Stormwater, the early years (7/10/2023)

In a previous post I mentioned that I once had the ambition to write a book on stormwater and erosion and sediment control (and I may still do it). This idea was a natural outflow of the job I did pre-retirement. The following post is part of an introductory section that I wrote for the book. Ince I lifted from a chapter, I have changed it a little to make it a narrative for you all to follow and understand. I left the literature citations out, feel free to contact me, if you are interested in them. So here I go:

Very early, North American settlement history may have followed similar patterns as were encountered in Europe of the Middle Ages. The settling population in North America initially concentrated in towns and villages for mutual protection from outlaws and native Indian population. This is evident by some of the older larger urban centers on the east coast. In addition, large tracts of land were deforested very early on in settlement history for the use of timber (building materials) and the growth of cash crops, in particular tobacco. A 17th century document in the historic town of Williamsburg describes that climbers of the church spire in town (or what is now Colonial Williamsburg) were able to see the York River to the north and the James River to the south, a feat that is impossible nowadays because of the regrowth of the forest in the area. The peninsula appeared to have completely deforested, mostly for the growing of tobacco at that time.

The cartographer Lewis Evans observed the same thing when he reported in 1750 about the deforestation and conversion to agriculture land that had already greatly altered the hydrology and clarity of streams and creeks in the Piedmont of Northern Virginia:

"When the country was cover'd with Woods, and the Swamps with brush, the rain that fell was detained by these interruptions, and so had time to insinuate into the Earth, and contribute to the springs and runs. But now the country is clear'd, the rain as fast as it falls is hurried into the rivers, and washes away the earth and soil of our Naked Fields."

 

The reports by Evans were only the beginning. Human caused accelerated erosion increased steadily as is shown in a recent study by Kemp et al (2020) who conclude that European settlement of North America during the past century has resulted in the movement in as much sediment that natural processes can move in 700 to 3000 years. They estimated that geologic sediment production which had been relatively stable for the past 40,000 years increased 10-fold as a result of European settlement and the rapid expansion of agriculture and river modification seen throughout the continent.

So, what are currently the main sources of sediment the waterways in more developed nations? It was reported that while agriculture practices generate considerable amounts of sediment by way of erosion; we now estimate that areas cleared for construction are able to generate the equivalent of many decades of sediment in one year compared to agricultural uses (let me know if you are interested in the source). Research determined that construction can yield 140,000 tons of sediment per square mile per year, compared to 1000 tons from agriculture land and up to 500 tons from forested land in the Piedmont area of Maryland. In other words, construction is a major contributor producing 140 times more sediment than agriculture land per unit area (for example per acre or hectare). However, , there is so much more land being used for agriculture than actively being disturbed by construction activities.

On an interesting note, while sediment production increased at least 10-fold over historical times in North America during the last century, it was also observed that during the same period it seemed that less sediment reached the ocean. This was caused by the retention of the sediment by reservoirs that were constructed by human. Reservoirs served for the storage of drinking water and water for energy generation and irrigation. It has been estimated that a total of 1.4 ± 0.3 metric tons of sediment per year is retained by reservoirs world-wide. Siltation of these reservoirs will eventually greatly reduce the capacity, function, and usefulness of these structures. It appears that Indonesian rivers were a rare exception and that they deliver more sediment to the coastal areas than other rivers that they surveyed.

Here I’ll step away from my book chapter. I saw similar issues in Nepal where the land or better fertile soil was being carried away by runoff. The main reason was deforestation for agriculture. We often joked that a new island was being formed off the coast of Bangladesh. This island was formed from the sediment being carried by the rivers coming out of Nepal. The results in Nepal were the drying out of springs and dropping groundwater table, a phenomenon seen throughout areas that are being deforested.

I’ll end here, there are many posts where I discuss some of these items as well. Just look in the keywords for the words like stormwater, erosion, sediment, erosion and sediment control, runoff reduction and alike. If you like or enjoy what I wrote here, let me know and I’ll pull some additional material out of my writing.

Our daughter was in New Delhi, India these past few weeks and sent me this newspaper shot.  They had 6" (126 mm) of rain in the afternoon and it flooded the town.  Can you imagine all the impervious area in such a large city, it created havoc.

