The Unexpected pwn
Jan. 9th, 2008 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hertinknessNo, this is not about the upcoming performance review, though I feel more confident about that than I think I normally would. I guess defending a thesis does that to you. That which doesn't kill me...
This is about the reason why I got into environmental work in the first place.
When I was growing up, one of the biggest battles I recall my parents and I fighting was to stop the permitting of a landfill in my hometown. Long story short, we lost (and I wish I knew that zoning laws would help back when that was an option), and the dump is now stinking to high heaven. They're doing quarterly groundwater sampling to determine if there's any impact. They're also holding public meetings, which my mom attends regularly.
Yesterday, the company spoke about groundwater sampling, and my mom, this little old retired schoolteacher asked for the results. The company rep said, "They're kind of complicated."
She insisted upon it. The company rep said, "Well, I can email them to you, but I'm warning you they're kind of scary," thereby proving what a smarmy bastard he is.
"Oh, I've got someone to talk to about it," she replied. I imagine that she did it with a smile.
Tonight, I fed her a list of questions to ask the guy at the next meeting. What is their sampling method? What is the yield on the monitoring wells? How many well volumes do they purge? Are they micropurging? Have they done any kind of aquifer testing to determine contaminant fate? When are they going to do it? What are they sampling for? Hopefully, if she gets the answers to these, I'll be able to tell if there's anything funky going on, and if there is, I can take the next step. That will involve something unpleasant being dropped on the company from a great height, with the resources of my big company behind it if I can talk The Boss into making a proposal to the citizens group that opposes the landfill (moral high ground + paying job= Happy Angry Geologist).
To say the least, it'll be amusing to see the look on the guy's face when my mom hits him with this. I do the muahahah thing every time I imagine it.
Half of me wants to fly home for a day just to watch. The other half is voting for asking mom to take pictures.
This is about the reason why I got into environmental work in the first place.
When I was growing up, one of the biggest battles I recall my parents and I fighting was to stop the permitting of a landfill in my hometown. Long story short, we lost (and I wish I knew that zoning laws would help back when that was an option), and the dump is now stinking to high heaven. They're doing quarterly groundwater sampling to determine if there's any impact. They're also holding public meetings, which my mom attends regularly.
Yesterday, the company spoke about groundwater sampling, and my mom, this little old retired schoolteacher asked for the results. The company rep said, "They're kind of complicated."
She insisted upon it. The company rep said, "Well, I can email them to you, but I'm warning you they're kind of scary," thereby proving what a smarmy bastard he is.
"Oh, I've got someone to talk to about it," she replied. I imagine that she did it with a smile.
Tonight, I fed her a list of questions to ask the guy at the next meeting. What is their sampling method? What is the yield on the monitoring wells? How many well volumes do they purge? Are they micropurging? Have they done any kind of aquifer testing to determine contaminant fate? When are they going to do it? What are they sampling for? Hopefully, if she gets the answers to these, I'll be able to tell if there's anything funky going on, and if there is, I can take the next step. That will involve something unpleasant being dropped on the company from a great height, with the resources of my big company behind it if I can talk The Boss into making a proposal to the citizens group that opposes the landfill (moral high ground + paying job= Happy Angry Geologist).
To say the least, it'll be amusing to see the look on the guy's face when my mom hits him with this. I do the muahahah thing every time I imagine it.
Half of me wants to fly home for a day just to watch. The other half is voting for asking mom to take pictures.
