Chemical Accidents in Freshwater : Development of Forecasting System for Drinking Water Resources

Major rivers in South Korea require attention for water contamination due to chemical accidents because the industrial complexes are located along the rivers that serve as a source of drinking water. An appropriate and immediate response to these accidents is necessary to minimize the impact on drinking water resources; therefore, a forecasting system is necessary. Previous studies, however, have a limitation in that the chemical transport via the pipeline is not considered in chemical accident modeling, even though a significant amount of chemicals is discharged into waterbodies through stormwater networks. Therefore, in this study, a forecasting system is developed to predict the transport/fate of chemicals through both pipeline and river channels. This study couples a pipe-network model with a hydrodynamic model and then conducts a scenario analysis on the Han and Geum rivers in a total of 44 accident scenarios. In the Han River scenario, it took approximately one day for toluene to reach the nearest water intake from the accident site, with peak concentrations in the range of 0.28 ppb to 0.09 ppb. The results of this study can be utilized as reference data to manage drinking water contamination in the future