Study on the Contamination of Fracture-Karst Water in Boshan District, China

Boshan is an industrial city in the center of Shandong Province where ground water is the only source for the urban water supply. The major water resource is fracture-karst water in the middle Ordovician carbonate rocks. Based on the hydrogeologic investigation and mapping in this area, the authors studied the geologic and hydrogeologic settings, the major pollution sources and the pathways of contamination, the principal contaminants, and their spatial distribution in ground water. The ground-water quality has also been estimated by the fuzzy mathematic method. The geostatistical method, such as the kriging method, was taken to simulate spatial distribution of the contaminants. The grey system method was adopted to forecast future contamination. An attempt at the remediation of Cr{sup 6+} contamination in fracture-karst water was also discussed. Finally, some proposals for the protection of the ground-water environment in Boshan District are offered.