Opinion ID: 652885
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dr. Earl's Testimony

Text: 25 The district court's findings and conclusions are supported by the testimony of the defendant's expert, Dr. Earl, a hydrogeologist. At the outset, Earl testified that the decreases in water levels in the AGES report were minimal given the scale of the pumping test. Earl testified that the drops in the two monitoring wells after the AGES pumping test may not have been caused by the pumping and do not necessarily suggest that there was a groundwater reversal. Rather, according to Earl, the water level drops could have been caused by a wide variety of factors other than a reversal in groundwater direction. Earl related that there is no way to tell from the AGES study that the water drops were in fact caused by a reversal in groundwater flow and not by these other potential forces. 26 Earl detailed a number of factors that could account for the drop in the monitoring wells. For example, he testified that seasonal changes or earth tides could have resulted in the water decreases. Earl further testified that changes in sunlight, passage of a cold or warm front, groundwater recharge events (i.e., proximity to streams or lakes where levels are rising and falling), as well as man-made influences such as nearby pumping wells and passing railroad trains, could have caused the water levels to drop as they did. In addition, he stated that some combination of those forces also may have been responsible for the drop in the monitoring wells. 27 Earl also criticized the AGES study for not observing and recording the trend in water levels in the wells before conducting the pumping test. He stated that the potential causes for the water level decreases that he identified would have been reflected in data about the trend of the wells' water levels before the test. Earl testified that without this pre-pumping data, there is no way to discern whether it was the pumping test or other factors which caused the drops in the water levels of the monitoring wells. Hence, according to Earl, the AGES pumping test results are inconclusive. 28 Earl's testimony raised questions about why the water level dropped, questions that, in his view, could have been answered had the AGES study investigated the pre-pumping water level trends in the monitoring wells. In this way, Earl's testimony provided substantial support for the district court's conclusion that the Authority had not established by a preponderance of the evidence that the pumping during the AGES test (rather than other factors) caused the water level decreases. The fact that Earl himself did not establish what caused the water levels to drop is inconsequential since Tonolli Canada, as a defendant, did not have the burden of showing the exact cause of the drop in water levels. That burden was on the Authority. 29 In addition to the questions Earl raised about the conclusiveness of the AGES study, his testimony also provided affirmative support for the district court's conclusion that the Tonolli site and the Authority's wells are hydrogeologically isolated. Based on the data used in the AGES study as well as a topographical survey of the area under the Tonolli site conducted by Tonolli Canada, Earl concluded that there is a groundwater divide separating the Tonolli site and the Authority's wells. Earl also testified that because the Authority's wells draw their water from a very deep aquifer which is in a discharge zone, the Authority's wells cannot be contaminated from activity occurring at the surface level. 30 Earl also raised questions about the Authority's interpretations of the water quality data gleaned from the AGES study. Specifically, Earl testified that there was no reason to believe that the VOCs and lead detected in the wells after the AGES test came from the Tonolli site. Earl pointed to other possible sources, such as sediments from nearby Tippets Pond and Lake Hauto, which contain lead as demonstrated by samples taken by Tonolli Canada, and which serve as recharge sources for the aquifer that supplies water for the Authority's wells. Moreover, Earl explained that because there were VOC's present in the wells before the pumping test even began, there clearly is an upgradient source of VOCs which most likely was the source of the additional VOCs during the full-scale pumping during the AGES test. 31 We are satisfied that Earl's testimony regarding the water quality data adequately supports the district court's finding that the lead and the higher levels of VOC's did not come from the Tonolli site. 6 In addition, Earl's testimony as to the hydrogeological separation of the Tonolli site also supports the district court's findings regarding the water quality data, because the hydrogeological separation of the Authority's wells and the Tonolli site means, by definition, that the higher level of contaminants could not have come from the Tonolli site. 7