SOIL AND WATER DATA COLLECTION, MONITORING, AND

EVALUATION ASSIGNMENT

MONITORING OF WELLS WATER QUALITY IN INDONESIA

By:
Anna Mariana Situngkir
Nur Ariyanto
Advisor:
Dr. DWI SETYAWAN

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

DOUBLE MASTER DEGREE INTEGRATED RIVER,
LOWLAND, AND COASTAL DEVELOPMENT AND
MANAGEMENT PLANNING (DD-IRLCDMP)
SRIWIJAYA UNIVERSITY
2014

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1. BACKGROUND
Almost Indonesia people still uses groundwater especially well as their drinking
water source. This happens particularly in rural areas in Indonesia. However, the
information of wells water quality in Indonesia is still lack because the
groundwater sampling is still rare to do especially for well in residents in the rural
areas such as Pesawaran Regency. In Pesawaran itself, the groundwater
monitoring is conducted only once a year and only at two or three sampling sites.
(Environmental Condition Report of Pesawaran) . It is because some local governments
in Indonesia have limit budget for groundwater monitoring. Moreover, the central
government of Indonesia provides limit budget for groundwater monitoring so the
monitoring can not be done periodically. Beside that, the groundwater monitoring
is a little bit expensive due to the technology, chemical reagents used and limited
environment analyst. However, Indonesia government still give less attention for
environment quality.
Usually, the groundwater monitoring is done when the groundwater is
contaminated. Therefore, it is difficult to get data and information about
groundwater quality for long term because many of environmental monitorings in
Indonesia is not conducted for regularly and continuously. However, information
plays an important role in the groundwater monitoring because monitoring
without specification of information needs before the project design will be
wasting money, it is important for the effectiveness of monitoring and needed by
the management for making decisions. (Mogheir, Y and Singh, V.P. 2002).

Figure 1. Monitoring Cycle

Source : Mogheir, Y and Singh, V.P. 2002. Application of Information Theory to Groundwater
Quality Monitoring Networks. http://cleveland2.ce.ttu.edu. Acessed on July 10, 2014

2. PROBLEM DEFINITION
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Soil and Water Data Collection, Monitoring, and Evaluation Assignment

The groundwater monitoring in Indonesia is done, but the frequency is usually

not perodically because the cost of groundwater monitoring usually limited.
According to Patrick Reed et al (2005), the monitoring of environmental system
usually has limit costs. Due to cost and technology limitations, those resulted in
new design paradigm for groundwater remediation from resource recovery to
longterm risk management. Beside limited cost, the groundwater monitoring
methods is expensive especially for long-term monitoring. Therefore, the costs of
long-term monitoring for the sites has been reduced by developing a new
methodology for sampling plan design. (Reed, Patrik. et al. 2000)
Beside that, the groundwater monitoring becomes expensive because the water
must be handled and treated and it needs large volume to purge and treat the
water. (Powell, Robert and Puls, Robert. 2004). However, treating the water will
chemical and usually cost of chemical is not cheap. Furthermore, the necessity
to employ one or more field technicians to take samples from a sampling site is
also not economics.
In addition, some groundwater monitoring methods are inefficient and
undesirable. According to Granato et al (1998), the manual methods for
determining groundwater quality have proven to be inherently and inefficient due
to the quantity of capable personnel is shortages and external factors such as
the inclement weather and other factors which limits the frequency of sampling.
Furthermore, the information of groundwater (well) quality in Indonesia is still
lack so it is important to collect data and information about that because
information will be needed for the project designs. (Mogheir, Y and Singh, V.P.
2002). Also, it is important to know whether the wells water quality is still good to
consume by the people.
3. OBJECTIVES
This paper has objective to define an efficient method with lower cost that can be
applied for the groundwater monitoring in Indonesia especially. Although the
groundwater monitoring is done rarely, but it is needed to find the lowest cost
method for the monitoring which can be applied in the future. Therefore, before
defining the lowest cost of groundwater monitoring, identifying some
groundwater monitoring methods is required because each method has
advantages and disadvantages. Beside the cost, the method will be used is
method which has benefits outweights drawbacks. This paper also has objective
to identify the method which can be applied to gather information of well water
quality for long-term purpose.
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
1. GROUNDWATER
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Soil and Water Data Collection, Monitoring, and Evaluation Assignment