October travels and what's next (10/24/2022)

While I have been (or will be) teaching three different weeks this month, I only had one overnight trip. One trip was to Hampton, approximately 20 minutes from my home, and I am going to Richmond this week. Richmond is my home office, and although it is an hour and twenty minutes’ drive, I am not allowed to stay overnight, at least not on the boss. However last week I spent some time in Portsmouth, which is technically closer to home, but further away from the office.  Moreover, the traffic here in the Hampton Roads could make the commute 2 hours although it ordinarily may take only 35 or 40 minutes.  Hence, the need to stay overnight at that side of the tunnel. 

The Portsmouth class was not scheduled. We had some turnover at work, and I needed to pinch hit as you might call it. So, I spent 3 days helping to teach Erosion and Sediment Control Plan Review, a course I used to teach a lot, seven or more years ago. Naturally at the end of the day I need to come down and try some of the microbreweries on the path to my hotel, the Hilton in Suffolk. Both breweries were new to me.

On the first day I tried the MoMac brewing company. The beer is decent and the guy behind the bar was talkative which was great. I really enjoyed their Schwartz Beer. Their IPAs tastes good. All fine. It was here that I received the word that the assistant brewer from MoMac will becoming the brew master at one of my favorite microbreweries in my area: Capstan.

The second day was at Harbor Trail Brewing Company, not far from MoMac. Harbor Trail seems to be a very young establishment (3 months old), but boy, I love their black IPA and their regular IPA was good too. The girlfriend of the soon to-be new Capstan brew master was behind the bar, and he popped in as well, so I had a great time. Having to drive to the motel after teaching a full day, I don’t dare to drink much more than one beer and a small taster of the other.

This post serves a quick update on two breweries and my travels this month, so no literary masterpiece again. I have three more trips planned for November and December. Next month it will be Winchester and in December I will be going to Virginia Beach and back to Lynchburg. That will do it for the year. I am looking forward to Winchester. I have not been there since before COVID and I love strolling downtown and eating at some of the restaurants. Pre-COVID (four or so years ago) there wasn’t really a nice microbrewery with a good atmosphere in town (or at least I don't remember them). I remember two pizza joints with their own beer, but hopefully they have gone up in the world. I will report out.  Weather permitting, I tend to stop for a walk/hike either at Sky Meadows State Park or the State Arboretum, on the way out there.  I really love those two places.

At least there will be plenty to report about the other two towns. So, stay tuned my friends, the quest for the perfect microbrew, restaurants and just travel will continue.

The Schwarz Beer at MoMac was really tasty.  The had two IPAs that they would like you to compare.  Skeeter Juice and one for the Aussie name of mosquitos (Mozzie Juice).  Interestingly for me, I could only taste the Mozzie Juice which is made with Australian Hops on the tip of my tongue and no where else in my mouth.  I never had that with any other food or beverage.  A strange experience.

A view from the bar at Harbor Trail Brewing.  I really like this place.  Google maps had a difficult time putting me here since it is on a corner of an intersection.  Again some good beer here!

20 to 7-year storms (7/30/2021)

There was a report in one of the professional publications that I read that predicts that what we call in our profession 20-year storms are shifting and becoming 7-year storms. Now that is an interesting concept that I teach in my classes on stormwater, in particular in the class entitled “Where the Water Goes.” The class has a subtitle Hydrology for ESC and SW Inspectors. ESC stands for Erosion and Sediment Control and SW for Stormwater.

So, what does a x-year (24-hour) storm means and what do these values mean? I tell my students that those famous 100-year storms do not occur only once every 100 year. I remember well that in 2003 we had two 100-year storms in one week, followed the next week by hurricane Isabel, which dumped another 100-year storm in our area. As you can imagine that September the ephemeral ponds behind our home were full to the brim, a thing that usually only occurs in February. They are usually dry in the month of September. Those two 100-year storms in a row actually created a major issue during Isabel; the soil was saturated, and the trees were extremely unstable because of this. Trees were falling all over the place during the hurricane. I lost 13 trees in my back yard that day.

In a simple explanation, I tell my students that the concept of so many year storms is based on statistics. For example, a 100-year storm tells us that the storm has a likelihood of 1% (or 100%/100) of occurring any day of the year. A 20-year storm has a chance of occurring 5% (100%/20) any day of the year, and so on. Somehow, NOAA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, could not find a better name for this phenomenon than calling it a so-many-year storm. In particular, since if it occurred today, it has the same probability of occurring again tomorrow. So, although rare what happened in 2003 having three 100 year storms in two weeks, it was statistically explainable.

