1 2 3 4 5 SAVANNAH HARBOR IMPROVEMENT PROJECT 6 7 STAKEHOLDERS EVALUATION GROUP (SEG) MEETING 8 9 FEBRUARY 3, 2004 10 9:00 A.M. 11 MIGHTY 8TH AIR FORCE HERITAGE MUSEUM 12 SAVANNAH, GEORGIA 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2 1 2 3 4 5 I N D E X 6 7 INTRODUCTIONS --------------------------------- 3 8 AGENDA ---------------------------------------- 5 9 GENERAL REEVALUATION STUDY STATUS ------------- 7 10 COMMITTEE REPORTS ----------------------------- 8 11 OPERATING GUIDELINES -------------------------- 9 12 ECONOMICS WORKING GROUP ----------------------- 11 13 INTRODUCTIONS --------------------------------- 15 14 GENERAL DISCUSSION ---------------------------- 16 15 PRESENTATION - CARD SMITH --------------------- 18 16 PRESENTATION - JIM LANDMEYER ------------------ 85 17 CERTIFICATE ----------------------------------- 112 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 3 1 INTRODUCTIONS 2 MR. DYSART: It's 9:08, and I would like to 3 call the meeting of the Stakeholders Evaluation 4 Group to order. 5 My name is Ben Dysart. I'm the SEG 6 facilitator, and the first thing we'll do is 7 introduce folks around the table, and why don't we 8 start with Tom, and give us your name and who you 9 are affiliated with, if you care to, Tom. 10 MR. WRIGHT: Hi, I'm Tom Wright, and I'm a 11 local citizen. 12 MR. GRIFFIN: David Griffin, Georgia DOT. 13 MR. BEASON: Fred Beason, Bottom Line Echo 14 Hydrographic Surveys. 15 MR. SMITH: Card Smith, Corps of Engineers. 16 MR. LANDMEYER: Jim Landmeyer, US Geological 17 Survey. 18 MR. GRABILL: Bill Grabill, Fish and Wildlife 19 Service in Atlanta. 20 MS. JAROUS: Bettye Jarous, Fish and Wildlife 21 Service. 22 MR. ROBINETTE: John Robinette, Savannah 23 Coastal Refuge. 24 MR. SCANLON: Bob Scanlon, City of Savannah 25 and also the Savannah Harbor Committee. 4 1 INTRODUCTIONS 2 MR. ELLIS: Bo Ellis with Applied Technology 3 and management. 4 MR. KEEGAN: Larry Keegan with Lockwood Green 5 Engineers. 6 MR. SCHALLER: David Schaller, Georgia Ports. 7 MR. REES: Morgan Rees, consultant to GPA. 8 MR. MIKELL: Rob Mikell, South Carolina DHEC 9 Coastal Program. 10 MR. PARSONS: Keith Parsons, Georgia DNR. 11 MS. MOORE: Kelie Moore, DNR, Coastal 12 Resources Division. 13 MR. GANE: Brad Gane, Georgia DNR, Coastal 14 Resource Division. 15 MR. FLEMING: Joe Fleming, Georgia DNR. 16 MR. KYLER: Dave Kyler, center for a 17 Sustainable Coast. 18 MR. HAAS: Kevin Haas, Georgia Tech Savannah 19 MR. DAILY: I'm Bill Daily, retired physician. 20 MR. BERSON: Will Berson with the Georgia 21 Conservancy. 22 MR. STAFFORD: John Stafford, Ogeechee Audoon. 23 MR. FARMER: Bill Farmer, citizen. 24 MR. OFF: Lou Off, Tybee Island Beach Task 25 Force. 5 1 AGENDA 2 MR. DYSART: Thank you. We have several new 3 faces today with us, and we're delighted about 4 that. We're always happy to see old faces, and 5 people coming back after an absence of a few 6 months, and also drawing in new individuals with an 7 interest in the project. 8 We will introduce other folks as they come in 9 in the morning, but we're going to let Lucille tell 10 us who she is, since she's getting ready to sit 11 down. 12 MS. COLLINS-RAHN: I'm Lucille Collins-Rahn 13 with the Sierra Club representing myself. Judy's 14 coming. She's downstairs. 15 MR. DYSART: The agenda is coming around and 16 item three is to comment on that, and I'll tell you 17 what, let's move on to item four until that gets 18 around, action on the transcript of the December 19 2003 SEG meeting. 20 That typically is posted and people have an 21 opportunity to review that, to the extent that they 22 desire to do so, and if there are any corrections 23 or comments, customarily, we simply make them on 24 the record here so that they become part of the 25 record. 6 1 AGENDA 2 So are there any comments or clarifications 3 concerning the December 2003 transcript? Seeing no 4 request to make comments, I would assume that the 5 will of the group would be to consider that to be 6 accepted, and indicative, and reflective of what 7 transpired in December. 8 Okay. Now, you have the draft agenda in front 9 of you, and we've had one presentation from the 10 Corps that they ask to be deferred to the next 11 meeting, because information arrived a little bit 12 too late for them to prepare for this concerning 13 the ship simulation briefing. 14 And there is a major update briefing 15 concerning the aquifer studies, which will be 16 presented a little bit later. Chris Schuberth, who 17 has been very active in the aquifer area has 18 requested, if possible, we hold that until he gets 19 here in a little while. 20 So we will -- would like to honor that 21 request. So is there anything that anyone would 22 like to add to the agenda at this time? Is there 23 any other change that you would like to make in the 24 order, or what not, of the proposed agenda? 25 If not, we'll consider that the agenda, as 7 1 UPDATE - GENERAL REEVALUATION STUDY 2 circulated, is acceptable to the group and we will 3 operate utilizing that. Okay. 4 Item five, old business. Larry, how about 5 giving us an update on the general reevaluation 6 study? 7 MR. KEEGAN: Okay. Well, I wish I had a lot 8 of interesting and exciting developments to report 9 to you, but the fact is that things are not moving 10 quite at the rate that would allow that. 11 We had no agency or interagency coordination 12 or lead cooperating agency meetings in January. 13 The next lead and cooperating agency meetings is 14 this month or next month probably, but that's just 15 starting to come up and get looked at. 16 The economic analysis draft work plan was 17 forwarded to the Economics Working Group and 18 posted, and we had a meeting here last week. I'll 19 let Judy address the outcome of that in her 20 committee report. 21 The hydrodynamic and salinity model and 22 dissolved oxygen model calibration report was 23 delivered to the federal agencies that make up this 24 part on the 26th, so that's in the review cycle 25 now. 8 1 COMMITTEE REPORTS 2 We hope to have that finalized and agency 3 positions in early April. The marsh succession 4 model development continued along the same vein as 5 it has been going. 6 We expect that the module that links the H and 7 S model to the marshes will be final and delivered 8 by the end of February by USGS. The remainder of 9 the module development should complete and, 10 validation of the whole collection of modules, be 11 able to occur sometime mid to late March. 12 Aquifer investigation, somebody investigated 13 where it started, did some boring work, and I'm 14 going to defer any details on that to Card Smith, 15 who is going to talk to us a little bit later on 16 today. And those are the items of note for 17 January. 18 MR. DYSART: Okay. 19 MR. KEEGAN: Any questions? 20 MR. DYSART: Questions, comments for Larry? 21 Okay. Let's now proceed with committee reports, 22 save Chris. Anything from the Beach Erosion area, 23 Bill? 24 MR. FARMER: No, sir. The committee did not 25 meet since the last SEG meeting. 9 1 OPERATING GUIDELINES 2 MR. DYSART: Any other information you would 3 like to share, other than you don't have anything 4 else you would like to throw out? 5 MR. FARMER: No, sir. 6 MR. DYSART: Okay. Dredging and Disposal 7 Committee, Fred. 8 MR. BEASON: No, sir. We're still waiting on 9 the model. 10 MR. DYSART: Okay. Will, what about Fisheries 11 and Aquatic Resources? 12 MR. BERSON: Nothing to report. 13 MR. DYSART: Moving along as we are, we may 14 have to come back to you for a soft shoe routine, 15 in a little while, which is always good. MTRG, Bo. 16 MR. ELLIS: No, no action to report. 17 MR. DYSART: Okay. Teri, Operating 18 Guidelines. 19 MS. LEFFEK: Just one item. Morgan has some 20 language that has been circulated among the 21 committee members and we've recirculated that. I 22 did not have any dissenting opinions on that. 23 So I e-mailed everyone saying the following 24 language is the recommendation we are making to the 25 SEG that we revise the Operating Guidelines at the 10 1 OPERATING GUIDELINES 2 beginning of paragraph E the following; the 3 functions and membership of the Communications 4 Committee were assumed by the Operating Guidelines 5 Committee by action of SEG at its meeting of August 6 5th, 2003. So if the SEG approves of that, we will 7 make that change to the Operating Guidelines. 8 MR. DYSART: Okay. Any comments on that, 9 what's your pleasure concerning that? Do I take 10 that as a motion for action from the committee 11 presented to SEG for their views or action, Teri? 12 MS. LEFFEK: (Nods head up and down.) 13 MR. DYSART: Any objections to the committee's 14 recommendation? Seeing none, I will take that as 15 an indication that the SEG has developed a 16 consensus on that, and supports the Operating 17 Guidelines Committee's recommendation. Okay Teri. 18 MS. LEFFEK: Okay. Thank you. 19 MR. DYSART: Striped Bass Committee. 20 MR. FLEMING: I represent the committee at 21 this time. We have nothing further to report. 22 MR. DYSART: Okay. Well, I'll tell you what, 23 Morgan. 24 MR. REES: You skipped over the Economics 25 Working Group. 11 1 ECONOMICS WORKING GROUP 2 MR. DYSART: How did I manage to do that? 3 MS. JENNINGS: We actually had a meeting. I 4 have a report. 5 MR. DYSART: Okay. It's got a check mark by 6 it. Okay. We can remedy that problem. Judy, tell 7 us about what's going on with the Economics Working 8 Group? 9 MS. JENNINGS: Well, we did have a fine 10 meeting on January 29th, and the Corps was able to 11 make a presentation of their draft work plan for 12 the economic analysis. 13 It was a really well-attended meeting. About 14 16 people, GPA, the Corps, Gulf Engineers and 15 Consultants, which I'm glad to say is our old 16 friend Richard Hill that used to be in our 17 meetings. 18 The work plan is posted on the website, I'm 19 pretty sure. And number one, the work plan is 20 there, and also the overhead presentation that GEC 21 made to us that day. 22 I thought it was really a lot of good 23 discussion about how the benefits of the benefit 24 cost analysis would be laid out. And Kevin Horne, 25 the project -- lead project manager for the project 12 1 ECONOMICS WORKING GROUP 2 -- I was a little confused, at one point in time, 3 in thinking about what we were talking about. 4 I was thinking benefits and cost, but Kevin 5 Horne explained it to me by saying we be benefits. 6 So that's what this section is trying to do, 7 determine what the benefits of harbor deepening 8 are. 9 I'll have, on the website, a list of who all 10 attended, and I am asking that folks who attended 11 the meeting communicate to me, via e-mail, any 12 comments they want as a matter of record. Dave 13 Kyler has sent some very good, detailed comments. 14 I appreciate that, and anybody else who wants to. 15 And because GEC is asking and the Corps is 16 asking give us feedback, so we need to clearly 17 articulate what that is. 18 There are lots of issues, but I just think 19 unless you're really into that committee -- Will, 20 Dave, who else was there -- anybody else from that 21 committee that can add something? 22 MR. BERSON: I recommend you do look at the 23 work plan and the overhead presentation. It really 24 does describe the meeting. There are other 25 comments, but I won't bore y'all with it this 13 1 ECONOMICS WORKING GROUP 2 morning. 3 MS. JENNINGS: But it is really and active, 4 interesting area of discussion. Check it out on 5 the website. 6 MR. DYSART: Okay. 7 MS. JENNINGS: Dave, anything from you? 8 MR. KYLER: Other than what for many is 9 probably an obvious thing, and that is this, in 10 these kind of analyzes, it's going to be a 50 year 11 projection. 12 The further out in the future any cost or 13 benefit happens, it's brought back to the present, 14 the less it affects the outcome. Just be aware 15 that while it may seem presumption a bit overly 16 ambitious to project 50 years, the fact is the 17 further out the impacts the less they matter 18 quantitatively in assessing the cost and benefits 19 in the present, the way the rules are conducted at 20 this time in making such an analysis. 21 MS. JENNINGS: I should hasten to add that the 22 work plan includes a variety of deliverables over 23 time, and when the time is appropriate and those 24 issues are right, that the work is right, we'll 25 have other meetings with this group of folks. 14 1 2 Morgan, anything to add? 3 MR. REES: No, I don't think so. 4 MR. DYSART: Okay. Thank you. Morgan, I 5 wonder if you or David would like to share anything 6 from GPA's perspective? 7 Chris had said he was going to be here about 8 10:00, so we're going to have decide whether 9 somebody fills that time or whether we take a break 10 or whether we simply go on without Chris. 11 So one of the things that facilitation is, you 12 recognize the wisdom is always in the group. So 13 you can help me decide how we deal with that issue. 14 Morgan or David, anything you would like to share 15 or talk about? 16 MR. REES: I'll defer to the boss. 17 MR. SCHALLER: Like what? 18 MR. DYSART: Anything. 19 MR. SCHALLER: I can tell you about my new 20 grandchild born July 21 living in Pensacola. 21 MR. DYSART: Okay. Congratulations. 22 MR. SCHALLER: Thank you. 23 MR. DYSART: Well done all the way around. 24 Okay. How about folks who have not introduced 25 themselves, introduce yourself on the record. 15 1 INTRODUCTIONS 2 MR. FLOCK: Allan Flock, U.S. Fish and 3 Wildlife Service. 4 MS. MOORER: Hope Moorer, Georgia Ports 5 Authority. 6 MS. MAYLE: Mary Mayle, The Savannah Morning 7 News. 8 MS. VAUGHN: Cathy Vaughn, Georgia Ports 9 Authority. 10 MR. EUDALY: Ed Eudaly, Fish and Wildlife 11 Service. 12 MS. JENNINGS: Judy Jennings, Georgia Sierra. 13 MS. LEFFEK: Teri Leffek, Marine Terminals 14 Corporation. 15 MR. REICHARD: Jim Reichard, Georgia Southern 16 University. 17 MR. DYSART: While you're walking around, 18 would you introduce yourself and tell us who you 19 are and who you represent? 20 MS. RUTHERFORD: Freda Rutherford from Tybee 21 Island. 22 MR. DYSART: Okay. What is the pleasure of 23 the group regarding timing on presentation and 24 Chris' arrival; anybody have any thoughts? 25 MR. SCHALLER: What is his arrival -- ETA? 16 1 GENERAL DISCUSSION 2 MR. DYSART: I think he said about 10:00 3 o'clock. I would -- I guess my gut feeling is it 4 would probably make sense to proceed. And if we 5 need to have a representation or tutorial, what 6 not, if there are clarifications that need to be 7 provided to Chris when he gets here, we'll just do 8 the best we can. 9 MR. GANE: He'll be speaking. 10 MR. BERSON: If you want to move forward, 11 that's fine. I was going to ask one of Larry, 12 since we're looking to fill some time. I was going 13 to ask you this offline. 14 You mentioned that you're looking for the lead 15 agencies to make comments back on the calibration 16 report, did I understand that correctly? 17 MR. KEEGAN: Yeah. They have started the 18 review. 19 MR. BERSON: Is that sort of an interim 20 process, you're going to be getting comments back 21 from them, and then addressing them or saying why 22 you can't address them; how does that process sort 23 of unfold? 24 MR. KEEGAN: Basically, I anticipate it's 25 going to unfold just like you described. We're 17 1 GENERAL DISCUSSION 2 going to wind up with, I'm sure, comments, 3 questions, items to discuss. 