Dave Cook Speaking on Environmental Ethics at Seattle University on November 7

Principal Geologist Dave Cook will be speaking about environmental ethics to an engineering class at Seattle University on November 7. Dave will cover how to understand an environmental professional’s role when project and land use decisions will ultimately affect others. He’ll cover scenarios that come up during environmental project work that don’t always have a blueprint for how to handle, such as:

  • Dealing with landslide risk – how to notify someone to leave their home?
  • If, how, and when to respond to public and media comments critical of ongoing project work.
  • What dictates when, how and why to report a contaminant release - it isn't always a clear cut case.

He’ll also cover current events including the South Dakota pipeline and Flint Michigan water crisis.

Landmark Hirst Water Rights Decision Increases Burden on Counties to Evaluate Exempt Well Impacts

In a landmark decision on the use of exempt wells and county responsibility for evaluating impacts from the wells on instream flows, the Washington Supreme Court (Court) recently overturned a lower court decision in the Whatcom County v. Hirst case.  The lower court decision appealed in this case essentially directed local governments to follow the Washington Department of Ecology’s (Ecology) interpretation of instream flow rules in determining water availability. This Court decision rescinds that direction, noting that the Growth Management Act (GMA) places an independent responsibility to ensure water availability on counties, not on Ecology.  The decision also noted that the fact that county provisions are wholly consistent with Ecology’s regulations does not, by itself, render them consistent with GMA requirements.

The Ruling Constrains Exempt Well Use in Washington

Under existing law (RCW 90.44.050), the groundwater permit exemption allows, for a limited number of purposes, water users to construct and develop groundwater wells for small quantities of groundwater without obtaining a permit.  According to the new ruling, there is no question that a permit-exempt well may not infringe on an earlier established right to water, including instream flow rules, under the doctrine of prior appropriation.  The Court also found it contradictory that Ecology must consider the effect of groundwater appropriations on minimum flows when issuing water right permits, while counties did not consider these same impacts when issuing building permits with exempt wells.  This means that in a basin with adopted minimum instream flows, any new exempt well or exempt well drilled after adoption of flows may be subject to interruption when flows are not met, rendering these wells legally unreliable as a continuous domestic water source.

The Ruling Increases County Responsibility for Water Availability Determinations under GMA

In addition, this ruling imposes a strict standard for county review of cumulative impairment from exempt wells due to rural development.  Aspect has been working with Spokane, Stevens, and Pend Oreille Counties to establish a water bank for the Little Spokane River watershed.  A water bank is a mechanism that facilitates transfer of water rights between sellers and buyers through use of the state’s trust water right program, using banked water as mitigation for new water uses. The three counties anticipated that use of unmitigated exempt wells would continue to be more restricted in the state and proceeded with water bank development to proactively address this concern, along with addressing other future water needs in the basin. The recent ruling in Whatcom County v. Hirst only increases the need for local jurisdictions to be directly involved with proactive water resource management.

Dave Cook Speaks and Moderates at GBA, Urban Land Institute, and IEEE Humanitarian Events

Aspect’s principal geologist, Dave Cook, is participating in several urban energy and humanitarian events this week in Seattle.

On Wednesday October 12th in Seattle, Dave moderates a panel of local experts discussing sharing energy sources between facilities and throughout communities. The discussion is sponsored by the Urban Land Institute of which Dave is a member.  The panel discussion is titled, “District Energy, What’s stopping us from sharing in the sharing economy?” will seek to answer the questions, “What is keeping us from sharing and conserving energy, reducing carbon footprints, and revolutionizing how we pay to heat, cool, and power our downtown core and neighborhoods?” Learn more about the presentation HERE.

On Saturday October 15th in Seattle, Dave will be at the Geoprofessional Business Associations’ Fall Conference in Seattle. As the 2016 Board President of the 15,000-person volunteer organization Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB-USA), he will discuss how EWB-USA responded to recovery efforts after the 2015 Nepal earthquakes, and how geoprofessionals can contribute their skills at EWB-USA. Learn more HERE.

Later on that Saturday, Dave will be the Keynote Speaker at IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference in Seattle again discussing the importance of EWB-USA’s work and how professionals can engage in the humanitarian world. Learn more HERE.