So, I looked at the data for my home. A 20-year 24-hour storm at my home dumps around 6.5 inches of rain or 165 mm in those 24 hours, according to NOAA. In the good old days, a 7-year storm drops 5 inches or 127 mm in the same 24 hours. In other words, as a result of climate change the 7-year storm at my home would increase 1.5 inches or almost 40 mm of rain. Surprise, this is something we are all experiencing, thunderstorms are increasingly getting stronger and more severe.

I realize this is only an example for one place, but in the past weeks we have seen similar examples in Germany, Belgium, Arizona, and China just to name a few where we are seeing that storms are getting increasingly severe and dumping more water. Naturally this is not helped by all the development around us and the imperviousness that we are creating in our watersheds. It all means more runoff and flooding. The problem on top of this is the imperviousness that we appear to have created and are increasingly creating in neighborhoods of disadvantaged racial minority groups.

Some of these things going on with our climate and our earth are most likely very difficult to reverse. We will have to learn to live with them and adapt to them. That is part of the job I do professionally. I am part of a group that teaches stormwater management. We teach designers, developers, and regulators that it is best to try to infiltrate all that stormwater, by minimizing the impervious areas such as parking lots and roads. We also tell them that they need to preserve the soil, not compact it, so that water can infiltrate. Plant trees and shrubs, minimize lawns. Trees and shrubs intercept rain in their canopies and often only 40% of the rain makes it down to the ground. Are my students listening? Some, few are. But we keep working on them. But we don’t get discouraged, it is the right thing to do.

This is a picture I took a few years ago of a rain garden/bioretention area in Charlottesville, Virginia.  We teach students that the placement of ponds like these help with the infiltration and cleanup of stormwater and hopefully reduce the flooding danger.

I am a trainer: The classes that I teach (11/13/2017)

If you are a regular visitor, by now you should know that I give day long workshops throughout the state of Virginia.  I do it for a living and in general I do on to two day-long workshops each week.  I will detail the workshops below, but first a brief explanation.

An updated photograph from 2019 during teleworking times.  I somehow lost the original pic.

We have a mandatory certification program for people working in Erosion and Sediment Control and in Stormwater Management.  In the distant past I used to be in charge of that program, and taught the certification classes.  However, the program was moved from one government department to another, and guess what?  I lost my job as manager of the program.  This is what usually happens with mergers, so it did not come as a surprise.  What surprised me was that they kept me, I was actually afraid of being laid-off or moved to a different job.  However, my current supervisor understood my love of course development, teaching, public speaking, and my life experience.  So, I am still allowed to do what I love to do these things: but especially teach.

Actually, one of the things I was asked to do was to step away from teaching the regular classes and to develop a number of classes that go deeper into the various subjects discussed in our certification classes.  We call these classes our Continuing Education classes; although the other day I called them the Special Ed. classes.  In my classes I stay away from my political opinion (although my regular readers now I have one), I am somewhat of a lecturer, but try to be Socratic at times.  So what classes did I develop and teach?

Integration of Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Program – This was the first course I developed.  It dealt with the transition from one department to another and the adoption of the then new stormwater management regulations.  I talked about how the two laws and regulations interacted and complemented each other.  Many of the Erosion and Sediment Control professionals were all the sudden faced with having to deal with enforcing the new Stormwater regulations and having to deal with a new State agency.  This was a very intense 6-hour class; it also introduced a lot of controversial new regulatory issues.

Plan Review Using the Older Standards – Since the adoption of the new Stormwater Management Regulations there were a group of older (grandfathered) stormwater structures that needed to be reviewed by folks who had never reviewed them before.  We teach the review of the new Low Impact Development (LID) Best Management Structures (BMPs) in our regular classes, so this class was for the review of some of the older more traditional ones.  This was another intense 6-hour class.

Erosion and Sediment Control Inspector Refresher Class – Everyone needs a refresher class so now and then; to go back and to hear it all again.  I end this class with a Bingo game.  This is a fun filled, very interactive 5.5-hour class.

Native Plants for Stormwater and Erosion and Sediment Control – Being a Plant Ecologist by training, this class was my first real hobby class.  I love doing this class and people seem to enjoy it as well.  I will be redesigning it this winter a bit, and will de-emphasize the law and regulations a bit and add more discussion about the various plants (that is what I also one of the comments in the evaluations of the class I received).  One or two people have an issue with me bringing up evolution and natural selection in this class.  So be it.  This is a very intense 6-hour class.