4 We'll probably have a meeting of the technical 5 guys to sit down and talk about whatever it is they 6 want to talk about; how did you do this, why did 7 you do that kind of thing. 8 Basically, it's a -- I mean, the calibration 9 is done, so the real question is, is it adequate 10 for its purpose or isn't it? 11 MR. BERSON: Members of the SEG typically 12 wouldn't sit in on those meetings. Would you be 13 willing to share those comments with us, so we can 14 know what the relevant issues are? 15 MR. KEEGAN: That's really up to the district. 16 I would be more than happy to suggest that we do. 17 Off the top of my head, I don't see any reason why 18 there wouldn't be -- why we wouldn't do that. 19 MR. DYSART: David Kyler. 20 MR. KYLER: Again, in the interest of filling 21 dead air time, Larry used the term boring work. 22 MR. KEEGAN: Drilling holes in the ground. 23 MR. KYLER: I hoped that wasn't a question of 24 job burn-out. 25 MR. KEEGAN: Pardon me. 18 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 MR. KYLER: Your career burn-out. 3 MR. KEEGAN: No, no, borings as in taking 4 samples from the earth. I'll defer to Card on any 5 questions about borings. 6 MR. DYSART: Question asked question answered. 7 Okay. I was going to say Larry could refer to 8 boring work and tell us just how the boring it was, 9 but we're going to invite Card Smith and Jeff 10 Landmeyer to tell us about that. Y'all proceed as 11 you desire. 12 MR. SCANLON: While he's doing that, I can 13 fill another void. It kind of -- in relation to 14 what Will asked, I have sat in on a couple of those 15 meetings. It's kind of appropriate because of the 16 play on words with borings, because John Sawyer sat 17 in on one of those meetings with me. 18 After sitting through about four hours of 19 presentation, he finally broke the tension by 20 saying, I used to think that the worst job in the 21 world was being a proctologist, but now I believe 22 it's one of these model developers. 23 MR. SMITH: I'm going to be blocking somebody 24 no matter what I do. Good morning. It's been a 25 while since we've -- since I've been to an SEG 19 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 meeting, and I'm glad to be here this morning. 3 Ben mentioned earlier that this was going to 4 be a major update on the aquifer work. I don't 5 really consider it a major update. What we really 6 wanted to do was come this morning and let you know 7 that we have gotten started back on the aquifer 8 work. 9 We have been funded to get started. We 10 started, in fact, back in December, which was I'm 11 not sure was too smart because of the cold weather 12 out there, but we got started anyway. 13 We have -- we've drilled -- actually, I say 14 four borings in the river channel. Actually, it's 15 more like three and a half. I'll tell you why I 16 say that a little later. But as I said, I really 17 just wanted to come and update you on what our 18 plans are, and what we've started doing as far as 19 the continuing aquifer studies. 20 When we all think about the proposed harbor 21 deepening, this is kind of the idyllic scene, I 22 think, we have in our minds. But to me and to 23 other geologists, I think when we see this picture 24 here's what I think about. 25 What this is is really just a cartoon. I hope 20 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 you understand this is kind of a compound situation 3 of what the subsurface is like up and down the 4 river. 5 I'm just trying to show here this would be a 6 confining material here and the aquifer down here 7 below. What you have to understand is don't pay 8 any attention to the scale here, because actually 9 where this is, and closer to Downtown Savannah, 10 there would actually be a much greater thickness, 11 relatively speaking, of the confining material. 12 I just want to show you a little graphic to 13 maybe retune you to the aquifer situation. As I 14 said, we haven't presented much on it in a good 15 while, and just kind of review just a little bit 16 what the situation is with the aquifer studies and 17 subsurface. 18 So I'm trying to show here just a little maybe 19 a paleochannel that's nicked down into the 20 confining material, and show how it relates to the 21 confining material and the aquifer before. 22 Of course, the reason we have concern about 23 these paleochannels is that they effectively reduce 24 the thickness of the confining material where they 25 occur. 21 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 They are not -- they are not areas of just 3 totally transmissive material. They have hydraulic 4 conductivity themselves that is, on the average, 5 somewhat less than the confining material, but 6 there are some zones in these paleochannels that 7 are fairly well impermeable. 8 So just trying to rehash that a little bit. 9 Okay. Now, these are six basic elements that we 10 have proposed to continue the aquifer studies, what 11 were called the supplemental aquifer studies. 12 The ones in yellow and the ones checked off 13 are the ones we have already gotten started on. We 14 are combining all the existing data that we have 15 into an in-house GIS system, that has really paid 16 off well already, and trying to keep of track all 17 our borings, and things like seismic data, any type 18 of analytical data that we have are going into that 19 GIS. 20 That's really going to be a big help in trying 21 to pull it together, years and years worth of 22 information. We will be doing and have already 23 started collecting data for and setting up a 24 numeric hydraulic model of the groundwater 25 situation, and how dredging might pertain to that 22 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 system. 3 We've contracted that out, and those guys have 4 gotten started -- gotten a good start on it. The 5 first step they did was go to USGS and get all the 6 data that USGS has in this area that may be 7 applicable to that model. 8 The thing about the USGS models is that they 9 are more regional model, whereas this model we want 10 to do will be a very local model in the harbor 11 itself. 12 I know that all of you are aware of the 13 Georgia Sound Science Initiatives and the work 14 that's going on there with modelling. This is a 15 little different from that, though, in that we're 16 going to focus on the harbor only, whereas those 17 models will be a little more regional-based. 18 Okay. We're going to also conduct some 19 additional subbottom seismic surveying. We've done 20 a lot of that in the past, and we're going to do 21 some more. In fact, we're going to do it next week 22 it looks like. 23 Things are working to the point that those 24 guys are coming down. I hope the weather will 25 cooperate with us and we'll get back out there. 23 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 What we're going to want to focus on on this 3 seismic surveying is the seismic work that we've 4 done in the past is pretty much down the center 5 line of the channel. 6 And going down the center line of the channel 7 with that seismic survey, we have, of course, 8 determined basically where the paleochannels are. 9 But that's one slice down the center of the 10 channel where the paleochannels show up. When we 11 do this additional work, we want to go down the 12 sides of the channels. 13 I'll display that to you a little better in a 14 second how we're going to do that. We're going to 15 go down the sides of the channel and add some data 16 to that center line data that we have. 17 The problem with trying to get data on the 18 sides of the channel is what we found in trying to 19 do these surveys, when you get out in the dredged 20 areas, and get out on the sides where there maybe 21 some fluff or softer material that's never been 22 dredged before, sometimes you don't get good data. 23 You get just windows of data. 24 It's pretty aggravating because you see these 25 windows of data in there and it makes you wish that 24 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 you had some information to fill in the gaps. 3 Hopefully, we're going to get some good data with 4 that. 5 We're going to focus on the paleochannels. 6 We're going to focus on a specific area. I'll show 7 you that in a second. We already mentioned the 8 fact we're doing additional channel borings, and we 9 are, again, focusing those channel borings in the 10 paleochannel areas. 11 Okay. And then we're going to also, after we 12 complete the channel borings or even maybe before 13 we complete them, we'll start up on some additional 14 land drilling. 15 And we'll install some wells to have some 16 multilevel wells installed in different zones, 17 within the surficial material, surficial aquifer, 18 in the miocene, which is the confining material, 19 and down into the Floridan. We have nest wells at 20 different levels, so we can get a better handle on 21 getting some good head data and chloride data in 22 those zones. 23 Lastly, we want to determine the feasibility 24 of conducting pumping tests. We have some wells 25 that have already been installed for various 25 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 reasons. 3 We particularly have two wells that over in 4 the disposal areas, on the South Carolina side of 5 the river in Jasper County, they're right next to 6 the river that we drilled for Georgia DOT. We want 7 to use those wells as tests to determine if we can 8 -- if we think there's a feasibility of doing a 9 full aquifer test or aquitard test on the confining 10 material. 11 We're just not convinced that we can even make 12 a test like that work, but we want to see what the 13 possibilities are. I should point out that these 14 elements that you see here are basically in line 15 with the elements that -- the proposed elements 16 that came from the Aquifer Committee. 17 MR. DYSART: Card, if there are any questions 18 or comments, would you prefer to have them as you 19 go along or save them? 20 MR. SMITH: I think I'd like to save them if 21 we could, if that's okay. Is that better -- is 22 that okay for y'all? Okay. 23 This is our -- this is kind of a map view of 24 our various study elements. This area in yellow, 25 which is basically from Fields Cut out to a couple 26 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 miles out in front of Tybee, is the area we'll 3 be focusing on. From past work we know that this 4 is an area where the top of the aquifer is high. 5 The confining unit is thinner. It's always 6 the area where we have some fairly significant 7 paleochannels. All we're trying to show here, the 8 blue dots indicate locations where we have existing 9 borings or ones we've done before. 10 The red ones are where we want to go back and 11 do additional borings. You might ask why are you 12 doing another boring right beside the ones you 13 already have? 14 Here's the reason for that. We have some real 15 good data from those original borings, good cores 16 from the original borings. 17 One of the significant things we want to do 18 is go back and focus on these paleochannels and try 19 to get better samples of the paleochannel material 20 itself, the in-filling material in the 21 paleochannels, and also the confining material 22 below the paleochannels. 23 One of the significant things we want to do is 24 collect this pore water data. You probably already 25 heard us talking about it, or others talking about 27 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 the pore water data, we're hoping will give us some 3 good ideas about what's really going on down there. 4 That's why we have Jim Landmeyer here with 5 the U.S. Geological Survey in Columbia. Jim's 6 going to speak, when I get through speaking a 7 little more about the pore water work, pore water 8 analysis. 9 We're going to go back to these areas. As 10 I've said, we've already drilled here. Let's see, 11 we've drilled right there is Number 11, Number 12 12, Number 13, and Number 14. 13 Those are all in the paleochannels. We've 14 completed the initial borings in those. We've kind 15 of stopped now because we want to get this seismic 16 data in, hopefully, get some good seismic data 17 before we continue on. 18 That's what we planned to do anyway, but we 19 had a few locations that we knew we definitely had 20 the paleochannels that we wanted to look at, so we 21 went ahead and got started on those. 22 Okay. Just trying to show here, you don't 23 notice much change in that last slide except just 24 trying to show these little paleo -- not little 25 necessarily -- but show where these paleochannels 28 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 are located. 3 There are other smaller paleochannels, but 4 these are the more significant ones that cut down 5 into the confining material. 6 Now, as a matter of scale, this is about 2,000 7 feet from here to here where this paleochannel is. 8 These are not insignificant features. They are 9 fairly wide. 10 If you looked at these things in scale, of 11 course, they would be long and not very deep. They 12 do cut down to various depths in the confining 13 material, 30 or more feet in places. 14 This one right here, where we drilled this 15 latest boring on 14, this is probably the 16 paleochannel that we will want to focus on, I won't 17 say more than the others, but this is one that we 18 really want to pay attention to. 19 This appears to be a deep one with at least 20 preliminary pore water data that I'll show you in 21 a little bit, we see some interesting things 22 happening there. So okay. 23 We got started in December. As I indicated, 24 it might not have been the best time to start. I 25 can tell you that this was a day that you really 29 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 didn't want to be on the river collecting pore 3 water data. 4 The wind was coming down the river about 30 5 knots, right straight down the river, and there was 6 nowhere on that barge to get out of the wind and 7 get warmed up, except going inside. 8 Of course, the core drilling crew can't do 9 that. They have to keep going. It did warm up 10 some and got a little nicer. I just wanted to 11 show you here located down near the Coast Guard 12 Station across from Ft. Pulaski more on the South 13 Carolina side of the river, just to give you an 14 idea of how close we're drilling to the shipping 15 channel, and the relationship of where we're 16 drilling. 17 I think this was Number 13 probably where we 18 were drilling. Okay. I think you've seen this 19 before, but we're pulling these cores out. We pull 20 these cores out and this is -- it doesn't get any 21 better than this for us after we make a 10 foot 22 core run, which just means we drill down 10 feet at 23 a time and we do that and bring out 10 feet of 24 core, that's about as good as it gets for us. 25 You don't always get that much recovery. On 30 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 these borings you get really good recovery, and 3 this is some of the miocene material. Here's a gap 4 right here that was pulled out to do some pore 5 water sampling on, and also to pull samples for 6 hydraulic conductivity analysis. 7 So what we're trying to do is we have stolen 8 all of Jim Landmeyer's equipment that he takes 9 around and uses different place. 