In this episode we speak to hydrogeologists John Guenther and Heather Good about “Toxic Clean Up” in Bellingham, Washington and the Nation. The conversation goes from happy thoughts to very scary environmental issues. Up and down and Up and down. Enjoy!
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[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
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? Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
? As I get all open on betatrons, gamma rays, thermo cracking
? Cyclotron, in and any and every mic
? You’re on, trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
? Molecules, spontaneous combustion, POW
? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I’m every element around
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome to Spark Science, where we explore stories of human curiosity. I’m Regina Barber DeGraafff. I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University and I’m here with my cohost, Jordan Baker. How’s it going?
Jordan Baker: It is going well. I am, yeah, I’m doing good. I don’t have any teaching credentials.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah well, we’re here today and we’re going to talk about toxic cleanup, and we’re here with John Guenther, and he’s a hydrogeologist with the Department of Ecology. How’s it going?
John Guenther: It’s going well. Thanks.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: And did I say your name right?
John Guenther: Yep, you did.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Excellent. Welcome to our show. And we are also here, we have another guest, double guests today, Heather Good. And she is also a hydrogeologist but she’s an environmental consultant. How are you doing today?
Heather Good: I’m doing great. Thanks.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome to our show. Welcome to Spark Science. I want to talk about, we’re going to talk about toxic cleanup eventually, but I want to kind of use this beginning time to talk about what is a hydrogeologist? How’d you get into it? How do you guys know each other?
Jordan Baker: Is it a person who studies a water rocks?
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Water rocks, yes.
John Guenther: Water and rocks.
Jordan Baker: Hydrogeology?
John Guenther: Yeah it’s basically, there are a lot of different areas in hydrogeology. Not all hydrogeologists do toxic cleanup, although a lot of them probably do.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
John Guenther: But it’s anything having to do with the hydrologic cycle, the cycle that water takes from the earth up into the atmosphere, and then rains back down onto the earth and in the oceans and rivers and lakes.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. And what made you want to be a hydrogeologist?
John Guenther: I don’t know about Heather, but I have a degree in geology, and I think she does too.
Heather Good: I do.
John Guenther: A hydrogeologist is a specialty area within the study of geology, as there’s engineering geologists, geophysicists . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah we have a geophysicist on. She’s awesome. What made you want to, like, really study the cycle as you were studying geology as a whole? What got you drawn in?
John Guenther: Well, you know, what got me drawn into geology, it wasn’t anything, it wasn’t like a, a special moment or anything. I just, they offered a lot of field trips.
Heather Good: It’s true.
John Guenther: You know, I think, I traveled a lot as a child, and I’ve always been infatuated with landforms and, you know, you start seeing geometric patterns in land forms, and I’ve been curious about that sort of thing.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: And you’re like, “Water did that! That’s amazing!”
John Guenther: [Talking over Regina Barber DeGraaff.] Yeah and so you know, I started taking geology classes and ended up with a degree in geology. I kind of stumbled into hydrogeology. I got a job as a consultant doing the type of work that Heather does, and a lot of that work applies to ground water work . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
John Guenther: . . . in addition to geology. So, my hydrogeologist experience probably came during the period of time that I’ve worked as a geologist.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay, so you kind of fell into it.
John Guenther: Yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: What about you, Heather? How did you get into hydrogeology?
Heather Good: Well, I came into hydrogeology roundabout through geology, and my interest in geology was sparked by my mom, actually, was a bit of a rock hound when I was younger, and she had a boyfriend for a time, that, she and her boyfriend would go and mine Herkimer diamonds in upstate New York, which are . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: What?!
Heather Good: . . . actually not diamonds, but they look similar to diamonds, and I was fascinated by the fact that she could go down to this mine, these public mines, and come back with this gemstone that looked like a diamond
Regina Barber DeGraaff: How old were you when this was happening, because that’s mind blowing as a child?
Heather Good: Middle school to high school age.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow!
Heather Good: Yeah, so that really sparked my interest in geology, and I also had a strong interest in science and math from academia. So, when I entered college, I was looking at degree programs and wanted to wed that science mathematics interest with a field that would take me outdoors . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Heather Good: Because I’m an outdoor enthusiast.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Heather Good: So, you know, with that kind of background, with the mine interest, then that got me interested in geology, but once I entered the field of geology I wanted to apply it in an environmental field because I was concerned, you know I considered myself somewhat of an environmental activist when I was younger, and so I wanted to apply it to some way I could help the planet [laughing] as an idealistic undergraduate.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Is that common in a lot of geology majors or was it kind of steered to hydrogeology, this environmental kind of activism that is related to that? I know we’re going to talk about toxic cleanup, but is there kind of a population that’s . . .
