Post 7.

Another great follow-along I got do was with a project manager who was conducting preliminary tests at a site that was still in the planning stage. Contamination had been determined and now the team was evaluating the extent of the contamination and the best approach to cleaning it up. Although the results from these tests form the basis of most of the major decisions regarding clean-up, I discovered that a whole lot more goes into these projects that simply producing a few numbers. During this follow along I witnessed how teams measure the parameters of a contamination site using something called an auger flight. It's a crazy piece of machinery! These giant drills (for lack of a better word) punch holes hundreds of feet into the ground. Depending on the type of material they are drilling through this can take hours or sometimes days. They then go through a series of procedures for placing the measuring tools into the holes and sealing them back up so that they can take readings over the next few days or weeks. This job takes an incredible amount of technical skill and ingenuity...they often run into hang-ups along the way and have to come up with creative ways of completing their tasks.

Although this sounds like simply construction work, it has much larger implications. The measurements that they take will be used to construct a plan that will ultimately prevent the contamination from spreading and possibly contaminating surrounding areas which in some cases can be neighborhoods, water supplies, or other public places. So much behind the scenes work is done on these projects that often goes completely unnoticed by the public. But I guess that's the job of the public servant.