Applied Soils for Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Professionals – This is another one of my favorite courses.  I developed this with a dear friend of mine.  We taught it together until he left the department; and now I am on my own.  In this class I deal with soils in three ways.  I look at it from the agriculture (USDA) side, the hydrology side and the engineering (Unified Soil Classification) side.  Then I try to tie it in to our job in construction as it relates to erosion and stormwater management.  This is a great 5-hour class.

Wetlands for Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Professionals – This is not a class intended to turn people into wetland delineators.  While I worked as a delineator for over 15 years, that is not the intent of this class.  What I do in this class is teach inspectors and plan reviewers to recognize “red flags” and know what to do when they see them.  I also want them to know how to react to sediment releases in wetlands.  This past week I taught the last of this class in its current format.  I will be redesigning it and taking a lot of the discussion on law and regulations out of it and putting it on-line.  For the rest, I again want to make it more hands-on and show pictures of plant species (invasive and typical wetland species) to get people more in to it.  This is a 6 to 6.5-hour class.

 SWPPP Inspections – This is the most interactive class of the bunch, with a class exercise.  We discuss the development of a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan, the different elements and the inspection of a site for compliance with the SWPPP and the Pollution Prevention Plan (P2).  This is a great 5-hour class.

Where the water goes – A class subtitled “Hydrology for Inspectors.”  A class that deals with the flow of water on a construction site.  How water behaves itself on slopes, why it matters and what we do to mitigate for its effect.  We discuss how we manage the flow of water on a site and examine a lot of “how-not-to” photographs.  I love this 6-hour course.

Soil Amendments for Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Professionals – This is a 3-hour course divided into two parts.  The first part deals with the use of compost and fertilizers in the restoration after construction has been completed.  In the second part we discuss the use of special soil mixes for bio-retention areas.

Photography for Inspectors – This is also a 3-hour course that I usually do in combination with the previous course.  As readers of my blog may know, I am somewhat of a photographer and I have been trained in it.  I teach the do’s and don’ts for inspectors as well as some of the photographic theory. 

Finally, I am in the process of developing some more classes (no rest for the weary).  But it keeps my brain going, it keeps me young.  I often joke, that I roll out of my motel bed in the morning and look on my sign-in sheet what class I am teaching that day; for sure, never a boring day.

In addition to all these classes, I also do some workshops on request here and there that are hybrids between these classes.  As I tell my students, if you have ideas for classes let me know.

   

I will also entertain special requests to teach any of these classes or any workshop where ever you are.

Laws and regulations suck (no they don't) (11/18/2016)

It should not be a surprise that as a teacher of regulations it helps me to spend time out in the field to see how regulations that I teach are interpreted, implemented, and enforced.  So last Monday I spend a day with an inspector in a locality that will remain unnamed looking at construction sites in town to look at what the builders do to comply with our regulations.

Inspector Jan

I came away from a day in the field amazed by the huge difference I saw between individual projects.  Be assured the inspector was great and the town I was inspecting in was really good too; I had issues with the builders/contractors.  In one project the foreman was cooperative, friendly and wanted to work with us, while in the other project we were definitively his adversary and he just looked at us from a distance with angry face.  Later on I learned that our angry player treated others the same way; he does not cooperate and you need to threaten him with shutting down his project, before he grudgingly cooperates. His project looked horrible and was littered with violations.  When we visited they had just torn out some concrete because it had not been pored correctly, even there he had done a shitty job. 

This is supposed to keep the sediment in the next time it rains (and it was supposed to rain the evening after we visited).

It is amazing the difference between these individuals.  Some are so against the government telling them what to do, and they fight it all the way.  The result is that they have to comply anyway, but all the fighting will cost them project time and most likely money.  For one, time is money, but all the after the fact clean up, the slowing down of the project because they have to correct or repair things, and so on, will all cost them money.  It is all so short sighted, but they are all standing on their principle!  In a previous post I wrote about catching flies with honey, this guy just acted like an asshole, and that attracts attention too, but not the long-term attention he would like.  He will have a reputation with inspectors for the rest of his career.  He will have cost overruns and it will never be his fault; always those damn regulators; it will always be the government's fault, those laws and regulations.  