John Guenther: I think maybe more so in the early days.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
John Guenther: You know, late seventies through the eighties, I think, a lot of young people, because there was such a boom in the environmental movement kind of across the globe, a lot of people kind of went that direction.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Was there like a, so you’re talking about, we can kind of go into the history of toxic cleanup and hydrogeology as like a field. Was there a big, like, event that kind of, like you said, sparked this interest in the seventies that you can kind of point to, that . . .
John Guenther: I think it was just sort of a general awareness, you know, the late 1970s I think is when . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Earth Day?
John Guenther: Earth Day started, and the whole concept of ecology and a lot of the environmental regulations were being written, the National Environmental Policy Act and the state environmental policy acts across the country. A lot of the cleanup regulations were being written by different states at about the same time. I think the EPA, I’m not that familiar with the history of the EPA, but they probably spawned during the mid/late seventies. It’s just grown from there and morphed as a result of new information, finding out more, and we can talk about that more when we start talking about toxics cleanup.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, I. . .
John Guenther: You know, how we, we’re able to see more now than we could even ten, fifteen years ago.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Why is that?
John Guenther: Analytical methods, you know, just, just evolution of technology, you know, our ability to see, we’re identifying chemicals now, for example, that have been released into the environment and, not only are we able to identify them and measure them, but we probably understand their toxicity more now than we did you know, ten, fifteen years ago.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. As a consultant, what are the kinds of things you consult on? Like, what would an environmental consultant do?
Heather Good: Well, typically, we help our clients with environmental due diligence of properties that they may want to acquire, so if they’re looking for a lender to finance acquisition of a property, then the lender may require that environmental due diligence is done first to ensure that the liability of the property is not compromised by environmental contamination. And so they would require that, for instance, like a phase one environmental site assessment be done for the property to look for any potential sources of environmental contamination. That’s kind of a desktop study that we do, kind of a first step for looking at a new property if there’s nothing that’s previously known, if there’s not already identified contamination at a property.
Through that phase one process, if there are potential sources of contamination identified, then you may take the next step to do what’s called a phase two environmental site assessment, where you actually go out and collect samples of soil or ground water or sediment and analyze them and look for chemicals associated with whatever environmental concerns you’ve identified at the property. So, for instance, if you looked at the records through your desktop review and found there had been a leaking underground storage tank on the property that contained fuel, then you might go and collect soil and groundwater samples and analyze them for petroleum hydrocarbons, for instance.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Do a lot of just, like, residents do this, or is this more of a like, business thing that people do?
Heather Good: This is more of a business thing.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Heather Good: Because residential?people aren’t purchasing residential properties that have been used for industrial purposes . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right! [Laughing.]
Heather Good: . . . which have contaminated those properties typically, although you do have some residential properties that may have historical heating oil tanks on them. I know that there’s a number of homes in Bellingham that have had heating oil tanks that they’ve needed to remove and remediate . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Heather Good: . . . you know, at cost to the property owner. In the past, there was funding, grant assistance, available to families to help them with that process. I don’t believe there’s any funding still available . . .
John Guenther: [Talking over Heather Good.] There is if they’re still using them. There’s the Pollution Liability Insurance Agency that the state administers, and if you discover . . . I kind of went through this; I have two old houses in town . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, so they’re old houses right?
John Guenther: Yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Multiple people laughing and making incomprehensible utterances.] So I’m trying to get to this, like who does this affect? Like, who’s going to have to pay this environmental cleanup kind of cost?
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John Guenther: So you just don’t look for them.
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Regina Barber DeGraaff: If you’re just joining us, this is Spark Science and you’re listening to KMRE 102.3 FM in Bellingham. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff.
Jordan Baker: And I’m Jordan Baker.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: We’re talking about toxic cleanup with hydrogeologists John Guenther and Heather Good.
? You can go, but you mustn’t tell a soul.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Jordan Baker: What’s the most common contaminant in new sites you might build a home on?
John Guenther: Well, on, on residential sites, like downtown Seattle . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
John Guenther: . . . there’s a lot of historic contamination, and the residences would be high-rise condominiums or apartments.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: You know, in residential, single-family residential areas, you know, you’re unlikely to come across contaminated properties unless you buy a lot that was an old corner gas station or something.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Which does happen.
John Guenther: It does happen.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
John Guenther: Petroleum hydrocarbons are probably the most ubiquitous contaminant out there, just because they’ve been used for fuel for so long, for our motors. Every industrial operation, no matter what they did, most likely used petroleum products to fuel their equipment, solvents to clean equipment, maintenance lubricants, all that sort of things. And all those things have inevitably, over time, been released into the environment.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right, so even, you’re saying that is the most common contaminant even in these business properties that you have to check out.
John Guenther: Yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. What’s the second one? [Multiple people laughing.]
Heather Good: Well, you know, as John was talking, I started thinking about nitrates because that is a huge issue here up in Whatcom County and the Abbotsford-Sumas Aquifer, you have nitrate-based fertilizers that are being applied to agricultural fields, and those leach into the ground water, and has resulted in some pretty significant nitrate contamination of the aquifer up there. And a lot of residences have residential wells where they get their drinking water . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Heather Good: . . . so that is a concern for residential properties.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Heather Good: That is an area where you would see, you know, contamination concern, whereas most of the stuff that we deal with is for redevelopment for . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay, right.