10 We kind of hijacked it and asked Jim if we 11 could put it on the barge itself. That has worked 12 out really well. Jim was nice enough to let us do 13 that, come down and get us trained, our folks 14 trained on the proper procedure for extracting the 15 pore water, and so far it seems to be working out 16 very well. 17 Okay. I think you've probably seen some of 18 these before too. All I'm trying to show here, I'm 19 trying -- just jump back for just a minute and show 20 you kind of where some of these things are going 21 on. 22 This is the section that we created earlier, 23 from the earlier work that we've done, showing out 24 here basically in front of Tybee. This section 25 goes all the way to Downtown Savannah. 31 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 This is a long way we're looking at here. The 3 vertical scale is exaggerated terribly. That's why 4 these paleochannels look so sharp and deep. Some 5 of them are fairly deep, but in true scale they 6 don't really look like that. 7 We're trying to present a lot of information 8 here over a wide area. Again, we want to focus on 9 this area here in the yellow. This is where we 10 really want to do this work. 11 Now we're looking at a section that only 12 covers this area right here. This is half of that 13 section you just saw but only in this area. Again, 14 I'm just trying to show where we have come back and 15 redrilled the latest borings that I'm talking 16 about. 17 You can tell where they are in these 18 paleochannel areas, and it puts it in perspective 19 on the map and in sections about where we're 20 working. All right. 21 Now, I've got the next slide that's a little 22 more detailed, kind of zoomed in on these borings 23 here to show you this pore water. 24 Now, I want to be very careful about what I 25 say about this slide and next one, and the reason 32 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 is this is pore water data that we've collected so 3 far as on these two borings. 4 This is not data that Jim has analyzed in the 5 lab. This is strictly the field data that we have 6 used Jim's portable refractometer, where you can 7 take a drop out of the extracted pore water that we 8 get out of the core five minutes after they come 9 out of the hole, and we squeeze it in Jim's press, 10 and put a drop of that on this little 11 refractometer, and you can look at it in the light, 12 and it gives you, as Jim says, a ball park idea 13 about the salinity that you're dealing with. 14 That has just really been a boon to us 15 to have that kind of thing in the field, where as 16 we drill these things and go down, we can watch 17 what we hope is a representative salinity of what's 18 going on down there. 19 That's what you see here. This is Number 20 14 right here at jetties. This is Number 13 21 generally across from the Coast Guard Station. 22 Now, what are we showing here? Okay. Think 23 of this boring, this is Number 13, this is Number 24 14, stray material is the paleochannel in-filling 25 material. 33 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 This is where a paleochannel has come through, 3 removed some of this miocene material -- miocene 4 material is in green, so we've got -- got about 5 -- this is about 63 from 63 to about 85. That's 6 paleochannel in-filling material. 7 And then we have confining material on down to 8 about 125 feet where we hit the top of the aquifer, 9 the top of the limestone. 10 Now, these are the pore water samples. Again, 11 they are not lab values. They are only field 12 values using Jim's refractometer. But we are 13 seeing a trend. Jim and Camille Ransom have seen 14 similar trends on work that Jim and Camille have 15 done on pore water analysis. 16 Characteristically, what you're seeing or what 17 we're seeing are the trends where you start out -- 18 Jim and Camille have done work where they started 19 taking pore water samples much higher in the 20 materials and then came down in even surficial 21 materials, and came down and showed a more 22 extensive profile. 23 Notice that our profile starts right here in 24 the paleochannel material. Well, why don't we have 25 -- I should point out this is the bottom of the 34 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 river right here. Okay. So, the problem with 3 trying to get samples above here, we're going to 4 try to samples anywhere we get a decent sample. 5 Some of these materials are not cohesive, 6 they're more like sands or silts. When you bring 7 them out of the barrel, they literally fall apart. 8 They don't lend themselves to squeezing. you 9 have to have material that lends itself to 10 squeezing. You have to have materials that are 11 kind of cohesive, have maybe a little bit of clay 12 in them so you can squeeze them. 13 They hold water and also keep the drilling mud 14 out from influencing as we drill. When you put 15 them in the press and squeeze, you can get some 16 representative results. 17 We generally try to take samples about every 18 five feet. What we're seeing is a profile where as 19 you're in the paleochannel, the in-filling material 20 -- now, let me point out this salinity value right 21 here is parts per thousand, okay, so 25 parts per 22 thousand or 25,000 parts per million, right, Jim? 23 MR. LANDMEYER: About. 24 MR. SMITH: About -- again, and Jim's right, 25 I really shouldn't even be using these numbers. I 35 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 hesitate to even put them up here. 3 What I really just want to show you is the 4 trend, not the numbers. So please, if you come 5 back to me later on and throw this up at me, I'm 6 just going to remind you this is what I said. 7 I'm also going to be less reluctant to come 8 and share with you the things we're doing as we go 9 along. We want you to know what we're doing. 10 Please don't take these things and run with 11 them. They are very preliminary. We just want to 12 show you the types of things we're finding. 13 You say yeah, I bet if you didn't have 14 something that you thought was good, you wouldn't 15 even be in here this morning to talk to us or to 16 show it to us. 17 Well, I'm going to try to not be that way. 18 We're going to show you what we find. I'm not 19 necessarily pleased about what I see here, but this 20 is the data. 21 Okay. In Number 14, okay, we have less 22 paleochannel material. We have a little more 23 confining material. Here's the top of the aquifer 24 down here. 25 What happens in this one, we start out here 36 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 right at the top of the paleochannel material. We 3 didn't get a sample in the paleochannel material 4 itself because it was -- the sample we got was just 5 really sandy. 6 Okay. So we got one right at the top of the 7 confining material here, and it was out here, and 8 so it started coming back in, as we got deeper and 9 deeper. 10 It stayed about the same here. Here we get 11 down about midway in the confining material and it 12 bumps out here. Then we get deeper and it comes 13 back, keeps coming back. It gets down to very low, 14 not even going to say zero. It gets down very low, 15 down to about 5, 10 feet above the top of the 16 limestone. 17 Okay. What does this mean? We don't know yet 18 what this means. We've seen this before. We've 19 seen a couple three times already where the values 20 decrease down to a certain zone and then they bump 21 out. 22 Okay. There's a couple of things that could 23 be going on here. We just don't know yet, but why 24 would I even bother to show you this? 25 The reason I want to show it to you is because 37 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 we really feel like this data is really 3 representative of what's going on down in the 4 miocene. 5 It's one thing to have wells, nested wells, 6 pull samples out of the wells and get data. I 7 really believe that Camille and Jim are really on 8 to something. I think they think they're on to 9 something too. 10 But we just all want to be explicit that this 11 is not definitive data, so please understand that. 12 Okay. I'm going to stop there and Jim will 13 continue on with some more background on pore water 14 analysis, and how he came about doing this, and the 15 way he analyzes samples. I guess what we could do 16 is take questions now. 17 MR. DYSART: Okay. I think that would be 18 good. First one, Allan then David. 19 MR. FLOCK: I have two questions actually. 20 One is would you explain what aquitard means, is 21 the origin of the paleochannel material, is that 22 sedimentation from the river flow, or what is the 23 origin of it? 24 MR. SMITH: That paleochannel material is 25 sedimentary material from ancient channels, rivers, 38 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 streams. 3 This is the confining material. These streams 4 and rivers, in times past, lower stands of sea 5 level have meandered back and forth. 6 They have eroded or cut down into this 7 miocene. So you've removed some of this good 8 confining material that we have and replaced it 9 with almost, probably in all cases, material that 10 has a higher hydraulic conductivity than the 11 miocene material does. 12 Aquitard is a term that's used to describe a 13 material that inhibits the flow of groundwater. It 14 doesn't necessarily stop, totally stop it, but it 15 inhibits or retards the flow of water. 16 MR. FLOCK: Thank you. 17 MR. SMITH: Okay. 18 MR. DYSART: David. 19 MR. KYLER: Card, on that graph that shows the 20 salinity, the last one you looked at -- 21 MR. SMITH: Okay, that one? 22 MR. KYLER: Yeah. If that spike on the right 23 slice, data site 14 -- profile 14, if that's 24 representative and not erroneous data, whether it's 25 accurate or not but shows a true pattern, could 39 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 that represent some feature in the geology that 3 permits greater transmissivity? 4 MR. SMITH: Certainly, should could. 5 MR. KYLER: If that's the case, what does that 6 suggest about the risks of deepening? 7 MR. SMITH: Let me tell you what, in this zone 8 right here, David, the core there is markedly 9 sandier than it is above and below. 10 That's one of the first things we noticed when 11 we got the results by the refractometer, went back 12 and looked at the core again, cleaned the core up 13 a little bit so we could look at it. 14 It was markedly sandier in that area. So I 15 think it probably does have something to do with 16 this is a zone that has a higher hydraulic 17 conductivity, and somehow that may have something 18 to do with this bump that we've got here. 19 Here's what one thought may be, okay. You 20 have to remember, when you go out and drill these 21 borings, if everything is perfect where we want 22 to drill is right smack in the middle of the 23 channel, right exactly where we've got all that 24 good seismic data, but it's just something -- it's 25 very hard to do you because you cannot shut down 40 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 shipping traffic to go out there and spend three or 3 four days drilling one of these holes in the middle 4 of the channel. 5 We have to compromise a little bit and slide 6 over, put these borings over where we can get them. 7 We try to get them as close as we can, and 8 sometimes it's pretty hard to do. 9 What I'm getting at is wherever we end up 10 drilling this boring, and what we're trying to do 11 here is go back to the seismic data and pick the 12 deepest place on the seismic data in the 13 paleochannel, the deepest part of the paleochannel 14 to do these borings. 15 This is why we want to get more seismic data 16 rather than have one line, we want to have lines 17 on the side where we have more 3D representation 18 of what the channels do. 19 But David, if we drill maybe on the side 20 somewhere in an area and we're drilling down here 21 and we encounter paleochannel material here and we 22 have miocene here, well, what if 100 or 200 feet 23 or whatever feet over there's the same paleochannel 24 has cut down deeper, okay maybe, just maybe 25 there's a possibility because that paleochannel cut 41 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 down deeper, this zone here may be kind of exposed 3 or open to more permeable paleochannel material. 4 Maybe saltwater is finding a route to get in 5 there. I don't really know. It's just things we 6 thought about while we're out there. Your point is 7 well-taken. 8 MR. KYLER: The subtext of my question was, to 9 what extent, if any, does this type of feature 10 that's spiking the salinity suggest a higher risk 11 than would be the case without that spike? 12 MR. SMITH: I don't know the answer to that, 13 David, I really don't. 14 MR. KYLER: A follow-up question, different 15 question altogether, at its maximum, to what extent 16 do these paleochannels decrease the thickness of 17 the confining layer, and how much is left of the 18 confining layer because of it? 19 MR. SMITH: Okay. Well, we know from previous 20 work that in this area right here, as I said, this 21 is the area that we have the greatest concern, 22 right here from like the Coast Guard Station out to 23 the end of the jetties. 24 The reason is -- actually, this paleochannel 25 right here is a significant one too. This one 42 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 right here is one of the ones that we have been 3 kind of keying on. 4 Okay. It has reduced -- this paleochannel has 5 cut about, as I remember, about 30 feet -- about 30 6 feet -- it's removed about 30 feet of confining 7 material. 8 So what you have left, David, is about 40 9 feet or so, as near as we can tell with the work so 10 far, 40 feet of the confining material. 11 So here's the thing, that doesn't mean in that 12 paleochannel area that for half a mile it's reduced 13 the thickness of the miocene. This paleochannel is 14 kind of all over the place from what we've seen 15 from seismic and drilling. 16 So they have cut down to different levels at 17 different locations. They're not just these nice, 18 clean features across there. Okay. 19 MR. KYLER: Is there any sort of typical 20 comparison of the conductivity ratios between the 21 paleochannel material and the confining layer 22 material? 23 MR. SMITH: There are. We've got the numbers 24 on that in the first report we did, and I don't 25 have -- I've got the book over there. Later, if 43 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 you want to look, I'll be glad to show it to you. 3 As I said earlier, they are definitely more 4 permeable than the confining material. 5 MR. DYSART: Bob. 6 MR. SCANLON: Card, the previous borings, was 7 there any similar data collected, any pore water 8 data taken in the previous borings? 9 MR. SMITH: No. I wish there has been, but 10 Jim and Camille got started on this. This was 11 about the same time that we got started on the 12 Aquifer Committee and everything. 13 We had already done a lot of this work, so no, 14 unfortunately they're not. But as I said, a lot of 15 the focus of what we're doing now is not just pore 16 water. 