So why do people hate regulations?  If you believe in the Bible, it was Adam and Eve who were the first people that did not believe in the regulations that God put in front of them and gosh darn it, they took a bite from the apple.  This famous bite still reverberates all over and we are living with the consequences.  But from what I see some people have been against laws and regulations throughout history.  Revolutions have been fought over this problem.  I am no philosopher, but I think a lot of people feel that they are put in place to control them.  Wake up call, the laws and regulations have no one specific in mind.  But without them society would probably be chaotic, there would be no traffic rules, there would be pollution everywhere, there would be no one checking who was bringing what on to airplanes, you name it.  As you can see I can give plenty of examples of laws and regulations that are essential to our safety, our life and health. 

Ruben's depiction of Adam and Eve's temptation (this picture is hanging in the Prado Museum in Madrid)

In our current political climate you hear conservative saying that we need to get rid of regulations; and that is what that one foreman’s behavior essentially was pointing at.  He did not care about environmental regulations and you had to force him to comply.  But these conservatives are the first in line to pass stricter and heavier regulations on the use of marijuana, on abortion rights, on euthanasia, or the death penalty. 

So now you say: "I hate bad laws and regulations, but I like good ones."  But who is the judge?  It all depends on who we listen to.  It is often said that if a lie is repeated often enough we will start believing it is true.  So it is the political pundits that we listen to on the radio, on TV, on the internet and maybe even in those books that we read; they will eventually convince us what laws and regulations are good or bad for us. 

Brooke Berger wrote an interesting article in U.S. News and world Report in 2013 entitled: “Yes, Regulation Can Make Government Better.”  Regulations often fail because they are so complicated.  People don’t understand them or the reason behind them.  In my teaching, I have been a huge proponent of explaining why we have certain regulations and I still find resistance.  “Just teach the law and tell them to follow it,” I am told.  To me this makes it: us the educated elite versus the non-educated masses, much like what we have seen in the recent election.  Simplification and explanation of the intent of the laws and regulations should not be a partisan thing; I believe that you get better buy-in when people understand how things affect their life and wellbeing.  However, repeated lies and biased interpretations are not constructive; they pin us against each other and don't help society grow.

On being opportunistic, or “Being against the law, except when you need it.” (6/3/2016)

A discussion on one of the LinkedIn groups I am a member of sucked me into a rabbit hole that I call today's blog post (and yes I will share it with you a little later in this post).  It stirred something in me that I also about about in the classes that I teach. 

So often you hear people complain about (environmental) laws and regulations: that they are too restrictive; that these prevent the growth of businesses that they are regulating; that some laws tell people what they can or cannot do on their own land; and even make private property undevelopable.  Then there are times people hide behind the laws and regulations and don’t want to do anything extra or different or don't want to do more than the law requires them to do.  Doing more costs money; even when doing more makes more sense, or when it is better for the environment, or when it is more sustainable (read profitable) in the long run.  This is not only true in my job right now; I even see this is the current political environment.

Let me explain.  One of the classes I teach is a class on the use of plants in erosion and sediment control and in stormwater management.  I spoke about it in previous blog posts <here> and just a small mention <here>.  In this course I talk about non-native plants and the care we need to take that they do not become invasive.  In fact, as I also mention in class, Virginia’s Natural Heritage Group currently identifies 90 invasive plant species that threaten the natural areas in Virginia.  You can find the list by clicking <here>.

Galax, (Galax rodundifolia) a native species, all in bloom in the mountains right now

Now here comes the rub: we work from guidebooks that were written in 1992 and 1999.  They are somewhat out-of-date, in particular when it come to the understanding of what foreign plants eventually become invasive; it takes time to find that out.

Take the plant in the picture below, sericea lespedeza is a legume introduced from the far east.  It grows fast and forms these dense mats.  It was thought to be great in stabilizing construction sites and controlling erosion and sediments.  It was used in revegetation throughout the U.S. However, we found out that this plant is too aggressive and competitive; and does not allow other plants to become established.  Moreover, it is allelopathic, meaning that it gives of a chemical that prevents the germination and growth of other plant species.  I describe it as chemical warfare between plants (something I studied for my PhD).  This is why some states have wanted posters for this plant.  It is still listed in our handbook that was published in 1992 and since it is there, some builders are still insisting that they can use it on their property, even though they harm themselves and everybody around them in the short and long run.

Sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cunuata) a noxious weed that is still being recommended by the handbooks.

A Kansas State poster.