Heather Good: . . . or industrial properties that have, you know, that deal with toxic and hazardous substances, and you know, releases are typical or common [laughing]. . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Heather Good: . . . associated with some of these industrial practices and . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: But this brings . . .
Heather Good: . . . issue . . .
Professor: Right, but this brings us to, I think, back to kind of the main idea, like, what is, what percentage we deal with on an everyday basis and what percentage is like something that needs to have toxic cleanup?
John Guenther: There are thousands of toxic chemicals . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . that we use for any number of things, in industrial uses, some of the things we keep under our kitchen sinks . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . and they’ve all been handled and managed differently over time and a lot of them have found their way into the environment and kind of tie the contamination to the source of contamination. There are a lot of industry-specific types of contamination, like manufactured gas plant sites. Boulevard Park in Bellingham used to be a manufactured gas plant . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh!
John Guenther: So there’s a lot of, they [people laughing] . . .
Heather Good: John, now I’m going to get nostalgic for working on that project with you. That’s actually John and I. . .
John Guenther: [Taking over Heather Good.] Heather and I actually worked on that for a while . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Talking over John Guenther.] Oh, okay!
Heather Good: . . . as consultants.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: And actually, that’s a giant renovation too, so . . .
John Guenther: There are known contaminants associated with historic manufactured gas plant operations. Shipyards, they worked with metal?paints with a lot of metals in them, for bottom-paints on ships, so you automatically look for metals. PCBs, dioxins, and furans and polyaromatic hydrocarbons are kind of ubiquitous contaminants associated with almost any type of industrial activity.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: So you know, you’ve got this host of, of, of, different types of contaminants that, that you’ve either identified through the process Heather was describing earlier, the phase 1, paper study where, where you investigate the historic uses on the property and kind of anticipate what types of contaminants you’re likely to find. And then you might see things as you move into the phase 2 of the investigation, and find that they had a paint spray booth or something, so you’d start looking for volatile organic compounds and solvents and things associated with painting. And so every site is kind of unique.
But then there are things like the nitrates in the environment, you know, widespread area-wide agricultural uses.
Heather Good: We refer to those in the industry as non-point source contaminants.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Interrupting] OK.
Heather Good: And so they’re widespread use, they’re, you know, fairly ubiquitous . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Are.
Heather Good: . . . as opposed to a point source contaminant, where you have . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Which would be like an old site.
Heather Good: Yeah, like a . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Heather Good: . . . Like if you had a tank that was leaking . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Got it.
Heather Good: . . . contaminants into the ground water, the soil, then that would be a point source.
John Guenther: Like a pipe spewing stuff up on I-5 [people laughing and remarking.] That’s where it’s coming from!
Jordan Baker: The smoking gun!
Heather Good: If you can point to it, it’s a point source. [Laughing.]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. So, Jordan and I lived in Lynden growing up, and there was a lot of pesticides used in all the berry fields and all that kind of stuff . . .
John Guenther: EDB?
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, I don’t know what that is, but tell me what that is [multiple people laughing.]
John Guenther: I’m not sure what it is, exactly. I’ve never worked with it, but one of my coworkers managed the EDB situation in the North County some years ago, and they actually had to build a water supply line to provide homes with clean water. Now, apparently, there are homes that are being affected by maybe nitrates, and the state and the county health departments are kind of in a bind, because this pipe was paid for and constructed specifically to address this EDB problem, and the people that live out there are asking to be tied into this pipe so they can get good, clean water instead of having to buy bottled water . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, wow!
John Guenther: . . . and it’s, I don’t know where that’s going to go, but . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: So, when did that happen in the North County, what year was that?
John Guenther: When they were using the chemicals or when they discovered . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Talking over John Guenther.] Yeah, when they were using the chemicals.
John Guenther: Well, I don’t . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Seventies? Eighties?
John Guenther: Probably. [Multiple people laughing and remarking.]
Jordan Baker: Hopefully before us!
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, hopefully before we got there.
John Guenther: You’re not Lynden city folk? Did you live out in the county?
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Uh . . .
Jordan Baker: Worked out in the county.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: My husband lived out in the county, and there was like, rumors about bad water in his area. There was a lot of kids that had illnesses and stuff like that, so, I’ve always wondered about that. I don’t have any definitive proof . . .
John Guenther: Yeah, yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: . . . proof or data or anything. So we’re going to take a quick break and when we come back we want to talk more about specific, like, we’re already kind of doing, specific cleanup events in the county [music starting in background] and maybe outside the county nationally.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take her back to Wondaland
? She thinks she left her underpants
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Music continues faintly in background.] If you’re just joining us, this is Spark Science and you are listening to KMRE 102.3 FM in Bellingham. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff.
