Linking Air Emissions and Water Quality: Mercury TMDLs in Maryland
John Sherwell*1, Timothy Rule2 and Mark Garrison3
All of the fresh water impoundments in Maryland are under fish consumption advisories for mercury. As a consequence of this fish burden these impoundments are subject to remediation actions under the Clean Water Act Total Maximum Daily Load [TMDL] requirements. All of the mercury inputs into these systems are atmospherically derived and consequently developing a TMDL program to address this problem requires an understanding of the emissions sources and their contribution to loading in the affected water bodies. The State has developed a mercury deposition modeling system1 and this poster will discuss its application in the development of the mercury TMDL programs. The modeling system has a Lagrangian formulation and so allows a categorical sourcereceptor relationship to be established for each of the air emission sources in the airshed and the receptor water bodies in the State.
1 Sherwell, J., M. Garrison, A. Yegnan, A. Baines. 2006. Application of the CALPUFF Modeling System for Mercury Assessments in Maryland. In Proceedings 99th Annual Meeting of the Air and Waste Management Association, Paper No. 429, Air and Waste Management Association, Pittsburgh, PA.
1 Power Plant Research Program, Department of Natural Resources, Annapolis, MD
2 Maryland Department of the Environment, Baltimore, MD
3 Environmental Resources Management, Exton, PA