Case Study: Sea-Tac Airport Groundwater Study

Client: Port of Seattle Location: King County (Seattle), WA Contact for information management projects: Gayle Thompson

Project Background & Challenges

The Port of Seattle is under an Agreed Order from Ecology to conduct an area-wide groundwater study at Sea-Tac International Airport. A major task of this project has been developing a comprehensive database and GIS to manage groundwater and environmental data in the 35-square-mile project area.

Solution

As part of our ongoing relationship with the Port of Seattle, we developed tools to manage and visualize information gathered from the mid 1940s to the present. Data from over 3,500 subsurface locations has been identified and integrated into a dynamic GIS database. Using SQL architecture, we can easily query the data to reveal the thickness of geologic units underlying the airport and surrounding areas for use in an area-wide groundwater model. The database has been essential to the Third Runway permitting.