Jordan Baker: And I’m Jordan Baker. We’re talking about toxic cleanup with hydrogeologist John Guenther and Heather Good.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
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Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Music continues in background.] Spark Science is an all-volunteer-run show and if you’d like to help out, go to KMRE.org and click on the button “Donate.”
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Dance in the trees
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? Your magic mind
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Jordan Baker: So, why do we clean up sites? Why does it even matter? Can we just . . . I mean, if it’s already in the ground, like, who cares, right? [Regina Barber DeGraaff laughing.]
John Guenther: Toxic chemicals, you know, present a threat to human health and the environment. It kind of ties into how contaminated a site might be versus what is clean, you know. What do we?we find contamination, we find these, any number of chemicals in the environment and groundwater and soil and sediment and we have to know how much of it do we need to clean up?
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: And those cleanup levels for all the different chemicals are based on toxicity to humans, toxicity to organisms. A lot of the contaminants are carcinogenic, cancer-causing toxics, and we have to assume a certain risk factor.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: And for, I think for cancer-causing contamination, it’s typically 10-6 . . .
Heather Good: One in a million.
John Guenther: One in a million . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: One in a million.
John Guenther: . . . and so, you know, the toxicologists develop the contaminant-specific cleanup levels.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
John Guenther: I’m not a toxicologist.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. Right, okay. [Multiple people laughing.]
Jordan Baker: So what you’re saying is one person out of a million can die of cancer, and we’re all good [laughing.]
John Guenther: You know, these are all regulations. So, you know, regulations are written by the legislature and, you know . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: May the odds ever be in your favor. [Multiple people laughing and remarking.] Is that the line from Hunger Games? Yeah.
John Guenther: But, you know they’re reasonable, and as I was saying earlier, you know, over time, we’re able to see chemicals at a smaller and smaller concentration and we’re learning more and more about the toxicity of different chemicals, and we’re discovering new chemicals. Those cleanup levels do change over time. They’re adjusted.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, I actually wanted to ask that. Is there any chemicals where we thought were a lot more toxic to our bodies than actually, you know, are? Over the decades maybe they’re not as bad, or the other way; they are way worse than we thought. Do you have any, kind of, chemicals in your mind that are at these sites that kind of fit that description or . . .
John Guenther: Arsenic is a pretty ubiquitous contaminant and it can be naturally occurring. You find arsenic in a lot of rock, rock, volcanic rock that degrades and ends up being soil.
Heather Good: In Bangladesh, there’s a lot of arsenic in the rocks there and so they have a big issue with their drinking water wells having high levels of arsenic.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. Wow. Is there any organic materials that have natural-producing arsenic?
Heather Good: There is organic arsenic.
John Guenther: Yeah.
Heather Good: That would be inorganic arsenic. I’m not sure of organic arsenic sources. I don’t typically deal with those.
John Guenther: Yeah, I don’t know but, so, currently, I think our state arsenic cleanup level, for arsenic in ground water, is five parts per billion, five micrograms per liter.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
John Guenther: And we’ve got a couple of major sources of arsenic. The Tacoma smelter that operated forever [Regina Barber DeGraaff laughing], the Everett smelter, and you know, they spewed out these huge plumes, so . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
John Guenther: . . . we’ve mapped out the impact of the Tacoma smelter plume, and it’s affected soil over a larger geographic area, so there’s a program in place right now where we’re actually going out to?this is something that affects residential properties. If you were looking to buy a house in Tacoma . . .
Jordan Baker: [Talking over John Guenther] Wouldn’t ever do it.
John Guenther: You might [people laughing] you might want to check with the State Department of Ecology and ask them, you know, if your property has likely been impacted by arsenic, and if it has, they’ll come out and they’ll dig up the top I don’t know how many inches of your soil and bring clean soil in and give you a new landscape and . . .
Heather Good: [Talking over John Guenther] Yeah and the city of Auburn has a large, one mile plus groundwater plume underneath the city with volatile contaminants from the former?from the Boeing plant there.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow! Let’s go back to Tacoma for a second because there is the, you know, famous, slightly mean, you know, term, the “Tacoma aroma,” right? So what is that?
John Guenther: That’s the smell from the pulp facility and, you know, that might, I don’t know that much about air, I’m not an air person.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Because you’re a hydrogeologist [people laughing and remarking.]
John Guenther: [Laughter] Yes.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
John Guenther: You know, air is another component . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . of cleanup. We have air people . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . and we oftentimes look at vapor intrusion from the volatilization of volatile organic compounds that might be in groundwater or might be in soil . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
John Guenther: . . . but if you build on top of those, those vapors can rise and seep . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . into, through your foundation and into your house and then we bring the air people in . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . to kind of address that. But where I was going with the arsenic thing is that was an example of where, so we’ve got this cleanup level for groundwater established. Interestingly, I think the?I don’t know if it’s the state or federal, I think it’s the federal?maximum cleanup level for arsenic is actually higher than our state cleanup level. And we’re considering adjusting the cleanup level higher, because of, I mean, toxicity is, we’re not going to adjust it higher if it’s demonstrated that it’s at an unacceptable toxicity . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . but I think that the feds in all their wisdom [Regina Barber DeGraaff laughing] that at I think it might be 20 parts per million . . .
