Optimal Cleanup.

An aquifer is contaminated and the regulator has set a deadline. You have a budget and a blank site plan. Design the cleanup that hits the target for the least money.

✎ Adaptable template⏱ 2–3 class sessions👥 Teams🏆 Scored & ranked📈 Intermediate → Advanced

The objective

Drive contaminant concentrations below the regulatory limit by the deadline — at the lowest lifecycle cost.

What you learn

Pump-and-treat design, the diminishing returns of cleanup in heterogeneous aquifers, and why lifecycle cost — not peak pumping rate — decides the winner.

How it works

Open the contaminated site and review the plume and the cleanup target.
Place extraction wells and set a pumping schedule; design a monitoring network to prove compliance.
Run forward in time — watch capture zones and lifecycle cost accumulate with every decision.
Iterate to balance speed against cost, then submit your design.

How you win

Designs that hit the cleanup target by the deadline are ranked by total lifecycle cost — wells, energy, treatment, and monitoring combined.

Score = target met by deadline (pass / fail) → then rank by total lifecycle cost

Constraints

Regulatory concentration limit and cleanup deadline
Capital + operating budget
Monitoring network must demonstrate compliance

Deliverable

Remediation design (wells, pumping schedule, monitoring)
A lifecycle-cost breakdown
Your compliance argument

Make it yours — for instructors

Every number here is a starting point. Change the site, the budget, the deadline, or the scoring rule to fit your course — then publish your version to the instructor network as a new seed problem for others to adopt and adapt.

Before you start

New to this? Watch the Groundwater Remediation concept lesson first.

Launch IGW-NET — start the challenge →Watch the concept lesson