17 We're not just depending on that for 18 everything. We're hoping that that data will be 19 representative and tell us more about what's going 20 on. 21 Let me point out before I forget, I brought in 22 some of the core this morning too that's from -- 23 what is it -- Number 12, Number 11. And so if you 24 want, you may have already seen it before, this is 25 fairly fresh bore that's still wet. 44 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 You can get a good idea of what the miocene 3 material really looks like and what the aquifer, 4 the limestone looks like. When we get through 5 if you want to come up anytime, you're welcome to 6 look at that. 7 MR. DYSART: Will 8 MR. BERSON: Judging by your elevation, is it 9 fair to characterize this as having the Savannah 10 as roughly an east west flow, these paleochannels 11 are running roughly north south? 12 MR. SMITH: I'll tell you, Will, what we've 13 done with these sections is we've terribly biased 14 your thinking about the way it's represented. 15 All we can do with these things so far is 16 represent them as you see on the slides in the 17 seismic mode, but they, most assuredly, don't cut 18 -- there it is. 19 They don't cut straight across. I mean, you 20 know, that's just -- they do appear to have some 21 sort of north south orientation maybe but, you 22 know, like this one here that's a half a mile, you 23 know, it may come down behind and go like this or 24 something. 25 We do know from the work Dr. Henry has done in 45 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 the past that there are a tremendous amount of 3 paleochannels on the backside of Tybee. He has 4 some seismic data that this area is coalescing into 5 each other, these paleochannels. 6 That could be an extension of this area right 7 here. Now, I should point out too that other work 8 that Dr. Henry has done has shown that there is an 9 area, as you probably know, this is part of the 10 Georgia Sound Science work, there is an area where 11 the ancient Savannah River and the Cooper River, I 12 guess, that comes out of Calibogue here, somewhere 13 offshore they came together. 14 There's a significant area of kind of erosion, 15 it appears, at the top of the miocene out here, 16 kind of a super paleochannel maybe where these 17 two came together. We're dealing with these, you 18 know, predominantly in this area right here. 19 MR. DYSART: Larry. 20 MR. KEEGAN: Card, on the later slide where 21 you have the paleochannel represented, it's a 22 little hard from this distance, can you orient me a 23 little bit and show me where the existing channel 24 is, the elevation on those? 25 MR. SMITH: Yeah. Get someplace I won't get 46 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 myself in trouble now. Basically, Larry, this is 3 the bottom of the channel, of course. 4 Here's what you have to understand about these 5 borings. This is a section taking -- taken along 6 these borings. These borings are not in the center 7 line of the channel. Okay. I wish they could be 8 but they're not. 9 So what will happen, if these borings -- in 10 other words, what we've done is kind of project to 11 this line. These borings are on the side of the 12 channel. 13 We projected this line out, and of course, 14 we've projected the borings kind of on the seismic 15 data or vice versa. But they don't always match up 16 exactly. 17 In other words, we drill on the side. We 18 don't always encounter the bottom of the 19 paleochannel where the seismic data says it is. 20 That's because we're offset several hundred feet 21 sometimes from that. 22 MR. KEEGAN: Right. 23 MR. SMITH: Does that answer your question? 24 MR. KEEGAN: I was looking for the 42 feet on 25 your elevation. 47 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 MR. SMITH: Okay. I think that's it right 3 there, that dash line. Okay. Again, though, this 4 is the profile that you are looking at and is not 5 down the center line. 6 That is 42 feet, I think this is 44 feet. 7 When I originally did this section, I was trying to 8 show that one thing. So one thing that brings to 9 mind is that there are some areas out in the, you 10 know, in the channel itself that are certainly 11 deeper than they have ever been dredge to, just 12 from natural scouring. 13 This place in the jetties right here, as I 14 remember, there's a pretty good area there in that 15 area where there's a natural scour about 50 feet 16 deep. That just happens to be right on top of our 17 paleochannel area there too. 18 MR. KEEGAN: Thanks. 19 MR. DYSART: Okay. Judy. 20 MS. JENNINGS: I'm just curious, you mentioned 21 that some of the -- in some of the borings, the 22 material wasn't consistent enough to get a water 23 sample from. 24 MR. SMITH: Right, right. 25 MS. JENNINGS: It seems to me like all these 48 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 years, the motion back and forth, that the borings 3 would be about the same as -- one would be about 4 the same as the other, but they're not and why is 5 that? 6 MR. SMITH: You mean why don't we see the same 7 thing in every boring? 8 MS. JENNINGS: Right. 9 MR. SMITH: Well, I guess that's just nature. 10 I mean, everyone of them has been in a little bit 11 different micro environment, if I understand your 12 question correctly. 13 MS. JENNINGS: Some don't have any consistency 14 and some do. 15 MR. SMITH: Well, the main thing there, Judy, 16 is the miocene material, the confining material in 17 the two shades of green, that material is almost, 18 to me, unbelievably consistent. 19 When you core it, we've got young folks out 20 there working now that have never seen the miocene 21 before now, they have drilled a few holes and they 22 can spot it, yup, we're in the miocene. 23 They've become experts. When you see it over 24 and over, you realize what it looks like. It is 25 very consistent. The paleochannel material may 49 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 vary from sand, even pea gravel to silty sand, all 3 these variations, and it's because of the way 4 rivers work, you know, the way currents work in 5 rivers. 6 Usually, when we think of lower velocity 7 currents or gentler streams, we think of more fine 8 grain materials. High velocity streams or major 9 rivers cobbles, big gravel, things like that. 10 So it's the big contrast that you see in this 11 material, other than the contrast between the 12 confining material and the limestone, which you can 13 come see in the box up here, is the other big 14 contrast between the paleochannels and the 15 confining material. 16 The confining material is a fairly consistent 17 material, kind of like modelling clay, kind of 18 moldable, kind of clay, doesn't have a lot of play. 19 It would probably fool you. You think it has 20 a lot more clay than it does, probably about 10, 21 15% clay is generally what we see. 22 This material in the paleochannel is looser. 23 A lot of times it will have zones or seams of more 24 clay material in it. But when we core it, some of 25 the material is so incohesive, when you open the 50 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 barrel it just flows out, instead of having to pull 3 it out. 4 That material is tough to sample. It's 5 impossible to get a sample you can do pore water 6 analysis on. 7 MS. JENNINGS: Maybe is it possible that they 8 reflect the historical shoaling patterns in the 9 river? 10 MR. SMITH: Oh sure. That's what this is all 11 about. These are rivers, the precursor of the 12 Savannah River, or some lesser stream, that is on 13 its way to the coast, meandered back and forth 14 across here. 15 And this present day channel has just now cut 16 down in an area and, you know, gone right over the 17 top of some of these old channels. That's what 18 happened. 19 Yeah, it's a good point. You've got -- just 20 like we talk about all the different structure in 21 these type of things, point bars. There's a whole 22 science of just studying the geomorphic features in 23 streams and rivers. 24 Those are the things that produce the 25 materials that we're looking at inside these 51 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 paleochannels. 3 MR. DYSART: John Robinette, please. 4 MR. ROBINETTE: Card, you said you got field 5 results. You'll be taking some of the core samples 6 into the lab. 7 MR. SMITH: I should have made a better point 8 of that, John. What we've done is we extract the 9 pore water sample, according to Jim's procedure. 10 What did we end up what getting -- two to five 11 mils of sample in a little vial. So you don't get 12 a lot. The amazing thing is you take a core, 13 sometimes by the time you trim off the outside and 14 look at the inside, it looks fairly dry. 15 When you squeeze it, drops of water come out. 16 You get two to five milliliters. We just take a 17 drop or so of that in the field analysis with the 18 refractometer, and we seal the other up and send it 19 to Jim for him to analyze in the lab. Jim gets it 20 down to basically the part per million level 21 MR. LANDMEYER: Part per billion. 22 MR. SMITH: Okay. That will do. 23 MR. ROBINETTE: You said you didn't get core 24 samples from the center of the channel because of 25 shipping? 52 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 MR. SMITH: That's right. 3 MR. ROBINETTE: Would you expect a different 4 result if you did get the core from the center of 5 the channel? 6 MR. SMITH: It may be a little different, but 7 I think the data we're getting is -- if it 8 represents what we think it does, it will be 9 representative. 10 Where we're drilling, as I pointed out, is on 11 the edge of the existing channel. When we get 12 through doing the additional seismic work, that's 13 one thing we need that for, as I pointed out 14 earlier, we need to get a better handle on the 15 attitude of the paleochannels and how they cross 16 the present navigation channel. Hopefully, we'll 17 have that after that. I think it will still be 18 representative. 19 MR. ROBINETTE: Did the last deepening 20 actually go into the some of confining layer? 21 MR. SMITH: Probably not the last one, some 22 before in some areas, because in some areas the 23 paleochannel -- I mean the confining material was 24 up high enough, yeah, it's undoubtedly been cut 25 down into in some areas. 53 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 MR. ROBINETTE: Have you got borings where it 3 was cut down from those places where the confining 4 area was removed? 5 MR. SMITH: What happened is we've got borings 6 that go back 20, 30, 40 years, okay, but -- so we 7 can use those borings where we have those to tell 8 well, where was the top of the confining material 9 before we started dredging. 10 But of course, trying to -- we go back and 11 look at those borings, when you go back and look at 12 some of the borings now, a good bit of the material 13 of the boring has been removed. 14 That boring is not really representative of 15 what's going on there. This is one thing we want 16 to take a look at. I mentioned the GIS. 17 You go back in the old data we have to try to 18 compile all this, and see if there's any way that 19 we can determine, over a certain period of years, 20 removing miocene, you know, is there any kind of 21 trend that we see? 22 I know what's going to happen. I've already 23 looked at some of the data. It's going to be 24 real spotty data. You're going to have good data 25 in different reaches of the river, and you're going 54 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 to have these big gaps where you don't know 3 anything. 4 You have these small areas where have pretty 5 good data, pretty good borings, but we're going to 6 try to pull some of that together and just see what 7 it looks like. 8 MR. ROBINETTE: The salinity data on the slide 9 you had after this one, yeah, this salinity comes 10 to zero there right above the aquifer? 11 MR. SMITH: That's right. 12 MR. ROBINETTE: If we removed some of that 13 confining layer, would you expect that salinity 14 peak there to shift, go down, move? 15 MR. SMITH: Let me be very candid about this. 16 If we come up here and we remove -- all right. 17 Paleochannel is one thing. Okay. 18 If we came up and removed one foot of 19 confining material, nobody can deny that that is 20 going to change the hydraulics of what's going on 21 here. 22 Okay. What it is going to do down here and 23 when, I don't know. I don't think there's anybody 24 that does, but that's part of the reason we want to 25 do the model. 55 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 We want to run some of the scenarios in the 3 model and see what the model says about these 4 things, about changing the rate of pumping in 5 Savannah, okay, what kind of effect might that have 6 on what's going on out here? 7 What we really hope to be able to do is if 8 these are representative values and they turn out 9 to be representative, we would like to focus on 10 these values in the model, and see if the model can 11 reproduce a scenario that's similar to this, 12 somewhat similar to it, and then give us an idea, 13 can we go from there and then try other scenarios. 14 That's really what we want. I'm really less 15 interested in the end product of what the model 16 shows than I am about the what if thing we can do 17 with the model to help us. Hopefully, we can get 18 some good information from the model. I'm 19 convinced that we will. 20 MR. ROBINETTE: Haven't there been some places 21 where the confining layer -- where they dug in that 22 confining layer and it has caused saltwater 23 intrusion? 24 MR. SMITH: Well, I don't know how to answer 25 that. I don't know -- like where? I mean, can you 56 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 give me an example. I don't -- 3 MR. ROBINETTE: I'm asking, has this happened 4 before, is there a precedent we can look at? 5 MR. SMITH: Here's the thing. This is why -- 6 this is why I'm kind of fired up about pore water 7 data no matter what it shows, is that we're hoping 8 that this is really representative of the pore 9 water that's contained in here, and actually 10 representative of what's trying to go down to 11 the aquifer. 12 But this data is rare. We're getting some of 13 this data, the only data that exists like this, 14 other than what Jim and Camille have done in 15 surrounding areas. 16 So we're -- that's why we really want to try 17 to get this data. We hope it is going to be very 18 useful. 19 MR. ROBINETTE: It's an excellent tool, 20 there's no denying that. 21 MR. SMITH: We think it's extremely 22 excellent. 23 MR. ROBINETTE: It's the best picture of 24 what's happening out there. 25 MR. SMITH: We're hoping it is, but I still 57 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 have to quantify, there are things going on here I 3 can't explain, none of us can explain. 4 When it is all over, we still may not be able 5 to explain it. Okay. But when you see this trend 6 right here, and Jim's going to show you a couple 7 more later, or something like this over and over, 8 something's going on, when you see things repeating 9 themselves like that, there's something to this 10 data. 11 But exactly what's going on, and exactly the 12 mechanism that's going on, this is way too early to 13 get into that. It's fun to think about it. I 14 usually get myself in trouble thinking like that. 15 MR. ROBINETTE: There's a lot of wells that 16 have gone to saltwater -- 17 MR. SMITH: Okay. That's true. 18 MR. ROBINETTE: -- overnight, and you know the 19 primary explanation, gosh, we're pumping so much 20 out of the aquifer the flow is down instead of up, 21 all that kind of stuff. 