Join Aspect at the NEBC 2016 Northwest Remediation Conference

Aspect is once again a proud sponsor and participant in this year’s Northwest Remediation Conference held October 4th in Seattle, WA. For session 2A, “Implementing Combined Remedies,” Senior Remediation Engineer, Adam Griffin, will discuss how, why, and with what results remediation technologies have been deployed at complex sites.  Later in the day, join Carla Brock, Aspect’s Associate Geologist, as she moderates a panel of remediation professionals and regulators on the challenges they face when mitigating surface water contamination.

The conference is presented by the Northwest Environmental Business Council, “a regional trade association representing leading service and technology firms who are working to protect, restore, and sustain the natural and built environment.”

Learn more about the conference HERE. 

Tim Flynn talks Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) at the NGWA Conference in Portland

This September 8-9 the National Groundwater Association will host the “Connecting the Dots…Groundwater, Surface Water, and Climate Connections” conference in Portland, Oregon.  This 2-day conference will focus on the connections between groundwater, surface water, and climate in the area encompassing Washington, Idaho, Oregon, northern California, and British Columbia.

Aspect’s president and principal hydrogeologist Tim Flynn will present on day two of the conference in the Drought Resilience/Water Availability/Scarcity portion of the conference. He will be presenting on Aquifer Storage and Recovery and will examine the challenges and opportunities of ASR. Learn more about the conference HERE.

Enloe Dam Water Rights Case Upheld—Permitting Path Stays More Certain for Applicants

The Washington State Court of Appeals ruled last week that the Department of Ecology appropriately conditioned the approval of a water right permit for the Public Utility District No. 1 of Okanogan County's (PUD) hydroelectric project on Enloe Dam. 

The case revolved around the public interest test in RCW 90.03.290, and the application of the protection of aesthetics of public waters in RCW 90.54.020, as well as a previously-issued 401 Certification under the Clean Water Act.  The Court of Appeals upheld the conditioned approval of the water right permit with a 5-year adaptive monitoring plan to evaluate the aesthetics of different flow levels over the dam and falls.  Because the final flow levels necessary to protect aesthetics were not known at the time of permit issuance, the appellants (Center for Environmental Law and Policy, American Whitewater, and North Cascades Conservation Council) argued that Ecology did not have authority to approve the permit.  The Court of Appeals disagreed.  “We conclude that Ecology had authority to issue a ROE, and water permit, which was subject to a condition to ascertain information that was not available prior to proceeding with the Project. Ecology did not abuse its discretion in determining that the PUD's water permit should issue subject to the stated conditions.” 

This is an important finding in water right permitting because not all conditions of a project can be known with clarity at the time of applying for a water right permit.  Ecology’s ability to approve a permit, subject to verification of conditions or adaptation-provisions for changing conditions, is important authority to retain.  A copy of the decision can be viewed at:  https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/748416.pdf. Contact Dan Haller (509.895.5462) at Aspect Consulting with any questions. 

Forecasting the Future of Water Use in the Columbia River Basin

Changing climate will affect availability and demand for water in Washington's Columbia River Basin, and will influence how water will be managed in the basin over the next 20 years, according to a new report being prepared for the Washington Department of Ecology's Office of Columbia River. 

The Columbia River Long Term Water Supply and Demand Forecast project team is preparing an updated long-term water supply and demand forecast for the Washington Department of Ecology, Office of Columbia River and would like your feedback. The Forecast team includes researchers from Washington State University, University of Utah, Aspect Consulting, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. This forecast, updated for the Washington Legislature every five years, provides a generalized, system-wide assessment of how future environmental and economic conditions are likely to change water supply and demand by 2035.

The team will host a series of FREE public workshops June 21st – June 23rd in Tri-Cities, Wenatchee and Spokane.  The purpose of these workshops is to share preliminary results from the 2016 Water Supply and Demand Forecast, provide an opportunity for public feedback and interaction, and gather input on possible improvements for the 2021 Forecast. (SEE POSTER BELOW FOR DETAILS)

What to Expect:

  • Presentations from researchers introducing the methodologies used and preliminary results found
  • Q&A sessions with the researchers
  • Open house, with time to explore results further and provide comments on the draft results

Technical Exchange: Talking Cleanup Levels

Cleanup levels are the beating heart of any environmental remediation project. They drive the approach, the cost, and the schedule for project closure. Yet, the path towards cleanup level selection is murky – one size does not fit all. In Washington State alone there are a variety of cleanup levels – set through the Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA) – and selecting the correct one for a site requires a sound understanding of site-specific data, the science of how the media at the site exists and moves, the pertinent regulatory requirements, and what, ultimately, is the site going to be redeveloped? If so, for industrial purposes? For livable space?