Heather Good: I’m not sure what the [Regina Barber DeGraaff laughing] the federal level.
John Guenther: . . . [Talking over Heather Good] the drinking water maximum cleanup level for arsenic in water. So they seem to think it’s okay at 20 parts per million, or . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Billion?
Heather Good: Billion, you said, micrograms per liter.
John Guenther: Yeah. So it can go either way.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Jordan Baker: So if I was just to try to get a house in Tacoma [Regina Barber DeGraaff laughing] would you just dig up earth, like twelve inches, and then ship it off somewhere? What happens to the dirt there?
John Guenther: A lot of contaminated materials go to landfills, and they’re engineered, they’re lined?and it hasn’t always been this way?old landfills are often cleanup sites because they were . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
John Guenther: . . . you know, there’s an old municipal landfill down on the waterfront here in Bellingham . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: There’s also the pulp mill. We were just talking about pulp.
John Guenther: Yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well, I guess not pulp, but, paper . . .
John Guenther: They had a pulp and paper mill here . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. Okay, I was right.
John Guenther: [Talking over Regina Barber DeGraaff.] Yeah. Yep. You were.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [People laughing] Okay, good!
John Guenther: And so, yeah, what do you do? Well, there’s all different kinds of treatment. You can burn soil, you know, depending, on the type of contaminant, you know. Petroleum hydrocarbons will burn. It might result in an air quality issue, so you have to treat that. Certain types of contaminants, if you burn them, there will be toxic byproducts if you burn chlorinated chemicals you’ll end up with dioxins and furans, which are really nasty things. You can freeze soil, you can freeze groundwater, you can cook it, you can kinda . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
John Guenther: . . . make it turn it into glass to stabilize it.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wait, turn it into glass? Okay, so, you’re turning the sand and like the soil . . .
John Guenther: Yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay, got it. Okay. I’ve never thought of that at all. So . . .
John Guenther: Vitrification.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wait, say it one more time?
John Guenther: Vitrification.
Heather Good: I think they looked at, you know, if I’m correct, I think they’ve looked at that as a potential way to contain radioactive contaminants as well. So, the pores in the glass, the pore spaces, they’re not interconnected. The pores are not interconnected so they’re, essentially, little prison bubbles . . .
John Guenther: [Talking over Heather Good.] Closed cells.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Talking over John Guenther and Heather Good.] And there’ll be like a museum of radioactive glass [laughter] people can look at.
Heather Good: Yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: That would be nice. I like it.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Take her back to Wondaland
? She thinks she left her underpants
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
Jordan Baker: [Music continues faintly.] If you’re just joining us, this is Spark Science and you’re listening to KMRE 102.3 FM in Bellingham. I’m Jordan Baker.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: And I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff. Today we’re talking about toxic cleanup with hydrogeologists.
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Regina Barber DeGraaff: So what happens, so, before our break, you talked about how you both met at Boulevard Park. Was it a cleanup or was it just a, kind of like you were saying phase one/phase two thing, or did you actually have to cleanup stuff because it was an old site? Did you say petroleum site or something?
John Guenther: It’s still in the cleanup?or in the study phase.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh!
John Guenther: Heather and I used to work together for the same consulting firm.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: And we represented one of the parties that was partly respon?the successor to the gas plant operator back at the turn of the century.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: You mean 1900, not 2000?
John Guenther: Yes. [Multiple people laughing.]
Jordan Baker: Fifteen years ago!
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, I know like, I went to Western at the turn of the century. I say that to my students and I find it funny and they don’t think it’s funny at all. They don’t get it.
John Guenther: So that site is still being characterized. They’re actually proposing to go out and collect some additional sediment samples that a contamination has made its way from up on the bluff down the bluff, through the park, and out into the bay.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: And what they do when they characterize, they characterize what we call the nature and extent of contamination, where it’s come to be, basically. And so we delineate, you know, the extent that the historic activity has impacted the property.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK. So, my kid plays there, so, but it’s still cool.
John Guenther: It’s OK. [People laughing.]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
Jordan Baker: So, in this day and age, after the latest turn of the century, why don’t we just have, like, some sort of a laser or something that just like, shoots into the ground and renders, like, the contaminants inert? [People laughing and remarking over speaker.] Is there something like that?
John Guenther: There’s something, similar, to what you’re describing.
Jordan Baker: Can’t we just leave the dirt where it lays, and . . .