All the time I get people complaining either that the laws and regulations that these guidebooks are based on are too restrictive.  People are always trying to circumvent the law and the regulations; who are we, telling them what they can and cannot do on their property!  In other cases, people who design plans will copy whole pages out of our out-dated books and slap them on plans.  It is the easy way out, it does not require any thinking time and if it is in the book it must be OK, or so they think.  It is a great thing to hide behind even if it calls for the planting of invasive plant species like sericea lespedeza.  However, the minute we ask them to update their plant species list, they refuse, because that is going above and beyond what the guide books requires them to do, and they hide behind the law they so revile in almost all other cases.  Trying to get away with it and if you can't getting away with the minimum, opportunistic, but using the law in their advantage when they need it.  Not everybody does it of course but even one is too many.

This all came up in me during a discussion on LinkedIn on the potential environmental consequences of the great American wall that Donald Trump wants to build.  It is amazing to think about what would happen to things such as water flow, airflow to the migration of insects and animals or even seeds; maybe even people, just to name a few.  The discussion centered about all the permitting that would be required.  All federal projects need to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA and the question was if a President Trump would abide by this law.

This brought me back to just after 9/11.  I was working on Andrews Air Force Base as an environmental consultant.  Andrews AFB did not have a perimeter road at that time.  A perimeter road is a road at the inside of the entire fence that could be patrolled by the military police to keep intruders of the base.  This is very important, especially for a place like Andrews AFB, since it is the home of Air Force 1, the President’s plane.  So there I was, doing my job just after 9/11, when I noticed that they were frantically building a perimeter fence around Andrews AFB.  I was told that there was no permit for any of the work and they were tearing through wetlands and forests, which all needed a permit, and yes, go through the NEPA process (write an Environmental Assessment or an Environmental Impact Statement).  Being the (somewhat) naïve, but hungry consultant, I spoke with my contacts in the environmental office and offered my assistance and told them I could help them and get them an after the fact permit, probably very quickly.  He told me he would take it under advisement, and within an hour military police escorted my off Andrews AFB and I was told never to set foot on base again.  I eventually lost my job for the company that I was working for at the time, because of this incident.

Air Force 1.  (I stole this picture from the White House website)

 I guess this being above the law, whoever it is, bothers me.  Yes, Andrews AFB needed that perimeter road, and it was foolish that they never had one in the first place!  But more than that, I am so tired of people (companies) trying to break the law, doing the bare minimum required by regulations, and trying whatever they can to get away with, just for short-term profit, or gain for themselves or their stockholders, while not considering the environment, sustainability or society as a whole.  No, profit was not a motive at Andrew's AFB, safety was; but me pointing out that laws were being ignored and that the military was not above the law did not go over well, and made me loose my job.

This discussion on the great American wall brought it all back to the surface.  Again, think about it, what would president Trump do?  From an environmental standpoint and the way he takes things out on everybody that opposes or just questions him?  A scary thought.

On trainers and teaching, Part VI, what walls? (11/25/2015)

It is always interesting to see that when you start something it has unforeseen consequences, in particular when they are positive.  Call it serendipity or coincidence, but it is often not the intent.  In my case, it brought down a few walls, or boundaries.

So what am I talking about?  As I recently mentioned in a post I was developing a course on wetlands and how it relates to stormwater and erosion and sediment control.  We felt there was a tremendous need for a class like this, since we always talk about wetlands in our classes and the need to avoid impacting them.  We felt that I was the person to do this because I have worked as a wetland scientist throughout the U.S.A. since the early 1990-s.  Well, we have rolled out the class and given it at two locations.  The class has been well received and the evaluations are great.  Both the materials and the teacher (me) are well liked.  So there is something to say for being multifarious, a jack of all trades, it helps in thinking things through in developing a class and standing in front of a room and talking about a subject.  I discussed that in this post as well.

A tidal salt marsh in a creek that is a tributary to the York River.  Tidal marshes are really interesting, to the eye they may seem fairly uniform and only occupied by a single species.  But this is far from the truth.  During high tide they are teaming with small (young fish) and at low tide they have fiddler crabs and other critters.  The plant species in them have a very narrow tollerance range of water (tidal) depth.  It is a really neat system.