At a recent Technical Exchange, senior hydrogeologist Dana Cannon tackled this knotty topic in an open discussion of what we talk about when we talk about cleanup levels. Questions asked and answered included:

  • What cleanup levels apply in what situations?
  • What exposure pathways do different cleanup levels address?
  • MTCA and other ARARs: Where do cleanup levels come from, and what’s an ARAR, anyway?
  • Method A cleanup levels: when can I use these? Do I want to?
  • Method B cleanup levels: now it gets complicated.
  • Method C cleanup levels: when to I get to use these?

Three overarching points rung true throughout the discussion:

  1. Get to Know CLARC. It pays big dividends to get familiar with the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Cleanup Level and Risk Assessment (CLARC) database and MTCA.
  2. Exposure pathways. Understand the human and ecological exposure pathways for a given site. From there, cleanup level selection becomes clearer.
  3. Strategy. Strategy means knowing the site conditions backwards and forwards, knowing the end goal for the site after cleanup, and understanding which cleanup levels apply. Knowing how to approach CLARC relative to site exposure pathways puts you ahead of the game.

Too Much Flare, Not Enough Gas

Aspect’s Peter Bannister, along with King County’s Dan Swope, will co-present at the 2016 Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) Northwest Regional Symposium in Vancouver, BC on Friday April 8th.

As landfills age and landfill gas generation inevitably declines, landfill operators face the problem of using legacy collection and control systems that weren’t designed to harvest dwindling amounts of landfill gas. Simply continuing operation of these oversized systems is often not practical or financially prudent.

Peter and Dan will present the Enumclaw Landfill case-study and focus on how landfill gas forensics has proven to be an innovative solution to coaxing better performance out of existing landfill gas collection and control systems, and designing downscaled systems, at closed landfills in King County, Washington State.

Peter and Dan will present Friday morning at 10:30AM in technical session 6B – Advances in Landfill Gas Management.  Learn more about the conference HERE and view the agenda HERE.

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

Evaluating Ground Movement from Outer Space: Annaliese Eipert Discusses InSAR satellite technology at AEG meeting

Many of the questions Aspect’s infrastructure staff have on a project revolve around soil movement. We may need to know how much a building’s foundation has settled, or if a steep slope is starting to fail, or the furthest extent of a sinkhole. A new technology— interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR)—is helping us gather better information to answer those questions. Project Geologist Annaliese Eipert will share Aspect’s local experience with InSAR at the monthly Association of Environmental & Engineering Geologists (AEG) meeting in Seattle on Thursday, March 17.

InSAR measures the changes in ground surface elevation by recording the distance between the ground and a satellite over time, and it does so with accuracy down to the millimeter. It can pierce through rainclouds and cover of night to document conditions without interruption. Unlike Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, which covers conditions for a fixed point, InSAR can collect data on the movement of large parcels of land. It also acts as a time machine of sorts, with the ability to study data gathered in years past. InSAR’s functionality gives us more detailed data to find problematic changes in ground surface and formulate appropriate recommendations and solutions.

InSAR image showing accumulated ground motion in the greater Tacoma area. Image courtesy of TRE-Altamira.

Annaliese’s presentation will focus on how we used InSAR data to help determine the cause of an approximately five-mile-long swath of widespread apparent uplift on the order of one inch in the Federal Way area that was observed between 2007 and 2009. She will also explore the potential causes of observed subsidence along Puget Lowland river valleys and of ground surface deformation in general, as well as the applications and limitations of using InSAR analysis for geologic and geotechnical engineering investigations in comparison to high-resolution GPS and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology.

Annaliese will be co-presenting with Giacomo Falorni from TRE-Altamira, a globally recognized firm with comprehensive expertise in applying InSAR data to large infrastructure projects. Giacomo will provide an introduction to the technology itself and discuss how it has been used on infrastructure and environmental projects around the world. 

Aspect’s Owen Reese and Tom Atkins presenting at NEBC’s Stormwater Conference on March 9th

On March 9th in Tacoma, the Northwest Environmental Business Council (NEBC) will host the 9th annual Managing Stormwater Conference in Washington. This focused one-day conference is Washington's leading stormwater event, convening regulated companies, governments, solution providers, and regulators to share solutions to the challenges of stormwater management. The conference’s educational sessions will cover both basics and advanced topics in the areas of industrial stormwater management, construction stormwater management, municipal stormwater management, and cross-cutting issues. Aspect is proud to be a premier sponsor of the conference. Aspect’s stormwater engineers Tom Atkins and Owen Reese will also be contributing to two of the educational sessions. 