Heather Good: Well, there are methods of treating contamination in place. It’s called in situ, so if you have soil or groundwater contamination that it’s infeasible to get it out of the ground and remove it, then you maybe look at options to break down or destroy those contaminants in place. And so, those are methods like injecting chemicals into the ground that break down the bad chemicals and turn them into good chemicals [laughing.]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Awesome. Chemicals by chemicals.
Heather Good: Mmhmm.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: So what other big cleanup events are happening here in Whatcom County, and then we can talk about, like, nationally what’s going on.
John Guenther: Well, there’s all of the Bellingham Bay cleanup sites, that most of the people in the community are aware of. There’s about a dozen sites around the bay all attributed to historic industrial uses.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: A couple of shipyards, a boatyard, the manufactured gas plant site that we were talking about, the Georgia-Pacific . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Talking over John Guenther.] Right, which we were also talking about.
John Guenther: . . . the mill, the chloral alkali [sp?] plant, there’s the city’s old municipal landfill, the Cornwall Avenue landfill, there’s an old wood treatment facility down in the same area of the RG Haley site . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
John Guenther: . . . and they’re all being managed separately. So the state is working with the port and the city of Bellingham, depending who owns those properties . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: . . . towards getting them cleaned up. The first, the largest of all the sites is an entirely aquatic site, the Whatcom Waterway site. It’s an entirely sediment site. It’s the Whatcom Creek Waterway . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: . . . that goes out into the bay, and then it’s a large area out in the bay that’s been impacted by the Georgia-Pacific property.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: And mercury is the primary contaminant of concern there.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: What do you do with mercury?
John Guenther: [People laughing.] That’s a good question, you know, depending on . . .
Jordan Baker: Make a bunch of thermometers. [Laughter.]
John Guenther: Or what should you do with mercury . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . is what a lot of people ask. You know, we have public meetings to present, you know, our best ideas and take feedback from the community on what should be done. A lot of people think it should all just be taken away.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
John Guenther: Cleanup is ridiculously expensive, and not only is the cost a consideration, and it’s not the primary consideration, but if you think about it, the feasibility of going in and digging up this incredibly fine material underwater you’re going to stir things up . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
John Guenther: And chances are you’d probably make the situation worse than it already is.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: You might get the bulk of it out of there, but there would more than likely be a lingering impact of contamination, you know, at levels higher than we would want to leave behind.
Heather Good: Well and then you have situations like Hanford, where you have a hundred foot plus unsaturated zone that’s contaminated and, you know, you don’t, you can’t dig out hundreds of feet of . . .
John Guenther: No.
Heather Good: . . . rock and soil . . .
John Guenther: [Talking over Heather Good.] It’s not feasible.
Heather Good: . . . and, yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: So we’re, so, for our listeners around the world and outside of Washington, we have listeners in Poland and, oh, Italy?that’s one of our highest ones now, I think it’s my friend Michaela [sp?] but I’m not sure, but yeah, so . . .
John Guenther: [Talking over Regina Barber DeGraaff.] Way to go, Italy!
Regina Barber DeGraaff: . . . Hanford, Washington, Hanford, Washington, right?
Heather Good: Correct.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Which is like middle, south Washington state.
John Guenther: Mmhmm.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: That used to be a power plant, a nuclear power plant.
John Guenther: [Talking over Regina Barber DeGraaff.] Nuclear power plant.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, so. But yeah, so, you’re saying, so this digging out is kind of sometimes not feasible. So what do we do then? So, you’re saying you talk to the public and you talk to other, probably, state agencies and stuff like that, so what do you do?
Heather Good: Well, sometimes you just cap it and say, “Don’t dig there.”
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, OK.
Heather Good: That is one method.
John Guenther: Yeah, you know it kind of comes back to “Is it presenting a threat to human health or the environment?” You always want to bring it back to that.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: If it’s not, if you can contain it, you know, why do anything . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Unless.
John Guenther: Unless, you know, somebody wants to develop the property, then there’s some incentive to get it out of there so you can start muckin’ around and building something in that location. Out in Bellingham Bay, we’re fortunate in that we have the Nooksack River that carries all of this nice, clean sediment down into the bay, and it’s depositing that sediment over time, so there’s what we call natural recovery.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: And so, over time, the historic contaminated sediment is being naturally capped by clean sediment.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: If that wasn’t happening, there’s always the option of bringing in, importing clean sediment-like material and dumping it over the contaminated sediment. And what’s happening out in Whatcom Waterway right now is a combination of both. They are dredging and removing some of the contaminated sediment, and they’re allowing other areas to be naturally capped by the Nooksack River sediment.
Heather Good: And then the groundwater?there is a process called natural attenuation, where contaminant, dissolve phase contamination, so contaminants in the groundwater can naturally degrade by a number of processes. So there’s physical and chemical and biological processes that can break down those chemicals that are naturally occurring processes. So as the groundwater moves it can essentially dilute as the plume spreads, and so that can lower concentrations.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: That makes me feel better. [People laughing.] So I mean, do you say this? You were saying you talk to the public, and I’m sure there’s . . . we’re going to label this episode “Toxic Cleanup” and that scares people, but what we’re telling me is like, not as scary as I thought. I mean, how do you deal with this with like public outreach and education?