Why then the unforeseen consequences?  That for a big part may have to do with my personality.  While I love to teach and be in front of a class; I hate to practice, do dry runs of my classes, tell people how it goes, what I am doing, you know it.  I find it difficult to develop outlines of what I am doing or how the class will go (a waste of time almost, I rather be developing the class or think about it).  For me developing a class is an organic I start out with a few ideas and things go from there I put things before it and behind it, wherever it makes sense in my eyes; I brood.  This can be infuriating to my supervisor, although he has learned to live with it and understands it.  However, you can imagine that people who do not know my style and more vested in the subject matter can get concerned when they experience my style first hand.  I do not like to rehearse my classes, and when I do, I find it difficult to treat a group of my colleagues, who I assume know as much as I do of the subject, as the students I am supposed to teach and know very little.  It feels like I am talking down to them and that is something I cannot do.  I like to talk to people at their level, which is probably why people rate me so high as a teacher (am I too arrogant here? I really don't like talking down to people, unless I don't like them, then I talk down to them like the best of them!).  Moreover, I do not rehearse my classes.  As I tell my students in the first class: “You guys are the dress rehearsal and the main event all at the same time!” 

During the development of the class I’ve felt two or three times that the class would be cancelled because of the sensitive issues that wetlands raise in this country.  We understand more and more about their importance as an ecosystem and habitat that needs to be protected, and for that matter the push back that conservationists have had in the past from the development and home building community.  So it is logical that this class was under somewhat of a microscope to start with.  Moreover, people are protective of their own turf, so it is difficult to have an outsider like me teach a subject that another group in our department is responsible for; they are the experts and they had no idea what my level of expertise was or what my teaching style was.  On top of that was my style of course design and development (in other words don't do as I do when you do course design) and my marginal ability to articulate it.

However, I can report all is well and I have received compliments from the group that considered asking us to cancel the classes and we received an offer from them to co-teach the class with me, the greatest compliment I can get.  I consider it a breaking down of a virtual wall between groups that is there whether you want to admit there is a wall or not.

But one thing is for sure you never get to tear down walls or get these neat unforeseen consequences if you don't try!

And yes, I need to really try to be more transparent in my course design, I guess.

On trainers and teaching, Part III (7/30/2015)

The latest issues of ErosionControl Magazine featured an interview that Carol Brzozowski did with me a year and a half or so ago.  I really had forgotten about it and about a half year ago, I figured that the interview had flopped, and it was all just hype and would never get published.  I added a copy of the article below (you will need to click on the article to get a larger version which might be easier to read).  I’m pretty thrilled by it; the only thing I would have liked to see is that it listed my current employee (the Department of Environmental Quality or DEQ).  I am having a lot of fun here, and moreover, I have a set of great colleagues and co-instructors here that really do not get mentioned in the article.  In a way it is a bit of a shame I did not get to see the article before it got published otherwise I would have asked to add those things.  Oh well.  You always hear that from people who get interviewed.

Anyway it is a nice closure to a fairly stressful few months with a lot of work, travel, some health issues, and even some mechanical issues at home like the kitchen sink and a lawn mower breaking.  Hopefully, that light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train barreling towards me.

Regular readers of my blog, my students and my friends know I have a passion for the environment, teaching, fairness, and social justice.  I am really hoping that this article did some justice (pardon the pun) to some of these beliefs and that I will be able to continue to do this work for a long time.  I have a wealth of life experience to share with people, and I really feel it would be a waste if I don't.  In the end I hope to leave one very small corner of this world a little better than I found it, or maybe better, when it found me.  Wouldn't that be nice!

Richmond (9/16/2014)

This week I am teaching in Richmond; kind of like a home game, with the exception that it was away from the office in the Science Museum.  I always enjoy teaching there, the place is vibrant with school children and other people who are at least mildly interested in the sciences.  Moreover, I was teaching in the "science room" where the walls have all kinds of details on the geology of Virginia.  I find this very appropriate given I am teaching courses in Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater.  It really is great to be out of the office and to be teaching.

The science museum is in the old train station, and when I lived in Cincinnati, that exactly where that science museum was as well.  They are majestic buildings and while it is a shame that these buildings are no longer used for trains, or train traffic has so declined and only one or two trains stop there every day, it is great to see them re-purposed rather that being torn down.  Still, it is a pity that this country is so car oriented and anti public transport.  I really love the U.S., but there are things I would want to improve.  I had a long discussion over lunch today with my fellow teacher, and yes we need to keep history and tradition in mind, but that does not mean we cannot improve where we see some inadequacies.  This photo is somewhat symbolic for this, there is a globe in front of the museum; somewhat symbolic of what I mean.  We are part of a greater world and should not be isolationistic in our thoughts and actions.