Tom will present a case study in the Industrial Treatment Project Showcase Session; his presentation will highlight deployment of a customized treatment system that successfully met tight time constraints, overcame challenging site conditions, and achieved NPDES permit requirements.

Owen will moderate the cross-cutting issues session on the “Impact of Third-Party Lawsuits”. This session will discuss Clean Water Act lawsuits by outside parties as a de facto enforcement tool for stormwater permit compliance, walk through the process of a typical citizen suit,  and share what can be learned from the outcome of these cases. 

Learn more about the conference HERE.

Icicle Creek Watershed Project Launches SEPA Scoping

Over the last three years, the 212-square-mile Icicle Creek watershed in Chelan County has been the focus of significant evaluation to address chronic water supply issues.

Recently, the Icicle Creek Work Group (IWG)--composed of a diverse set of local, state and federal agencies, tribes, irrigation and agricultural interests and environmental organizations--reached a key project milestone with the launching of State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) scoping for a diverse range of projects to help fish, farms, and flows. The purpose of SEPA is twofold: it encourages public involvement in selecting project alternatives and it ensures environmental values are considered by state and local agencies before committing to action.

The proposed projects run the gamut from retrofitting existing reservoirs in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness to benefit instream flow to designing new infrastructure at the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery to improve fish populations. In addition, proposed conservation efforts—to improve irrigation and domestic use efficiencies--look to promote both instream and out of stream benefits.

The timeline for the SEPA process will run over the next 90 days, followed by the kick-off of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) evaluation, which will take place over the next two years.

Learn more about the proposed projects here.

Environmental Data Management Done Right: EQuIS in Action

Aspect’s Data + Mapping team uses time-saving tools to streamline our data analysis and processing to inform conclusions, design, and reporting—at the center of which is the environmental data management system EQuIS. Having long been leaders in the field of environmental chemistry data management, we have recently migrated from home-built, custom database systems to this industry standard. Our expertise with this powerful software has been bolstered by Senior Staff Data Scientist Lea Beard, who joined Aspect last summer. She is an EQuIS expert who turns her deep analytical chemistry and data management skills into efficiencies and insights for Aspects project teams and clients.

Why we use EQuIS:

  • It is reliable and stable, ensuring the integrity of our clients’ valuable data.
  • It helps us to process, review, manage, and analyze data as rapidly as our projects move.
  • It enables us easily tailor reporting outputs to the nuanced needs of a project.
  • It ensures adherence to standards and helps us to maintain consistency across projects.
  • It safeguards our data’s compliance with environmental regulatory standards.

Created by EarthSoft, EQuIS is optimized to handle a broad-range of environmental data—particularly environmental chemistry data. EQuIS gives us the “brain” to formulate answers to the questions its users may ask, such as:

  • How many fish passed through this culvert last year?
  • To what extent have the concentrations of chlorinated solvents in groundwater responded to the remediation system operation?
  • Was the Reporting Detection Limit for Lead low enough to meet the Quality Assurance Project Plan?
  •  What were water level elevations in this monitoring well network from 2010 to 2015?

Having this framework already in place saves us and our clients time and money that would otherwise be spent building or customizing software to meet ever-changing needs. EQuIS also contains built-in solutions for common problems encountered in environmental reporting. It’s been put to the test by a wide cross-section of users—consultants, public agencies, corporations, laboratories—who have contributed their feedback and worked out bugs as they go. With a diverse group of users informing how it works for them, EQuIS is able to keep up with the state of environmental reporting.

Case Study in How EQuIS Simplifies Our Data Collection

Our staff heads out to a project site, tablet loaded with Fulcrum in hand, and begins to collect data. When the day is done, they send samples to the lab for analysis. Taking the field observations and measurements from Fulcrum and the analytical results from the lab, Lea feeds these two data sets alongside one another into EQuIS. With these normally separate datasets stored together in one spot, EQuIS makes it easy to access and search. Automated alerts and reporting based on preset parameters (perhaps a particular contaminant level has been detected or exceeded) means that project teams can make timely decisions about their next round of data collection or further investigation/inquiry. Reversing the direction of the data, Lea can then feed those results back into Fulcrum, sending it out to the team in the field, ensuring they have the most up-to-date information at the site. In the past this information exchange would have taken a week, but with EQuIS and Fulcrum, it takes mere hours.