22 There are some of those areas that are close 23 to the intercoastal waterway where there's a lot of 24 dredging, that kind of thing. 25 MR. SMITH: And there's some areas of the 58 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 intercoastal with scour holes 60 feet deep or more, 3 one particularly over near Isle of Hope. You see a 4 scour hole that deep, you just think miocene 5 because that one has really whacked down in the 6 miocene. 7 It's a real local thing. I'll tell you what I 8 think happens, you may not care or not, but I think 9 what happens in deep scour areas is, and this may 10 be plainly evident to smarter folks, but these are 11 paleochannels, you know, and the material in there 12 is less cohesive. 13 So wherever a present stream or a present 14 river comes along and really gets some high 15 velocity current going, it can scour that old 16 paleochannel material out a lot easier than the 17 paleochannel material. 18 I mean that's -- I think that's why you've got 19 some of these areas -- Dr. Henry has found some 20 really deep scour holes. But John, what you are 21 bringing up about wells being salty, okay, those 22 are, for the most part as far as I know, wells in 23 Floridan, and for the most part they're over toward 24 Hilton Head, okay, and there are other things going 25 on over there. 59 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 It doesn't mean that those other things, in 3 the big picture, aren't just another element to 4 this whole thing. Okay. I mean, we're talking 5 about dredging. We've got Camille Ransom's 6 situation over here in South Carolina where he's 7 got an area over here where he's got kind of a 8 saltwater front coming this way. Again, one of 9 those big driving forces is pumping in Savannah. 10 MR. ROBINETTE: Sounds like that's the cure to 11 our problem, quit putting paper mills on the river. 12 MR. SMITH: I'm not going there, but it has a 13 huge effect. It really does. It has an effect. 14 MR. DYSART: If I might add, Chris has 15 arrived. What I would like to do is offer a 16 suggestion that we take a break now, and that Chris 17 visit with Card, and kind of get brought up to 18 speed kind of fast, then we will continue. Any 19 objection to that? 20 DR. DAILY: I have a question -- can I ask a 21 question? 22 MR. DYSART: We've got a lot of questions. 23 We're going to continue the questions after the 24 break. Okay. Let's take a 10 minute break. 25 (Short Break) 60 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 MR. DYSART: Okay. We'll call the SEG meeting 3 back to order, and Chris has arrived. Would you 4 introduce yourself for the record, Chris, indicate 5 who you are representing. 6 MR. SCHUBERTH: I'm Chris Schuberth, and I'm 7 representing the Chatham Environmental Forum, and 8 just since Ben so kindly gave me the floor, I also 9 serve to chair the Aquifer Committee, which was 10 created, I don't know, five years ago maybe, 11 sometime in that sense. 12 Out of that Aquifer Committee, there developed 13 a working group, as it was officially known, and 14 the working group worked for about a year, year and 15 a half, and Jim Reichard, who is here this morning, 16 normally doesn't attend these SEG meetings. He was 17 an active participant of the working group. 18 I would like to say, for the record, that this 19 is, I think, a very important point that we're at 20 in the total SEG process, which has gone on for a 21 good many number of years. 22 And about a year and a half or so ago, the 23 working group concluded their work, made a series 24 of recommendations, which went forward, and Doug 25 Plachy, in all of the subsequent meetings that we 61 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 have had, always gave us an update of where those 3 recommendations stood in terms of the bigger 4 picture. 5 Jim, this morning, sacrificed to come here. 6 He has a class and he got someone to cover his 7 class. So he drove down from Statesboro. And I 8 had a class, and nobody wanted to cover my class, 9 so I came in a little bit late. Anyhow, I just 10 want to enter these comments into the record. 11 MR. DYSART: I would just state for the record 12 Chris had requested that we have this presentation 13 after he arrived. 14 We went ahead and, during the break, Chris was 15 fully briefed in, in my understanding, by Card 16 Smith on the presentation to this point. And is 17 that to your satisfaction, Chris? 18 MR. SCHUBERTH: Yes, yes, everything's great. 19 MR. DYSART: What I would like to do now is 20 continue with the questions and discussion. I'll 21 try to keep up. Bill Farmer, I think, had his card 22 up next. 23 MR. FARMER: I covered my question during the 24 break, and it basically was if one or two or a few 25 high risk areas were identified, what could be done 62 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 about it. 3 You know, you scrape it out and put something 4 in its place. You indicated that there are people 5 at the Corps that are figuring on that as we speak, 6 I guess. 7 MR. SMITH: Let me just qualify that. There 8 are people that think about those things, because 9 we have a house of engineers. They love to think 10 about how something like that might be 11 accomplished. 12 Please don't think we are in the process of 13 nearing a solution to something like that, but it's 14 a good question. It's one we've heard before. 15 MR. DYSART: Will, I think you had a 16 follow-up. 17 MR. BERSON: It looks, and it's a little hard 18 to tell with the scale on the graphic, but it looks 19 as if the paleochannels are roughly the same depth, 20 plus or minus. I mean there are not orders of 21 magnitude different. Is that coincidence or -- 22 MR. SMITH: Well, I suppose it's as much 23 coincidence as anything, Will. It's -- I don't 24 think I read anything more than that into it. 25 You know, of course, the scale is not exact on 63 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 there. But yeah, when you look at them, they 3 basically cut down, you know, at somewhat similar 4 depths, at least in these three here. 5 MR. BERSON: What is that roughly? It's very 6 hard to tell from my seat. 7 MR. SMITH: What depth is it, it's about 30 8 feet. This one here, the reason it caught our eye 9 early on in the early work was that, as near as we 10 can tell, this one is the only one maybe -- we used 11 to talk about miocene A, this was a lighter color, 12 and miocene B. 13 That was just strictly a way of designating 14 the upper miocene and lower miocene. There's some 15 characteristic things that go on the contact. 16 There's a gamma kick you always see at that zone. 17 You can tell where you are in a boring that 18 way. But this is one of the only ones that we 19 thought may have actually cut down into B, and that 20 doesn't mean it cut tremendously deeper than any 21 others. 22 The thing about it is you notice here B is 23 higher. This zone is thicker and higher in this 24 area, so yeah, it had a better chance to cut down 25 into it. 64 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 The puzzling thing is this, 3 characteristically, the contact between A and B 4 miocene there's hard zone. Sometimes it's two or 5 three feet of just really hard limestone, a lot 6 like what you see in the rock over here. 7 Other times it's just a real thin layer of 8 calcareous zone that is kind of cemented, and it's 9 kind of easy to pick out of the core. That zone, 10 you know, is going to be more resistant wherever it 11 has any thickness. 12 You know, I guess a question is, does that 13 zone -- is it possible it may act as any kind of 14 internal barrier within the confining material for 15 saltwater intrusion? 16 Maybe it's an enhancer. Maybe it's not a 17 barrier in some places. I don't know. This one 18 was puzzling because it appeared to have cut down 19 to B a little bit. 20 MR. DYSART: Rob Mikell. 21 MR. MIKELL: I was going to ask if the 22 paleochannels can get deeper? You know, you've 23 already mentioned scour, but can they get deeper as 24 a result of cracks or hydrostatic pressure or 25 something like that? 65 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 MR. SMITH: Well, I don't think we envision 3 these paleochannels getting any deeper. I just 4 don't see that happening. 5 MR. MIKELL: Not necessarily these, has any of 6 the research showed any type of paleochannel 7 getting deeper? 8 MR. SMITH: Yes, sir. We mentioned some 9 earlier. Well, I should back up. There are some 10 that have been found, in seismic data, and if you 11 get on the rivers very much and watch your 12 fathometer, you see some of these, like 13 particularly the one over near Isle of Hope on the 14 curve there, and as I remember, it's about 60 feet 15 deep. 16 That's how deep it is to the bottom there. 17 It's just scoured out. Well, if that's the case, 18 that's more than likely in a paleochannel area 19 that's scoured out. You know, the current channel 20 and the current current has scoured out that area, 21 but I don't doubt at all that there are probably 22 some places that the paleochannels is cut deeper. 23 Maybe not a lot deeper because, you know, it 24 probably has a lot to do what the stand of sea 25 level was at that time, you know, how bad these 66 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 rivers wanted to get to the ocean, how hard were 3 they headed that way, how much were they cutting 4 down based on where sea level was. 5 MR. DYSART: Jim. 6 MR. REICHARD: Card, go to your profile real 7 quick. I just want to say for the benefit of the 8 non-scientists here, the hydraulics have always 9 told us, since we have a cone of depression, it 10 should be a downwards movement of saltwater through 11 the aquitard. 12 This preliminary data here is indicating that. 13 So when I look at this, I look at this very slow 14 saltwater intrusion. If you had a complete breach, 15 like a paleochannel, a very large one like Port 16 Royal, we have a very rapid influx because there is 17 no protection. 18 So the aquitard here is slowing this down. I 19 think the real question, of course, is the 20 paleochannels are a preferential place where the 21 saltwater migrates quicker. 22 The ultimate question for this group is 23 removing some of that material from the top of the 24 paleochannel, how much will that accelerate? 25 That's what the follow-up work for the Aquifer 67 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 Committee has recommended to done for the modelling 3 to see -- I don't know if Jim will be able to tell 4 us whether any of his data will tell us what the 5 migration rate of this has been. 6 That will be, obviously, important for future 7 predictions on how this may migrate and what 8 removing some of the aquitard material will be. I 9 just wanted to paint that bigger picture for 10 everybody. 11 MR. SMITH: That is one of the obvious things 12 we would love to be able determine, as Jim points 13 out. One of the goals, if this data turns out to 14 be legitimate data, a goal would be to determine by 15 having this data and knowing about 60 or so years 16 ago when everything reversed, when the water in the 17 aquifer was artesian and trying to come out, we had 18 40 or 50 feet of head of water above land surveys 19 in this area, and then we started pumping. 20 Sixty or so years later, well, it reversed 21 about 60 years or so ago. We reversed. Instead of 22 water trying to come out, it's trying to pull 23 saltwater down now. The gradient is downward 24 instead of upward. 25 So it would be very interesting and very 68 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 useful if we said that okay, in this period -- in 3 this span right here, if this occurred over a 4 period of 60 years, thereabouts, and we had this 5 kind of data, what will that tell us, as Jim says, 6 about the vertical hydraulic conductivity or the 7 vertical velocity that saltwater has trying to go 8 this miocene material, confining material. 9 MR. FARMER: Wouldn't you get the same chart 10 regardless of whether the water is going up or the 11 saltwater is going down? 12 MR. SMITH: Well, there has been a lot of talk 13 about that kind of thing. There are folks that 14 have, I think, wondered well, what if you had 15 salinity that was naturally in the miocene when it 16 was laying down, and then you had -- after that you 17 had freshwater artesian freshwater out of the 18 aquifer trying to come up, and it did come up 19 trying to work its way up through here, is this 20 incomplete flushing of that? 21 Is this a remnant of salinity that was in this 22 material anyway? And what we see, you know, is not 23 all the profiles look like this, but anyway -- 24 MR. FARMER: Answer is maybe, you get the same 25 chart coming or going. 69 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 MR. SMITH: I need to think more about that, 3 Bill, I hadn't thought too much about that 4 scenario, but really, I really think this data is 5 going to turn out to be some decent data. I hope 6 it will, regardless of what it shows. 7 MR. DYSART: Dr. Daily, you have a comment? 8 DR. DAILY: Yes, I was going to ask what the 9 aquitard test is that you mentioned? 10 MR. SMITH: That's a good question, see if I 11 can represent it properly. Okay. In an aquitard 12 test, what we would basically try to do -- we would 13 call this the aquitard, the confining material, the 14 miocene material. 15 We would either use an existing well or drill 16 a well into the limestone, pump horrendous amounts 17 of water out of the limestone -- to be able to pump 18 large amounts of water out of the limestone. 19 We would also have some wells drilled at 20 varying depths into the confining material. And by 21 pumping large amounts of water out of the 22 limestone, you would hope to influence water levels 23 in these various wells in the confining material, 24 and by doing that, being able to come up with some 25 more or less in situ properties for hydraulic 70 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 conductivity of this material. 3 If that makes any sense to you -- I probably 4 didn't do a good job of explaining that, but it's a 5 means of estimating in place the hydraulic 6 conductivity of this confining material, as opposed 7 to taking samples like we're taking now. 8 When we take each one of the core samples, we 9 also take a companion sample that's sent to the lab 10 and have a lab permeability run on it. 11 We've done a lot of those in the past. Others 12 have too. There have been some question about how 13 good that data is, how realistic that data is. The 14 reason we would be entertaining those in trying to 15 do an aquitard test is to try to get in place or in 16 situ data that may be more representative of the 17 vertical hydraulic conductivity in the confining 18 material. 19 MR. DYSART: Morgan. 20 MR. REES: Yes. Card, can you tell me what 21 the horizontal and vertical scale distortion is on 22 that? 23 MR. SMITH: Morgan, I should remember. I 24 don't have the scale. I should have left it on 25 there. I clipped it off. 71 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 The vertical exaggeration is awful. I mean, 3 I'll tell you, I really regret showing this like 4 this and have for quite a while. 