Gainesville, VA (9/4/2014)

When I travel for work, I go to a place to teach a class or participate in the teaching in a stormwater related class.  That is why I am always excited to go to the offices of Wetland Studies and Solutions Inc. in Gainesville (the Manassas area).  In building their office, the owner has made sure that they constructed a building that is LEED certified (for the layman this means it meets very high environmental and energy efficiency standards) and that it manages stormwater the way we teach it.  It is a great place for show and tell (and no, I am not endorsing them; I just like the way they built their office; they are friendly and I hear they are a good company). 

So what do I teach?  This time I was teaching an erosion and sediment control plan review course for people in local government.  In it they learn about the various measures that control erosion from construction site.  In addition, they learn about managing stormwater that runs off construction sites and form sites where construction is done and the people have moved in.

Teaching all this can be frustrating and gratifying at the same time.  It is a required class if you want to work in the field, and you always have the very few that think that it is a waste of time.  They obviously do not believe in it.  Some even want to debate anything you say that has a slight slant towards environmentalism.  Conversely the majority goes through the motions; and then you have the few that really like it.  But I am happy to report that the reviews that I get from my teaching are generally very favorable.  I really try to make my classes relevant, interesting and I try to stay very dynamic in my classes.  There is nothing worse than having to go to a class and the teacher puts me to sleep.  It means; however, that I am exhausted after a day of teaching.

Anyway, we teach about the importance if infiltrating water back into the soil.  Far too often we see that rainwater/stormwater is treated like the enemy.  People connect down spouts to the storm sewer or to a drainage ditch and pipe it out of there.  In addition to disastrous results downstream the water does not go back into the soil where it belongs and we are now noticing dropping ground water table.  Moreover, we then also have to irrigate our lawns with drinking water.  It is all so backwards, that it often infuriates me.  At home we have three operational rain barrels and one waiting to go on line; in the summer we hardly ever water our plants with drinking water.

Back to this photograph; the building I taught at has a green roof. The roof has a growing medium on top of the roof that is 3 to 6 inches thick.  Plants are planted in the growing medium and the plants use the stormwater that falls on the roof.  Any excess rainwater is captured in a cistern, but a lot of the rainwater never leaves the roof.  Because of this, the roof is much cooler, which means lower air conditioner cost.  In the winter the thick layer of growing medium results in lower heating bills.  I took this photograph on the roof.  It has a narrow path and even two pick nick areas.  Great for show and tell.  (A previous post by me and picture of the roof can be found here)

 

Beached whales? Yorktown (5/2/2014)

The first thing a lot of people at the marina said when they saw this was "they look like beached whales; next thing is that they are going to explode."  I actually remember that there was something in the news during that period about exploding whales.  A quick search on line shows a plethora of webpages and videos. 

Actually these are dewatering bags from the dredging operation we had at our marina.  Silt sacks or dewatering bags are commonly used in erosion and sediment control, and I should know that.  I teach erosion and sediment control for a living.  People involved with erosion and sediment control in Virginia need to be certified and during the past 5 years, almost all new certificate holders in Virginia have been to classes taught by me somewhere in this great state.  I used to manage the program, but they moved our program from one department to another, and their training group already had a manager, which resulted in me having to scale back my responsibilities.  This is probably very much like what some people experience in a merger.  It is not necessarily negative, but you have to get used to it.  I could write books about it, but it was interesting to see how people were jockeying, lobbying and politicking to weasel themselves ahead of others; while others just decided to leave and go work somewhere else.

During the past two weeks our marina was dredged by an hydraulic dredge.  These machines look like a giant vacuum cleaner that stir up the sediment and then suck it up.  The mud was pumped to these bags, which are now left to drain and dry out.  Initially water was poring out, and it has already slowed down to a trickle.  At first the water that comes out is fairly clean, but later on it gets dirtier.  This is expected since these bags need to drain and some of the clay particles are so small that they readily pass through the pores in the bags.  After 6 to 9 months these bags will have dried enough to cut open, spread and be seeded.  Naturally right now they do not look that nice, but eventually we'll have a small higher area in the field, which I expect will subside somewhat. 

It was an interesting project to help permit and to watch.  I learned a lot by watching the progression of this project in the past two years.  But at least my slip now has a depth of 5 feet, compared to 3 feet and 10 inches before.  Hopefully I can go out now when the tide is extremely low.