Groundwater is water which is located under the earths surface in the soil pore
spaces. It is recharged from and flow to the surface naturally. The discharge is
naturally happen at springs and seeps and can form wetlands. In addition, the
groundwater is often taken for agriculture, municipal, and industrial use through
contructing and operating extraction wells. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Figure 2. Groundwater
Source. Waller, Roger M. 1982. Groundwater and the Rural Homeowner cited in
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthgw.html. Acessed on July 14, 2014

Groundwater is a part of water cycle because the groundwater is recharged from

rain water and snowmelt or from water which leaks from lakes and rivers.
Moreover, the groundwater can be recharged when water-supply systems such
as canals and pipelines leakage and when crops are irrigated with more water
than the plants can use. (U.S. Geological Survey)
2. GROUNDWATER SAMPLING AND MONITORING METHODS
A monitoring system is essentially an information of collection system. The
technical design requires a quantifiable measure of information achieved through
the application of the information theory. It is also a complex, difficult, and costly
undertaking. (Mogheir, Y and Singh, V.P. 2002).
According to Granato et al (2000), there are two kinds of methods that can be
done to monitor the groundwater quality. First method is manual method. In
manual method, a field technician is assigned to draw samples from a well.
Then, the groundwater is samplings are tested. There are two ways to test the
groundwater samples. First, the samples are tested on-site based on established
protocols or regulations. Second, the samples are transported to a laboratory for
analysis. However this method has disadvantages that can be seen in the table.
Table 1. Disadvatages of Manual Groundwater Sampling Method

Disadvantages
Inherent and inefficient
Manual
3

Reason
The cost needed to employ one or
more field technicians to get back the
test samples from the number of wells

Soil and Water Data Collection, Monitoring, and Evaluation Assignment

Method
Undesirable

tested in a sampling site.

Personnel shortages, bad weather,
surge of effluent, contamination, and
other factors limit the frequency of
samples can be taken

Source : Granato et al. 2000. Automated Groundwater Monitoring System and Method.

Even though, the manual maethod has some disadvantages, the groundwater
monitoring in Indonesia mostly still uses this method because the new
technology is usually expensive.
Second method is automated method which uses passive techniques. In this
method, a data logger will control a probe which is located in a well to make
measurements from which water quality can be determined. However, this
method has better performance than manual method and the benefits is
outweight than drawbacks. The benefits and drawbacks of automated method
can be seen in below table.
Table 2. The Benefits and Drawbacks of Automated Groundwater Sampling Method

Benefits
Lower cost than manual method

Automated
method

Drawbacks
The size of the pressure
transducers and other probes
used limits the minimum
diameter of the sampling
wells in which they are
installed.

It might be programmed to take

a
greater
frequency
of
measurements than manual
method
The data collected are often
electronically stored
Some automated methods have
been equipped with diagnostic
feedback to increase system
reliability

Source : Granato et al. 2000. Automated Groundwater Monitoring System and Method.

According to Robert Powell and Robert Puls (2004), groundwater sampling can
be done using the low-flow and passive sampling. Those methods can be the
most accurate to reduce the large volume of purged water by using dedicated
sampling devices. Beside the volume is eliminated, the time also is reduced. Low
flow samping is modification of traditional techniques that sample groundwater
with pumps. The pump is placed at the point where the contaminant
concentration is desired usually at the zone of highest contaminant
concentration. Then, the purging is begun, typically at a rate of 0.1 to 0.5 quarts
per minute. The parameters that will be measured in this sampling are pH,
4

Soil and Water Data Collection, Monitoring, and Evaluation Assignment

temperature, conductivity, DO, and turbidity. Passive sampling has objective to

get the needed samples with minimum possible disturbance to the water in the
well. The disturbance will increase the purging volume and time. The passive
sampling can be done through the following steps:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Adjust the pump to the slow sampling speed and turn it off.
Attach the pump to the tubing exiting the well and start the pump.
Purge enough water to remove the sampling device volume at least once.
Collect and preserve the samples.
Measure the water level.
Close up and proceed to the next well.