John Guenther: Yeah all of our studies are published for public review in draft form, and we take public comment on those documents. A lot of them are very technical and, you know, unfortunately a lot of the public can’t hire consultants to kind of interpret what they’re reading. But we try to do a pretty good job, and that’s the reason why we hold public meetings is so we can, we’re there to explain what these things mean in a more simple way. And do we typically change course based on public comment, you know? No. [People laughing.]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: But you’re letting them feel involved.
John Guenther: Well, not only that, but I think we’re helping explain, you know, and that’s not to say that we haven’t?we oftentimes tweak things and do things differently based on the public comment that we receive. But every document is such a huge body of work that oftentimes took years to develop, you know. To kind of turn around and say, “OK, we’re not going to do that, let’s start over and, you know, go down this path, that’s unlikely to happen.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: So, slight tweaking happens but . . .
John Guenther: Yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: But the main force is still there.
John Guenther: Yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
Heather Good: Well, when?the sites that John is talking about are larger, more complex cleanup sites that tend to take years to resolve and get to some cleanup. There definitely are smaller contaminated properties, less complex sites that may get cleaned up without formal ecology oversight, and so you may not have that public involvement piece.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: That’s true.
Heather Good: There are . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Who cleans them up?
Heather Good: . . . other pathways for cleaning up sites that do not involve that oversight piece with ecology. So that might be someone that’s trying to sell their property or someone purchasing a property . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
Heather Good: . . . that they may do, hire consultants to do . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Like you.
Heather Good: Like me [laughter] . . . to do an independent cleanup . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
Heather Good: . . . or to do a cleanup under the voluntary cleanup program which is an ecology?it has minimal ecology oversight. It’s an ecology program where you essentially do the cleanup and submit documents for ecology review and comment and opinion but you’re not as engaged in the process every step of the way with ecology.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK. We’re going to take a quick break and then when we come back we’ll talk more about “are there sites that aren’t cleaned?” and also like, what nationally what’s happening.
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Regina Barber DeGraaff: And movies. [Laughter.]
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take her back to Wondaland
? She thinks she left her underpants
Heather Good: I’m Heather Good, a hydrogeologist. You’re listening to KMRE-LP 102.3 FM in Bellingham. Your community, your voice, your station.
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? The music floats you gently on your toes
? Touch the nose, he’ll change your clothes to tuxedos
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Regina Barber DeGraaff: Spark Science is an all volunteer-run show and if you’d like to help out, go to KMRE.org and click on the button “Donate.”
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? Dance in the trees
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? The magnificent droid plays there
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Regina Barber DeGraaff: I wanted to talk about a couple things, like, is there any cleanup sites that don’t get cleaned up for various reasons? And then also, what’s happening nationally? So let’s talk first about the sites that haven’t really been cleaned up. So tell?is there anything going on?
John Guenther: Well I’ve got some statistics.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
John Guenther: There’s. . .
Jordan Baker: [Laughing and clearing throat.] Really?
John Guenther: There’s about 12,000 cleanup sites on the state books in the state of Washington.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: And of those, probably half have been cleaned up. And of the 12,000, that’s not to say we know of every contaminated property, but it’s, you know, we’ve been doing this long enough now that that’s probably the bulk of them. And, and then there’s probably a few thousand that are kind of in various stages of the process. They’re either being studied, or there’s some sort of cleanup action being taken, or. And then there’s a few thousand that are kind of just in the waiting stage, waiting for something to happen.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: So our show has brought like, scare, and then we make people feel better, and then we scare them again [laughter.]
John Guenther: Well, again, it comes back to, you know, is there a threat to human health or the environment?
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: And if there was at a site, ecology more than likely would be taking . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: . . . action to address that. There are a lot of contaminated sites that aren’t harming anybody.
Jordan Baker: So if I was to want to develop a property, how long would it take for you to come down and do your phase one to actually digging it out?
Heather Good: Wow, you sound like the clients that come into our office [laughter.] That’s always the first question, how long and how much does it cost.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Talking over Heather Good.] Jordan knows . . .
Heather Good: It widely varies, you know. It’s really hard to predict.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s like any contractor [laughter.]
Heather Good: Because you don’t, when you come into it . . .
Jordan Baker: [Talking over Heather Good.] It’s going to be more expensive than they tell you.
[Multiple people talking at the same time.]
Jordan Baker: Whatever they think it is, double it!
Heather Good: It’s a black box. You don’t know what’s inside until you start opening it, peeling off the layers of the onion. You don’t know what you’re going to find, so, you know, there are a lot of things that can increase costs, extend the time frames. But, you know, typically the turnaround time for doing like that phase one desktop assessment that we talked about . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Heather Good: . . . that’s two to four weeks, depending on the, if it’s a typically sized property . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Interrupting.] Yeah. That’s not that bad.