5 MR. REES: It just might be helpful for the 6 non-geologists to understand, in realty, it looks 7 dramatically different from that. 8 MR. SMITH: Yeah. Great risk -- let me -- 9 what I wanted to do, if I were in a different mode, 10 I would take this graphic and squeeze it is up, way 11 up. 12 Then you see things more in a more realistic 13 perspective. You see this long, linear stretch of 14 section, and you see borings that are about this 15 deep, and paleochannels that are about like this. 16 They don't look so significant then. That's 17 where they're in actual perspective or actual 18 scale. In case -- you know, we talked about this 19 scale exaggeration, but really what we've done is 20 try to show some of the features. 21 We've stretched this thing terribly in this 22 direction, literally stretched it. So that's why 23 the paleochannels look so sharp. In realty, these 24 paleochannels, in a more normal scale, they might 25 come to here, come way down like this, cutting down 72 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 like this. 3 I said this one here is 2,000 feet, almost 4 half a mile, so put those things back in 5 perspective, they look a lot different. That's a 6 good point. 7 MR. DYSART: Keith Parsons, please. 8 MR. PARSONS: Two questions I guess. What's 9 the average depth of the confining layer? 10 MR. SMITH: The average department of the 11 confining layer, do you mean -- 12 MR. PARSONS: Of the miocene layers. 13 MR. SMITH: Do you mean the average depth to 14 the top of the confining layer? 15 MR. PARSONS: No, the confining layer down to 16 the Floridan Aquifer. 17 MR. SCHUBERTH: Thickness. 18 MR. SMITH: That varies. I don't know what 19 the average is. I haven't really ever -- see, what 20 happens, you're out here off of Tybee here, you're 21 downtown here at the other end of the section. 22 What happens is here's the top of the aquifer 23 here, it's high out in the jetties in Tybee. Then 24 as you come to town it gets lower and lower. As a 25 consequence, the confining material is thicker and 73 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 thicker as you come in town, whereas in town you 3 may have 180 feet or so of this confining material. 4 Out here you may have, well, without a 5 paleochannel, you may have 70 or so feet, so it's a 6 drastic difference in the thickness. 7 MR. PARSONS: Okay. You answered my question. 8 The second question, are there other -- other than 9 the paleochannels, are there other inconsistencies 10 in the confining layer that could be conduits for 11 intrusion? 12 MR. SMITH: There are, undoubtedly, zones in 13 the confining material. Earlier I spoke that the 14 confining material, when you look at it day after 15 day when you are drilling it, it is fairly -- more 16 than fairly consistent material. 17 But within that, it has its own little 18 environments where you have more sandy material, 19 more clay material, and it just varies all over the 20 place. 21 You know, I mean there are -- at one time, the 22 real concern years ago that we had about dredging 23 was not the Floridan Aquifer. It was the upper 24 aquifer called the two zones -- called the Upper 25 and Lower Brunswick Aquifer. 74 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 Okay, but what we found, what those aquifers 3 would be, they would just be sand zones, more 4 conductive sand zones within the miocene. What we 5 found is they don't really exist this far up. 6 Down towards Brunswick, they are viable 7 aquifers. You come up this way, they kind of pinch 8 out, phase out. You don't really see them. We see 9 probably remnants of them or upgrades, kind of 10 extensions where they have kind of thin sand zones 11 where they have played out up this way. 12 Yes, I mean there are zones that are, that are 13 certainly more sandy and more conductive, and 14 that's why we try to get these lab permeability 15 values. 16 They can be good, relative indicators of 17 within a bore hole, at least, of changes in 18 hydraulic conductivity from zone to zone. We use 19 those. 20 MR. PARSONS: Are y'all actively doing 21 aquitard tests out there? 22 MR. SMITH: No, no. We haven't done any 23 aquitard test yet. 24 MR. PARSONS: That would seem to me to give 25 y'all a handle on other inconsistencies, other than 75 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 the -- 3 MR. SMITH: Well, right on the surface it 4 would seem to be the answer, but there are some 5 problems with it. And one of the problems is we 6 don't know if we can pump enough water out of the 7 Floridan to cause the effects that we need to cause 8 up in the miocene. 9 The miocene, relative to the Floridan, is so 10 much more impermeable that, you know, we're talking 11 orders of magnitude difference. So the horizontal 12 flow or the flow that would come to your well that 13 you are pumping is tremendous, as opposed to what 14 could be pulled down in that local area from 15 pumping in the Floridan. 16 So I'll tell you this, there was a pump test 17 done out on Tybee Island years ago, and it stirred 18 up a lot of talk, because the premise was it was a 19 test somewhat like what we're talking about where 20 they pumped the Floridan, and had some monitoring 21 wells in, and the wells were supposed to be in the 22 miocene. 23 What the purpose was to try and determine 24 were these miocene aquifers there, and would they 25 be productive zones for getting water of them. 76 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 That would be nice to have that other upper aquifer 3 we could use for more domestic-type uses. It might 4 be a source of water. 5 When the results came in from the tests, there 6 were flows that were really high. They said, well, 7 the flows were so high in those zones in the 8 miocene, it's almost like Floridan. 9 Everybody is saying man, that's weird. Why 10 would that be like that? Then there was talk about 11 it must be one of those paleochannels, something 12 like that. 13 Well, we started doing more drilling out 14 there. We did drilling out in the river off the 15 end of Tybee. We found out what the problem was 16 that the wells weren't where they thought they 17 were. 18 The pumping well was sure enough in the 19 Floridan, and so were the monitoring wells, even 20 though they were planned to be up in the miocene. 21 So they turned the pump on and whamo, those wells 22 responded like you would expect them to, just like 23 the Floridan, because they were in the Floridan. 24 MR. DYSART: Chris. 25 MR. SCHUBERTH: I have two questions, one to 77 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 follow-up on what Keith just asked in terms of 3 irregularity, any evidence of joints or fracture 4 systems of any type that's patterned in there, 5 because that was one of the comments that had 6 brought us sort of to this juncture a while back, 7 that there's evidence what is the aquitard has 8 joined it elsewhere. 9 MR. SMITH: No, Chris, we haven't seen any 10 evidence -- we still haven't seen any evidence of 11 anything like that. 12 MR. SCHUBERTH: Let me go to the 13 paleochannels. The paleochannel is fully in-filled 14 with newer sediments? 15 MR. SMITH: Is fully in-filled -- 16 MR. SCHUBERTH: Well, the channel was 17 originally cut during the pleistocene offshore. 18 The sediments came back in and filled in the 19 channel. 20 The sediments inside the channel, whatever the 21 depth, have different characteristics than the 22 original materials that the channel was cut in. 23 Are these paleochannels, basically, buried -- 24 fully buried stream channels like you would get the 25 definition out of a glossary? 78 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 MR. SMITH: Yeah. They seem to be other than 3 where they're fully buried, other than where say in 4 this area of the jetties where you have, you know, 5 present day scour that has uncovered them more. 6 MR. SCHUBERTH: They basically have been 7 successfully in-filled with newer sediments? 8 MR. SMITH: Right. They're filled with 9 something. They are, as you say, buried. 10 MR. SCHUBERTH: I ask the question so 11 everybody kind of understands it's an ancient 12 channel that once was exposed, and has subsequently 13 been filled in. 14 MR. SMITH: That has nothing to do with the 15 present day channel. 16 MR. SCHUBERTH: So the sediments in the 17 paleochannel are younger than the sediments into 18 which the paleochannel was cut when it was being 19 cut. This is the Geology 101. 20 MR. DYSART: Larry, you had your card up next. 21 MR. KEEGAN: I think I heard the answer. I 22 was wondering if there had been any dating on any 23 of the samples yet. I remember that discussion, 24 dating to find out when the salinity -- 25 MR. SMITH: Okay. There has been some -- 79 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 there is a recent USGS report out on dating some of 3 these sediments. You may be think about -- are you 4 thinking of dating the sediment material or the 5 water? 6 MR. KEEGAN: Water. 7 MR. SMITH: Okay. We haven't dated any of 8 this water and we won't be dating any of this pore 9 water, even though we hoped we might be able to do 10 something like that. 11 But our expert over here lets us know we don't 12 have nearly enough water to do that kind of 13 sampling, is that correct, Jim? 14 MR. LANDMEYER: Right, with two or three 15 mils, it's not really enough to do it. What we 16 hope to find, if we install multilevel samplers in 17 the miocene, then we can collect enough water to do 18 those. 19 MR. SMITH: And that's when we will do that. 20 We will pull samples out from those wells to do 21 that, but not pore samples. It would sure be nice 22 to do the pore water samples that way though. 23 MR. DYSART: I'm going to take three more 24 questions cards that were up, and then we're going 25 to go to Jim. John Robinette. 80 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 MR. ROBINETTE: You were saying there was 3 dense material that exists between the miocene 4 layers? 5 MR. SMITH: Right. 6 MR. ROBINETTE: Could you show us where that 7 is on the salinity chart? 8 MR. SMITH: Yeah, sure, be glad to. All 9 right. It's right there and right probably about 10 there in these different borings. 11 MR. ROBINETTE: The boring on the right was 12 which paleochannel? 13 MR. SMITH: That's the one in the jetties. 14 MR. ROBINETTE: Huh? 15 MR. SMITH: The one in the jetties on your 16 little map there, see? 17 MR. ROBINETTE: That's the deepest one? 18 MR. SMITH: The deepest paleochannel? 19 MR. ROBINETTE: Yeah. 20 MR. SMITH: It's one of the deep ones, yeah, 21 yeah. 22 MR. ROBINETTE: On your chart it looked like 23 the paleochannel actually went below those two 24 layers there itself. 25 MR. SMITH: In the section I had up a while 81 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 ago? 3 MR. ROBINETTE: Yeah. 4 MR. SMITH: Well, it does look like that on 5 there. That's what I was actually trying to point 6 out on there, that according to the interpretation 7 Dr. Henry did on the seismic work, he felt like 8 that one had penetrated through that zone. 9 That may have something to do with what's 10 going on there. I just don't know yet, but we have 11 seen a similar spike, for what its worth, back down 12 here at DOT 2, which is right here. I'm sorry, 13 right there. 14 Outside the channel, that's a land boring up 15 there. I'll be honest with you, John, I've found 16 several things that we need to go back and fix on 17 some of these elevations and things. They are kind 18 of minor adjustments, but to be technically correct 19 we need to fix them. 20 MR. ROBINETTE: But you're seeing a spike 21 right at those two layers? 22 MR. SMITH: Seeing a spike right at that 23 contact and we've seen that in two borings. I 24 don't know what that means. I don't know if that 25 zone has something to do with why we're seeing that 82 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 or what. They coincident somewhat. 3 MR. DYSART: David Kyler. 4 MR. KYLER: I was just going to remind Keith, 5 Card had answered my questions earlier which spoke 6 to some of the things he was asking. 7 One is that the deepest paleochannel cut was 8 30 feet into a 70 foot layer of confining layer, 9 right? 10 MR. SMITH: Something like that, yeah. 11 MR. KYLER: And that that spike occurred on 12 that profile 14, sample 14, because of a higher 13 transmissivity or conductivity of lower dense 14 material -- that's your supposition? 15 MR. SMITH: Yeah. I mean, there's something 16 going on there. It doesn't appear to be a fluke in 17 just one boring. We've seen it in at least one 18 other one. What's happening there, we need to go 19 find out. 20 MR. KYLER: Okay. 21 MR. DYSART: Jim. 22 MR. REICHARD: Card gave a good description of 23 the aquitard test and why they're difficult to do, 24 and sometimes they may or may not be feasible to 25 do. 83 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 The reason they were recommended by the 3 Aquifer Committee was to determine if any 4 homgeneity may exist in the aquitard. You can't 5 see the fractures Chris was asking about. 6 This is one of the reasons we're here. This 7 is one of the ways to get field values of what the 8 aquitard can tell us vertically. 9 It was inserted there, and I noticed on your 10 list of topics or milestones, Card, that those were 11 still in there. Is that still on the books, as we 12 go down the list, we're going to try the trial 13 pumping test? 14 MR. SMITH: Yes, we're definitely going to do 15 a trial. 16 MR. REICHARD: If that trial is successful -- 17 MR. SMITH: If that trial -- if that trial 18 suggests that we could be successful, we will do 19 what it takes to -- the whole premise of this, Jim, 20 is to try to use some existing wells, maybe one of 21 the dot wells we have over across the river, and 22 put in maybe some transducers, or some monitoring 23 well, just get an idea. 24 Pump the daylights out one of these, and we 25 see any effect at all -- Jim's point is a very good 84 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - SMITH 2 point because that pump test would have an effect 3 of trying to average out all of the various things 4 that are going on, and give you kind of an average 5 hydraulic conductivity in the zone that you're able 6 to influence, and would certainly be useful. 7 But when you look at doing, again, on the 8 surface of doing a test like this, you might have 9 to pump 30 days. You might have to pump 60 days, 10 before you see any response in those wells. 11 I say you might have to. I don't know. We 12 don't know what it would take. But we are pretty 13 sure it would take an awful lot of pumping for a 14 pretty good bit of time to get some response. 15 And we can say that just based on what we know 16 already about the hydraulic conductivities about 17 the limestone and confining material. 18 Again, this is something that the model will 19 be very useful for to look at these type of things. 20 What if we vary -- what happens when we vary the 21 hydraulic conductivity to just ridiculous ends, 22 extremely low and extremely high hydraulic 23 conductivity, what does the model show? What 24 happens when we vary pumping tremendously? 