According to Patrick Reed, et al (2000), there are four kinds of groundwater

monitoring. First, fate-and-transport simulation which uses the reactive transport
in three dimensions (RT3D) developed at the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratories (Clement et al., 1998 in Reed, Patrick. Et al. 2000). RT3D can be
used to evaluate contaminant fate and transport both reactive or nonreactive
conditions. The current version of RT3D can detect some reactions such as
aerobic decay of benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylene( BTEX).
Moreover, it can detects degradation of BTEX using multiple electron acceptors,
sequential degradation of perchloroethylene, and other aqueous contaminant
reactions. However, RT3D must be coupled with a groundwater flow simulator
because flow simulation is used to determine the hydraulic heads required in the
calculation of contaminant transport velocities.
Second, global mass estimation method which is used to show changes in the
dissolved contaminant mass between successive monitoring periods. The
coordinates and concentrations of sampled points of each potential design are
used to estimate contaminant concentrations at all unsampled nodes within the
modeled domain by using one of two interpolation methods which is kriging or
inverse-distance weighting. The global mass estimate for a particular sampling
plan is then calculated by simply adding all of the mass concentrations and
multiplying this value by the total effective pore volume of the aquifer.
Third, ordinary kriging which is a kind of geostatistical methods. This method can
provide minimum error estimates of contaminant concentrations at unsampled
locations using linear combinations of sampled concentrations. (Cooper and
Istok. 1988a, 1988b, 1988c in Reed, Patrick. et al. 2000). Futhermore, this
method is related to groundwater contamination. The method involves four
primary steps. First, modifying the contaminant concentration data by converting
contaminant mass per unit volume of groundwater to contaminant mass per unit
volume of aquifer and normally distributed by taking the log transform of the
data). The second and third steps are the calculation of the experimental
semivariogram using the RT3D simulated data and structural analysis consisting
of several semivariogram models which can be used as long as they are
5

Soil and Water Data Collection, Monitoring, and Evaluation Assignment

positive-definite and nonnegative. Last, the analysis involves estimating

contaminant concentrations at unsampled locations using ordinary kriging.
However, the ordinary kriging assumes that the mean contaminant concentration
in the neighborhood of an unestimated point is stationary, but trend removal
maybe required in instances where the experimentals emivariogram does not
have a clearly defined sill value. The validity of kriged estimates depends on how
well the mathematical model used in structural analysis to predict the spatial
correlation of contaminant concentrations. Cross validation was used to insure
the accuracy of the mathematical model. Cross validation consists of
sequentially estimating concentrations at each of then known locations using the
remaining n - 1 sampled locations in the domain. An analysis of the residuals
between the estimates and actual known concentrations must show that the
residuals are normally distributed, independent, and have an expected value
equal to zero before the semivariogram model was accepted. Then, the
validated model of the semivariogramis used as an input for kriging. However,
using kriging for interpolation has disadvantages such as its complexity
computation and the calculating and validating the semivariogram can require
considerable expertise and analytical time.
Last, inverse-distance interpolation which has strength its numerical simplicity.
This method can be used as an alternative method for interpolation since kriging
has some limitations that have stated. The inverse-distance method could also
be used as a screening step to determine whether a detailed geostatistical
analysis could result in considerable savings in sampling costs.
Furthermore, Reed, Patrick, et al in 2005 has been using new version of the
Nondominated Sorted Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGAII), -NSGAII for longterm
groundwater monitoring (LTM). LTM is sampling of groundwater quality over long
time-scales to provide sufficient and appropriate information to assess if
current mitigation or contaminant control measures are performing adequately to
be protective of human and ecological health. The LTM problem is ideal for
demonstrating how EMO can aid environmental decision making because of the
tremendous expense and complexity of characterizing groundwater
contamination sites over long time periods. Usually, the -NSGAII is combined
with a parameterization strategy to accomplish the following: (1) ensure the
algorithm will maintain diverse solutions, (2) eliminate the need for trial-and-error
analysis of parameter settings (i.e., population size and crossover), and (3) allow
users to sufficiently capture tradeoffs using a minimum number of design
evaluations. A sufficiently quantified tradeoff can be defined as a subset of
Pareto optimal solutions that provide an adequate representation of the Pareto
frontier that can be used to inform decision making. A tradeoff solution is termed
Pareto optimal when the solution can only improve its value in one objective by
degrading its value for at least one other objective (Pareto, 1896 in Reed,
Patrick, et al. 2005). The Pareto frontier is the full set of Pareto optimal solutions
6

