Water Watch: Real-Time Groundwater Monitoring for Possible Contamination from Oil and Gas Activities

Abstract

Currently, only a few states in the U.S. (e.g. Colorado and Ohio) require mandatory baseline groundwater sampling from nearby groundwater wells prior to drilling a new oil or gas well. Colorado is the first state to regulate groundwater testing before and after drilling, requiring one pre-drilling sample and two additional post-drilling samples within 6 - 12 months and 5 - 6 years of drilling, respectively. However, the monitoring method is limited to ex-situ sampling, which offers only a snapshot in time. To overcome the limitations and increase monitoring effectiveness, a new groundwater monitoring system, Colorado Water Watch (CWW), was introduced as a decision-making tool to support the state’s regulatory agency and also to provide real-time groundwater quality data to both industry and the public. The CWW uses simple in-situ water quality sensors based on surrogate sensing technology that employs an event detection system to screen the incoming data in near real-time. This objective of this study was to improve the understanding of groundwater quality in Wattenberg field and assess event detection methods. The data obtained from 5 sites (the earliest monitoring sites in the CWW network) for 3 years of the regional monitoring network in Wattenberg field is used to illustrate the background information about groundwater quality and its changing trend, and make comparisons between two outlier detection methods, CANARY and simple moving median.