25 Hopefully, the model will give us some ideas about 85 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 that. 3 MR. DYSART: Okay. Thank you. Jim, we look 4 forward to your part of the presentation. 5 MR. LANDMEYER: You know, I was thinking as I 6 was listening to Card that we have this concern 7 with the potential leakage of salty water down into 8 the Upper Floridan Aquifer, but take a look at that 9 picture right there behind -- that picture up there 10 on wall. 11 What do you see there? That's the White 12 Cliffs of Dover, limestone right in contact with 13 saltwater. 14 So they have a serious problem there. That's 15 modern day saltwater that's lapping right up 16 against -- that's basically one of their major 17 aquifer systems exposed. 18 Basically, what I'm going to do is kind of get 19 a little bit of background, a little bit of a 20 primer on pore water, because it's something we've 21 been talking about, something I'm sure everybody 22 has heard about. 23 What exactly is it? Card's done a great job 24 in basically setting the stage for this. I want to 25 give you a little bit more detail on exactly how we 86 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 go through the process. 3 The pore water is a very crucial and new, at 4 least, to this project way to provide tools to 5 answer the questions; in this case to determine the 6 salinity profile in the -- in this confining bed 7 sediment. 8 Without having to go repeat the geology that 9 Card just showed, basically the section that we're 10 looking at is sand on top of the confining bed on 11 top of our Upper Floridan Aquifer. 12 Now, if you want to collect a water sample for 13 salinity analysis from either the sand, the water 14 table aquifer, or from the Floridan, you create a 15 hole, a well, and let water fill into it and pump 16 it out. 17 Because in those cases the porosity of the 18 water and the permeability allow water to flow 19 naturally into these holes or these wells. 20 Unfortunately, because of the very fine clay 21 and silt, as you can see from the core that was 22 brought, these confining bed sediments, just by the 23 mere fact that you can see the fellow here is 24 holding them in his hand. They're cohesive. 25 The have a very high angle repose, meaning it 87 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 doesn't fall apart. There's water in there. Now, 3 one thing I want to point out, this is drilling 4 fluid on the outside. 5 One way you have to drill, in one certain type 6 of drilling, you have to actually circulate 7 drilling fluid. 8 This wetness is actually wetness on the 9 outside. When we take our cores, I'll show you, we 10 remove all that. We pare off or cut off the 11 outside to actually get into the inside. 12 The ironic thing about this is that although 13 you cannot get -- you can't put a hole and let 14 water flow into it as fast as you can say the 15 Floridan, ie, the porosity may be actually higher 16 than in the Floridan, or higher than in the sand. 17 What that means is you may actually have 50% 18 of this particular chunk of material actually 19 contain water, but it just doesn't have the 20 permeability to get out into the hole. 21 On the other hand, the Floridan or the sand 22 aquifers have a lower porosity but have a higher 23 permeability. 24 So that translates more easily to a well. So 25 how do get water from the sample? We can't put 88 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 a hole in the ground. We can't have a well. We 3 can't pump. 4 So we actually have to squeeze. We have to 5 apply pressure to this sediment to actually force 6 the water out under a static pressure. 7 Now, what I want to explain here in the next 8 few slides is because of the importance of this 9 methodology, we want to make sure that we do an 10 audit of it and make sure it actually works. 11 This technique goes back to the early 60s, 12 believe it or not, when some folks at USGS were 13 trying to study the position of the saltwater 14 interface off the East Coast of Florida. 15 And the idea then was actually doing it the 16 way we're doing it now. This is just a successive 17 evolution of what they were doing back in the 18 60s. 19 So the history is there on extracting these 20 pore waters. This was done back in -- again as a 21 test before we went offshore for this harbor 22 expansion project, kind of a ground truth. 23 This was along the Tybee Island Causeway back 24 in the spring. We wanted to find an area, 25 basically, where we were surrounded by saltwater 89 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 but you didn't have the expense of the jack-up 3 drill rig. 4 This was a slightly different drilling 5 technique. It was a rotosonic drilling technique. 6 It does not use drilling fluid so we didn't have to 7 worry about fluid contamination. 8 We get beautiful cores that come up. This is 9 actually -- I think it's a five foot core that we 10 cut in half. What you are seeing there is we are 11 removing a section of that dark, tight confining 12 unit material, and we're placing it into this 13 device. 14 You can see again there's no wetness. There's 15 no drilling fluid on the outside. Basically, it's 16 jam packed. You have to get this out quick. The 17 plate will expand and you'll never get it to budge. 18 So we're removing the center material, maybe 19 about 30 grams. It's not a lot. What I was 20 placing it in is just basically a modified mortal 21 and pestle. 22 If you ever grind herbs when you are cooking, 23 it's basically the same thing. It's a cylinder 24 with a piston. You place the -- this is a bunch of 25 different parts. 90 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 You place the 30 grams into that cylinder up 3 there. We have a hole at the bottom. The idea is 4 you take this piston with the hydraulic jack and 5 ram it, put force, about 3 or 5,000 psi on the 6 sediment, extract the pore water, push it out the 7 bottom, and remove it with a syringe. 8 We have pressure and vacuum -- the pressure 9 pushes the water to the bottom of sampler and the 10 vacuum pulls it out. 11 This was how we were doing it in the field and 12 that's at Tybee Island land base to get the survey. 13 This is what we actual mobilized -- decided to 14 mobilize for this project to start in December. We 15 actually have this now, just like we took it out of 16 the back of the truck to do Tybee Island. 17 We decided rather than having a sample sent 18 back to the lab, we want to get pore water right 19 when it is fresh. 20 We set this up on their barge, basically a 21 glorified jack, jacked up, push the ram up, pushes 22 that top piston down. 23 And you can see how long that piston is. By 24 the time you're pushing that ram down, it's about 25 half into the cylinder. At the bottom, we're just 91 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 slowing vacuuming out the collected pore water. 3 Now, as Card was saying, it's kind of 4 interesting. You get 30 grams of what looks like 5 rather hard material, again, for getting the 6 drilling fluid that may have been on the outside of 7 it. 8 You wouldn't think on first looking at it, 9 even looking at this up here, you wouldn't think 10 you get any water. It's not dripping wet. But 11 when you put pressure on 30 grams you get about 12 two, three, four, five mils of water. 13 That's a heck of a lot of water. Like I was 14 saying before, there's a lot more porosity, in many 15 cases in clays, sometimes twice as much as the 16 aquifer material. 17 But you just can't move it out under the 18 influence of normal gravity. That's what we 19 believe happens at the end. You take up 30 grams 20 that now looks like about 10 grams. 21 It's hard as a hockey puck. So again, to test 22 whether or not this works for this area, again this 23 is all preliminary to the Savannah Harbor Expansion 24 Project that we're doing right now, we decided 25 let's do two cases. Let's do a worst case 92 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 scenario. 3 They were already out there, basically, in the 4 middle of the ocean doing some point drilling, and 5 let's also do one like I was saying before on the 6 Tybee Island Causeway. 7 Let's see what the profiles between the 8 miocene sediments are there. I think you can see 9 on this thing Card passed around, the Bull River 10 site is also located. 11 This also shows the -- this is the -- I don't 12 know what year post-development contoured this was. 13 You can see the contour, the cone of depression, 14 City of Savannah, you can see with the heads, the 15 freshwater head of the Floridan minus 10 feet, 16 about minus 35. 17 So we have that downward pulling of water, 18 freshwater. This is the seven mile site. This 19 shouldn't be surprising from what Card showed from 20 the harbor data, same scales, although this was 21 actual data that we got from the lab. 22 What Card was showing was our field data with 23 parts per thousand salinity on top. This is 24 actually chloride concentration. Think of sea 25 water being 35,000 parts per thousand, chloride is 93 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 19,000 milligrams per liter of saltwater. 3 Our first sample at 70 feet or so was 7,000 4 milligrams per liter chloride. Again, saltwater is 5 about 19,000, so 70 feet down, in the confining 6 unit, or 70 feet, you know, down from the top of 7 the surface water elevation, you have about 7,000. 8 You have that nice profile, 6,000, 4,000, 9 2,000, at 90 feet you have about 2,500 milligrams 10 per liter chloride. 11 There are some other holes that we did, bore 12 holes, one time snapshots. We just showed you the 13 seven mile site, eight mile site, 10 mile site. 14 The filled circles are chloride and the open 15 circles are sulfate, another indicator of 16 saltwater, but the most definitive indicator is 17 chloride, again, with chloride in this case on the 18 bottom. 19 This one here we're talking 80 feet down. 20 That's 18,000 milligrams per liter chloride. 21 Remember, saltwater is 19,000. You have a nice 22 -- basically from 50 to 90 feet, you have two 23 points there that are representative of saltwater 24 migration downward. 25 This is out in the ocean. Here, 18,000. Not 94 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 too surprising because you're out in the middle of 3 the ocean. 4 What about Bull River? What about Bull River? 5 We really spent a lot of time in Bull River. We 6 took a lot of data, not the refractometer field 7 data, this is actually what we ran on the IC in our 8 lab. 9 Chloride concentrates again from zero to 10 basically saltwater. And what we've been showing 11 up to now is pretty much from about here down to 12 about 30 or 40 feet down. 13 Here we started to kind get a hint of that. 14 Here we started at land surface. We did that for a 15 reason because we knew we were on land. 16 The water table aquifer had some freshwater in 17 it. That freshwater tends to develop a freshwater 18 lens or bubble that keeps saltwater at bay. 19 You can actually see evidence of that. Our 20 first sample was about eight feet down into the 21 water table and was essentially fresh 121 22 milligrams per liter chloride. 23 But as we start getting deeper and deeper, you 24 start seeing the effects of the freshwater bubble 25 tends to go away quickly. 95 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 You have a peak at about 40 feet down into the 3 hole, now saltwater concentration, again you see 4 this profile going off. 5 This little zone here, I think I have a slide 6 that just shows basically that concentration with 7 no change. 8 I'm not a geologist. I don't have a pretty 9 geologic section of pictures that Card had shown. 10 You'll have bear with me. Basically, it's the same 11 picture I showed you previous with the depth kind 12 of knocked out with different geologists here. 13 I guess we were lucky. We hit a paleochannel, 14 even though we were on land, because these 15 paleochannels snake all around. 16 We hit a paleochannel at about, I don't know, 17 50 to 75 feet, and we were able to recover that 18 material with the rotosonic drilling method. And 19 the thing to look at here is the filled circle, the 20 white before with the red line, and the same thing 21 with chloride. 22 It starts out fresh and goes off and gets very 23 salty. This is basically where the saltwater is 24 leaking in or interfacing with the freshwater or 25 surface water in the surficial aquifer and starts 96 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 to follow down. 3 But look at the interesting thing here. You 4 have a -- again, as you're going down 50 to 75 5 feet, you don't have any change. Everywhere else 6 you have sequencing gradient. 7 That's because that paleochannel is more 8 permeable sediments and allowed saltwater to 9 accumulate. Now, once you get into the aquitard 10 here, you see the same sort of profile showed in 11 the offshore sites and also the preliminary data 12 from these two or three Savannah Harbor Expansion 13 bore holes. 14 So it looks like if you look at the salinity 15 from this last -- let's see what was the cut off 16 -- the Floridan Aquifer is about 190 feet. We're 17 talking this last sample here is 25 parts per 18 million chloride. And this is 32 parts per million 19 chloride. 20 It doesn't really appear that the saltwater 21 from these values is any different or actually may 22 be, in some sense it is a little bit lower than 23 what can be measured in other parts of the Floridan 24 Aquifer. 25 So it looks like the conclusion, salty water 97 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 has entered the Floridan Aquifer at the Bull River 3 site, probably is a little premature, but it looks 4 like it's heading on to its way. 5 One thing I wanted to show in answer to I 6 think Larry's question, we did take some -- this is 7 the same Bull River site. 8 In this case, there was a lot of data. Let me 9 show what you're familiar with. The black is 10 chloride. Remember the paleochannel? We also 11 measured using a geo-probe. 12 We took some actual water samples as far down 13 as we could get. We couldn't get the geo-probe 14 past 75 feet. The drilling was too hard. We 15 pumped the water, conventional method, we just 16 advanced our rig down and removed anything from 17 boring with water. 18 The blue squares are showing naturally in 19 place radiocarbonate that we all have in our 20 systems today. 21 What it shows is it's naturally in place and 22 had nothing to do with any sort of manmade 23 contamination. 24 It shows we have some evidence in the 25 paleochannel, at 75 feet down, of -- in this case 98 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 the unit up there is 80% radiocarbon. Now if it 3 was all old water, like say from the Floridan, 4 there should be zero, because the water is old 5 enough the radiocarbon should have decayed out. 6 So it half answers your question, Larry. At 7 least the paleochannel at this site, you have 8 fairly modern evidence not only water but salty 9 water. 