Soil and Water Data Collection, Monitoring, and Evaluation Assignment

plotted in objective space. 3-NSGAII enables the user to specify the precision
with which they want to quantify the Pareto optimal set and all other parameters
are automatically specified within the algorithm. The proposed algorithm consists
of three steps. First, utilizes the NSGAII with a starting population of 5 individuals
to initiate EMO search. The initial population size is set arbitrarily small to ensure
the algorithms initial search is done using a minimum number of function
evaluations. Subsequent increases in the population size adjust the population
size commensurate with problem difficulty. Second, the -NSGAII uses a fixed
sized archive (which inherently results from the user-specified 3 precision) to
store the nondominated solutions generated in every generation of the NSGAII
runs. The -Dominance allows the user to define the precision with which they
want to evaluate each objective by specifying an appropriate -value for each
objective. Last, checks a user-specified performance and termination criteria to
determine if the Pareto optimal set has been sufficiently quantified. If the criteria
are not satisfied, the population size is doubled and the search is continued.
When increasing the population, the initial population of the new run has
solutions injected from the archive at the end of the previous run. The algorithm
terminates if either a maximum user time is reached or if doubling the population
size fails to significantly increase the number of nondominated solutions found
across two runs.

Figure 3. Schematic Overview of NSGAII

Source: Reed, Patrick. et al. 2005. http://faculty.mu.edu.sa/. Acessed on July 10, 2014

CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
The groundwater sampling method will be used in the project is passive
sampling because the disposal of large volume of purged water that must be
handled and treated often can be minimized. The method can be the most
accurate to reduce the large volume of purged water by using dedicated
sampling devices because beside the volume is eliminated, the time also is
7

Soil and Water Data Collection, Monitoring, and Evaluation Assignment

Adjust the pump to the slow

sampling speed and turn it off

reduced. Passive sampling has minimum possible disturbance to the water in the
well. The passive sampling can be done by the following steps:

Attach the pump to the tubing exiting

the well and start the pump
Purge enough water to remove the
sampling device volume at least once
Collect and preserve
the samples

Measure the water

level
Close up and proceed
to the next well

Analysis sampling water based on SNI

Physical parameter
Chemical parameter
Biology parameter

Monitoring well water quality

using inverse-distance method

LITERATURE
Anonymous.
Groundwater.
Wikipedia,
the
free
encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundwater. Acessed on July 14, 2014
Anonymous.
2014.
Earths
Water:
Groundwater.
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthgw.html. Acessed on July 14, 2014.

Soil and Water Data Collection, Monitoring, and Evaluation Assignment

Local Government of Pesawaran Regency. 2012. Condition Report of Pesawaran

2012. Gedongtataan
Granato et al. 1998. Automated Groundwater Monitoring System and Method. United
States Patent, Patent Number: 6,021,664, Date of Patent: Feb. 8, 2000.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com.
Acessed on July 10, 2014
Mogheir, Y and Singh, V.P. 2002. Application of Information Theory to Groundwater
Quality Monitoring Networks. Water Resources Management 16: 37-49, 2002.
http://cleveland2.ce.ttu.edu. Acessed on July 10, 2014
Powell, Robert and Puls, Robert. 2004. Sampling of GROUNDWATER Monitoring
Wells - Part 3. National Driller; Feb 2004; 25, 2; ABI/INFORM Complete pg. 26.
http://search.proquest.com. Acessed on July 10, 2014
Reed, Patrick. et al. 2005. Using interactive archives in evolutionary multiobjective
optimization: case study for long-term groundwater monitoring design. Science
direct. Environmental Modelling & Software 22 (2007) 683-692.
http://faculty.mu.edu.sa/. Acessed on July 10, 2014
Reed, Patrick. et al. 2000. Cost-effeective long-term groundwater monitoring design
using a genetic algorithm and global mass interpolation. Water Resources
Research, Vol. 36, No. 12, Pages 373-3741, December 2000.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com. Acessed on July 10, 2014
U.S. Geological Survey. 2014. What is Ground Water? http://pubs.usgs.gov. Acessed
on July 14, 2014

Soil and Water Data Collection, Monitoring, and Evaluation Assignment