EQuIS weaves together the data streams and creates meaningful output.

A Helping Hand Sets Clients on the Right Data Management Path

While EQuIS has the power and flexibility to make managing data easy, it can be a bit daunting to learn and implement. Lea helps guide clients through the set-up process – deciding on reference values, figuring out which lab electronic data deliverable formats to use, building reporting standards – forming the framework of their ongoing data management needs. From there, Aspect can help clients create software customizations to make summing groups of analytes (such as polychlorinated biphenyls) straightforward and reproducible, and offer assistance on making data easy to export into Ecology’s Environmental Information Management (EIM) database. Our in-house experience with EQuIS allows us to help clients tell their project’s story clearly.

Having someone like Lea at the helm of a program like EQuIS allows us to efficiently collect, manage, and report on data, ensuring that the rest of our team can focus on what they’re best at: science and strategic advice for our clients.

See Aspect at the Yakima Ag Expo January 7th and 8th

Come visit us at our booth at the Yakima Ag Expo on January 7th and 8th at the Yakima Valley Sundome. Members of our water resources team will be providing one-on-one water rights evaluations for conference attendees. We’ll be there to answer your questions about current water right trends in Washington state, and handing out some free goodies as well.

A Look Inside Vapor Intrusion

When volatile chemicals have the potential to migrate from contaminated groundwater or soil into an overlying building—i.e., vapor intrusion (VI)—a whole new layer of complexity is added to environmental remediation projects. In Washington State over the last several years, vapor intrusion has been under increasing regulatory scrutiny. An understanding of vapor intrusion typically revolves around a few core questions:

  • How to accurately evaluate it?
  • How to keep abreast of what’s required, given that the regulatory guidance is constantly evolving?
  • How to protect human health during and after site cleanup?

During Aspect’s monthly technical exchange series, Eric Marhofer, Dave Heffner, Carla Brock, Eric Geissinger, and Kirsi Longley of our environmental team gave a roundtable presentation of their collective experience at assessing vapor intrusion at well over 100 sites.

Read More

New Geologic Map Unveils Port Ludlow's Underground

Aspect Staff Geologist Jesse Favia is a co-author of the recently published geologic map of the Port Ludlow area in Kitsap and Jefferson Counties. The map—officially the Geologic Map of the Port Ludlow and southern half of the Hansville 7.5-minute quadrangles, Kitsap and Jefferson Counties, Washington, Map Series 2015-02 by M. Polenz, J. G. Favia, I. J. Hubert, G. L. Paulin, and R. Cakir— was a joint effort between the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the United States Geological Survey. Much like a dictionary is an official reference point for language, geologic maps are the official references in the field of geology, and it is thought an honor to have a hand in creating one.

Jesse worked on the map through an internship with Michael Polenz at DNR. They started in July of 2014, when Jesse, Michael, and Ian Hubert set out to map the quadrangle, which covers Port Ludlow and about 50 square miles around it that includes parts of Kitsap and Jefferson County. The group spent the summer exploring the land—sometimes in a truck on rural roads, sometimes on foot through the forest, sometimes by boat floating by bluffs on the coastline. They looked for cut banks and slopes, any place where soils were exposed and allow them a peek below the ground surface. Some days were slow; some days they’d stumble upon a huge exposure where the layers of soil deposits were clearly visible and they could easily take samples to date and analyze.

When fall arrived, Jesse spent from November 2014 to May 2015 in Olympia conducting the “mini science experiment” that would ultimately make the map. They ran lab tests on the approximately 200 soil samples they collected, worked with DNR’s editing section to display the deposits, and wrote the corresponding report.

The result of their efforts created an updated geologic map that will be used by everyone from government agencies to local engineering firms to inform them about what’s underground around Port Ludlow. 

Click image below for full resolution. 

Dan Haller to Present on Water Right Mitigation at Seattle Law Seminar on November 6

Aspect’s Dan Haller will speak on a panel to discuss water rights mitigation at the 8th Annual Water Rights Transfers Seminar in Seattle.

Mitigation—i.e., offsetting impacts from a new water right by either trading water (in kind mitigation) or providing habitat improvement or investment (out of kind mitigation)—is THE topic in Washington water circles because of the Washington State Supreme Court’s recent Foster vs. Ecology decision. This groundbreaking ruling overturned Ecology’s permit approval, thus cancelling the City of Yelm’s water right permit. This timely panel discussion will discuss recent case law and what it means for future water right permitting strategy.

Learn more or register for the conference HERE.