10 So the saltwater there is comprised somewhat 11 of modern leakage. We don't yet have the data. 12 Hopefully, we'll be able to fill in over this year 13 or so. I think that's all I have for you. 14 MR. DYSART: Questions, Bob. 15 MR. SCANLON: Jim, see if I can phrase this 16 right. Go back to the slide you just had. Would 17 you suspect that prior to pumping, prior to having 18 the cone of depression, that that would have been 19 freshwater all the way to the top? 20 MR. LANDMEYER: If we went back to say the 21 late 1800? 22 MR. SCANLON: Right, before anybody pumped in 23 there 1880. 24 MR. LANDMEYER: If you look at it in the terms 25 of the short answer, I would expect that. Yes, I 99 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 would expect all that to be fresh. 3 The reason is you look at it in terms of 4 geologic time frame. We've been pumping for a 5 hundred years. We've had the cone of depression 6 reversed for maybe 60 or 80. 7 The pre-development flow path had been around 8 for, you know, hundreds of thousands if not longer. 9 The impetus was for freshwater to have completely 10 flushed out any saltwater that remained either when 11 the clay was originally deposited in an estuary, or 12 saltwater environment, or when the sea level, back 13 in the old days, was down a lot lower. Saltwater 14 had a chance to do what you see in the White Cliffs 15 of Dover picture, actually enter at those times. 16 It should have been flushed out, enough time, 17 enough head, enough pressure to have caused all 18 that to have flushed out. 19 I think if we were doing the same study back 20 in 1880, you would have seen a flat -- not flat 21 liner, but a -- it would have been pretty fresh. 22 And some of this initial radiocarbon data suggests, 23 at least, in this area where we pump water, it's 24 salty and modern. It's not salty and old. 25 Now, if we had no radiocarbon and had high 100 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 salt, I would have to say, you know, there was 3 probably salt in that sequence since time in 4 memorium. 5 That data initially suggests that that 6 saltwater leads down through the paleochannel, it 7 has been since post 1940 at least. 8 MR. SCANLON: Would you expect that the 9 saltwater would continue to be drawn down below the 10 potentiometric of the aquifer -- the Floridan 11 Aquifer. 12 MR. LANDMEYER: There are two processes -- I 13 have the red showing the head is down. Obviously, 14 we know there's a downward gradient. This is a 15 confined aquifer. We're not really talking water 16 level. We're talking potentiometric contours. 17 The potentiometric contour has dropped. The 18 thing is is that you have two forces moving, even 19 if you have -- even if you don't have any change of 20 potentiometric contour, you have two forces that 21 are moving salt. One is evection which would be 22 followed down. This is the head drop. 23 The other is simply diffusion dispersion. You 24 have two solutions of different concentrations 25 sitting next to each other. 101 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 So I think that even if you have the same sort 3 of situation just if conditions were static, I 4 guess is the short answer, but having that head, 5 having that arrow greatly exceeds and plays 6 favor to movement of saltwater by evection rather 7 than simply by diffusion and dispersion. 8 So what it does is it accelerates the time of 9 movement down, not its eventual movement but 10 repetitive -- its velocity. 11 MR. DYSART: Chris. 12 MR. SCHUBERTH: Jim, what aspect in the 13 stratagraphy allowed you to single out the 20 foot 14 or so of the paleochannel; was it known to be 15 there from -- 16 MR. LANDMEYER: No. I think Card -- I don't 17 remember the exact story. I think maybe Jim 18 Henry's work showed hints of it. I'll let you tell 19 the story. 20 MR. SMITH: We didn't really suspect that we 21 would encounter a paleochannel there, but as we 22 drilled down, it was a really nice sand -- in fact, 23 one of cleanest sands I've ever seen in a 24 paleochannel. It was over 20 feet of it, something 25 like that. 102 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 MR. LANDMEYER: Yeah. 3 MR. SMITH: It was consistent, clean sand 4 which was kind of surprising. We expected the 5 miocene a little higher, but we didn't hit lower. 6 This paleochannel had eroded some out, and then 7 Dr. Henry made the comment he had some seismic work 8 in that area that showed some pretty significant 9 paleochannels in that area. 10 We kind of suspect that paleochannel is an 11 extension of one of the ones coming across the 12 river from Ft. Pulaski and over that way. 13 MR. LANDMEYER: Right. 14 MR. SCHUBERTH: So you kind of hit the edge of 15 that channel? 16 MR. SMITH: Maybe. 17 MR. SCHUBERTH: Through a part of it? 18 MR. SMITH: Yeah. We went through 20 feet 19 of it, could be deeper somewhere around that area, 20 you know. We don't know. 21 MR. SCHUBERTH: But it was stratagraphy, it 22 was just clean sand -- 23 MR. SMITH: Yeah, really -- 24 MR. LANDMEYER: It's stratagraphy, but you can 25 see how the stratagraphy ultimately controls the 103 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 hydrogeology. 3 It's nice, Chris, in this case you can 4 have multiple lines of evidence. The stratagraphy, 5 you know, geology can also -- you know, the 6 hydrogeochemical signatures -- 7 MR. SCHUBERTH: Right. 8 MR. LANDMEYER: -- you know, we're talking 9 short concentration radius of a distance of less 10 than five feet. I mean, that's a significant trend 11 and significant concentration gradient, okay, that 12 just happens to coexist perfectly with the 13 stratagraphy picks. 14 It makes sense if you're talking about water, 15 fluids, moving through stratagraphy. So hopefully 16 we'll be able to complete this end of the chain, 17 and get better data to see what exactly is -- does 18 this modern water -- does it stop, because that 19 will really answer what's going on in these less 20 permeable sediments. 21 MR. DYSART: Jim. 22 MR. REICHARD: Jim, it was mentioned earlier 23 in the paleochannel, the Corps squeezings that were 24 done, there wasn't a sufficient volume of sample to 25 do any radiocarbon. 104 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 Can you obtain a sufficient amount by 3 squeezing more than the 30 grams, or will you plan 4 to do that in the future? 5 MR. LANDMEYER: First of all, the radiocarbon 6 data, if I wasn't clear about it, these were 7 collected at this Bull River site using geo-probe 8 screen point sampler. 9 Okay. I don't want to confuse you. This 10 here, the chloride data was done with rotosonic 11 drilling, collecting of the core, squeezing on 12 site, and ran it to the lab. 13 The radiocarbon data, since we couldn't get 14 enough water out of the squeeze, we had to do an 15 alternative method, so we just used the geo-probe, 16 which basically is a well-drilling system that 17 allows you to push a rod into the ground. It's not 18 really a jet, it's like a big press. 19 You push the rod into the ground. It's 20 hollow. You can pull water out of it. We were 21 able to get sufficient water, from the surficial 22 aquifer and paleochannel because those sediments 23 yielded enough water, about 250 mils to do the 24 analyzes. 25 The reason there's not another data point here 105 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 is we couldn't advance the drill rig past this 3 contact. It's just too hard. 4 MR. REICHARD: You could never squeeze 250 or 5 whatever you needed -- 6 MR. LANDMEYER: If you squeeze 250, you know, 7 you're talking 30 grams, you get say, if you're 8 lucky, five mils per gram. You can do the math 9 there. The problem is everytime you're doing it, 10 you're exposing the water to moderate radiocarbon. 11 So you would, unfortunately, bias your sample 12 to the high end because you're allowing too much 13 surface area to contaminate it. All the samples 14 that were collected, you know, down in the bore 15 hole and were not in contact with the atmosphere. 16 You can do -- one of the reasons I have down 17 here, if you can actually run stable carbons rather 18 the radiocarbon on microliter samples. 19 You can run stable carbon isotopes, which can 20 give you kind of an age date, but the data was just 21 -- we had too few data points to be conclusive in 22 each one out there. 23 MR. REICHARD: I was just curious, what kind 24 of potential of age dating could you get from the 25 core squeezing like what we're seeing in the 106 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 paleochannel; can you date that water by any means? 3 MR. LANDMEYER: We did date it here. 4 MR. REICHARD: I mean the ones in the channel 5 itself not on the Tybee Causeway. 6 MR. LANDMEYER: Again, your constrained by the 7 lack of -- to do the analysis reproducibly you need 8 to have an X amount of volume of water. 9 You would either have to take a lot more cores 10 or you would have to take so much core that the 11 material would be averaged out over 30 foot 12 sections, so you would really not know where that 13 age date came from, plus you have a problem with -- 14 MR. SMITH: That was done offshore for some of 15 the offshore wells we put in for Sound Science, was 16 it not? You guys took age samples of that water 17 that we pumped out there -- 18 MR. LANDMEYER: Right. 19 MR. SMITH: -- at different levels. Is that 20 data that we're going to see later on, or did 21 anything come of that data that you know of? 22 MR. LANDMEYER: I think most of that was from 23 -- I think most of the water you're talking about 24 from the age dating was the Upper Floridan. It was 25 not from the miocene 107 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 MR. SMITH: That's true, that's true. 3 MR. LANDMEYER: But you know the definitive 4 evidence of this chloride profile, and all the 5 other questions you can use a lot of other 6 geochemical tools, but it's hard to deny, just a 7 straight fact, these repetitive chloride profiles 8 that we're beginning to see. We're really not 9 seeing anything that's not like that, so -- 10 MR. DYSART: Further questions or comments? 11 MS. MOORE: I have a question. It's more I 12 guess for Card. The data that you got from -- that 13 shows the spike in boring Number 14, you said there 14 was another boring that showed a spike. 15 Boring 14 has the paleochannel in it. Does 16 this other boring have one as well? 17 MR. SMITH: If it has one, it's nothing -- 18 well, I just I don't remember a paleochannel being 19 at the other one, no. If it was, we took just a 20 little bit of material. 21 That was in one of the deep wells we drilled 22 back about Elba Island is where that one was 23 located, but it was on land, drilled on land. I 24 don't remember seeing any paleochannel material. 25 MR. DYSART: Any other questions? Okay. 108 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 We would certainly like to thank Card and Jim and 3 the Corps and GS for sharing your work plan and 4 preliminary data, and we look forward to your 5 coming back and sharing more. 6 I think this presentation or presentations, 7 and the broad discussion all around the table, 8 probably exemplify three things that are important 9 to this body; that is good science, good effective 10 engagement, and transparency openness. 11 So we really appreciate you're willingness to 12 come and share this with us. I think everybody 13 heard the cautions that you presented, the caveats, 14 and we appreciate your sharing that. 15 We also appreciate your making an effort, a 16 very nice effort, to make it meaningful to lay 17 people all around the table, who are essential, 18 critical parts of this group. 19 And so the test next month will be to see how 20 many people can properly spell stratagraphy forward 21 and backwards, including madam court reporter. 22 Should be interesting. David. 23 MR. KYLER: Minor editorial comment on a good 24 summary, I think everytime we hear a so-called 25 Sound Science presentation, we're aware of the 109 1 AQUIFER UPDATE PRESENTATION - LANDMEYER 2 value of it being sound, but also the limitations 3 of the information we have, and the implications 4 for this project. 5 I just caution everyone to be aware of the 6 importance and the value of the science, but also 7 the limits of our current understanding of it. 8 MR. DYSART: Well stated, I think I probably 9 said good science as opposed to Sound Science, 10 which is apparently some kind of initiative. 11 I was not indicating any editorial opinion. 12 This was not an instantaneous peer review that I 13 was providing here, in this period of good humor. 14 I think it is important when people who are 15 conducting substantive investigations, that have 16 resulted from work of this body or contributing to 17 the project that this group is focusing on, can 18 bring it back and say here's what we're doing, 19 here's how we're doing it, here's what we're 20 finding, and can have open discussion on that. 21 So I think your comment is appropriate. Any 22 further comments. Okay. How about the next 23 meeting, who has an idea? 24 Larry or Morgan, somebody could you indicate 25 sort of what might be kind of in the wings, so 110 1 2 folks -- I've had heard a couple of people say 3 things are kind of picking up. Is there any reason 4 to consider a change in the frequency of meetings 5 between now and the next time? I'm not suggesting 6 that. Could you just kind of tell us what the -- 7 MR. KEEGAN: No, I wouldn't think so. 8 MR. DYSART: Okay. Do I hear a suggestion we 9 get together in two months. 10 MR. SCHUBERTH: So suggested. 11 MR. SCANLON: A question on that, the MTRG on 12 the hydrodynamic model, I thought heard earlier 13 at we're looking at possibly having some decision 14 on that early in April. Would it be better to have 15 the meeting after that decision? 16 MR. KEEGAN: You know, I appreciate the 17 thought, Bob, but if I've learned one thing is 18 that -- 19 MR. SCANLON: Point taken. 20 MR. KEEGAN: -- when you are reviewing models, 21 it doesn't always fit into a nice time box. I'd 22 hesitate to absolutely guarantee that. 23 MR. DYSART: Can't look it up in Farmers 24 Almanac. 25 MR. KEEGAN: I certainly hope it would. 111 1 2 MR. DYSART: I have a suggestion in two 3 months. Consensus on that on that. So declared. 4 The next meeting then will be April 6th here. I 5 presume the same time is acceptable. If anybody 6 has any reason for us to discuss making any change 7 in logistic, timing, so forth, please do so. 8 Anything else for the good of the body? If not, we 9 are adjourned. 10 (Concluded at 11:50 a.m.) 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 112 1 2 3 4 C E R T I F I C A T E 5 G E O R G I A : 6 CHATHAM COUNTY: 7 I hereby certify that the foregoing 8 transcript was taken down, as stated in the 9 caption, and the questions and answers thereto 10 were reduced to typewriting under my direction; 11 that the foregoing Pages 1 through 111 represent 12 a true and correct transcript of the evidence 13 given upon said hearing, and I further certify 14 that I am not of kin or counsel to the parties 15 in the case; am not in the regular employ of 16 counsel for any of said parties; nor am I in 17 anywise interested in the result of said case. 18 This, the 16th day of February, 2004. 19 20 21 ________________________ 22 Kathleen Dore, Certified Court Reporter, B-2041 23 24 25