Heather Good: . . . and then following that, to do like a phase two, you know, that may take six to eight weeks kind of time frame. There’s . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: So it’s slowly doubling.
Jordan Baker: Yeah [laughter.]
Heather Good: As part of that, you’re hiring contractors to go out . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Heather Good: . . . and use drilling equipment . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Heather Good: . . . to drill into the ground and pull out the soil samples that you’re then going to send to the analytical laboratory, and then it takes time for them to process those samples and give you back the data, and then you’re analyzing the data. So there’s, there’s many steps to the process.
Jordan Baker: Yeah, so it’s not only just you time waiting for the property, it’s you spending extra money to have like construction workers come out there and dig it all up . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Talking over Jordan Baker.] There’s a lot of stuff.
Jordan Baker: . . . that’s crazy.
John Guenther: And when there’s an economic driver it’s amazing how fast things can happen. Downtown Seattle, where I’ve had a few sites downtown Seattle, and within the course of two years, I’ve seen these pretty large contaminated sites be dug. You know, they’ll spend millions of dollars addressing the cleanup right up front, because there’s so many millions of dollars to be made, you know, post-development when you’ve built this new high rise condominium building.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow. Wow.
Heather Good: That would be the opposite of the brown field [sp?].
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. [Laughter.]
John Guenther: Yeah, exactly. So it really kind of depends where the properties are located . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: You kind of talked about the two things I really wanted to bring up. Nationally, there’s one, the gold mine that’s, I’m trying to look, the contamination of the river in, I’m trying to find, in San Juan County in Colorado, that river. And then, but there’s also, you know, of course, oil spills. So you have, you were talking about petroleum, that’s the floating stuff that’s contamination, but and then this mine, there’s all this stuff that’s sinking down, right?
John Guenther: I think the contaminant is primarily metals . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: . . . if I’m not mistaken.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. How are those two kinds of cleanups, because they’re massive, you know . . .
John Guenther: Yeah. Yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: . . . an oil spill and this river. How are they different and how are they, like, the same? Or how do they even do it?
John Guenther: Well, any large, you know, release like that is very challenging, and there have been others, I guess you would look at what the state of some of those other large disastrous releases are today, you know. The oil release in the gulf . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
John Guenther: . . . you know, how many years has it been?
Regina Barber DeGraaff: I don’t know.
John Guenther: Several, maybe.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: I’m old. [Laughter.]
Jordan Baker: Turn of the century.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Turn of the century.
John Guenther: Yeah, so there’s, so there’s, you know, depending who you talk to, you know, the people that were responsible for the release are probably telling you how much better things are and how much the gulf has recovered . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: But then, you know, the other side of the story is you’ll find people that are saying, you know, “We’re still being impacted by that.” And that’s more than likely the case with any large release. The Exxon Valdez, I don’t know, maybe that . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
John Guenther: You don’t remember that?
Regina Barber DeGraaff: No, I remember that.
John Guenther: Do ya? OK. [Laughter.]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: I told you, I’m old.
John Guenther: I lose track of time. When you’re my age, you kind of, you know, the last thirty years just sort of, it’s all . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: The turn of the century.
John Guenther: . . . within the last five . . .
Jordan Baker: He’s thirty two. [Laughter.]
Heather Good: Well, the response is going to evolve throughout the different stages of the cleanup. So, depending on, you know, the initial release, and this is just a theoretical example, they may evacuate a town . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Heather Good: . . . or, you know, in the case of this release to the river in Colorado . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Talking over Heather Good.] In Colorado. Yeah.
Heather Good: . . . they instructed people to, you know, there’s various instructions about letting your, if you’re using surface water as a water source for your livestock . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Heather Good: To let the sediment settle out of the water before you give it to your livestock or to use bottled water.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
Heather Good: So there’s varying responses and so then . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Heather Good: . . . as they learn more, and they collect samples and learn more about the toxicity and the extent of the release, then the response . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Talking over Heather Good.] So we don’t even know that yet?
Heather Good: . . . then the response is going to vary.
John Guenther: No.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: No.
John Guenther: You know, we know . . .
Heather Good: We’re in the initial stages of understanding.
John Guenther: We know the behaviors of different types of contaminants. Some are soluble, some are relatively immobile . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: . . . we talked earlier about how some sink . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . and some float on water. Metals typically are relatively insoluble and immobile.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: They’ll typically stay in place. Now, if you’re in a river with current . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . it’s [laughing] transporting it, but as Heather was saying, you know, it will settle, and so you end up with all this metal in the river sediment over, I don’t know how many miles . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . and, you know, what can you do?
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
John Guenther: Go in and dredge it all out . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . and then you have to restore all of the sediment to kind of replace the habitat that was there before?
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Regina Barber DeGraaff: Or do you put the dirt, like you were saying . . .
John Guenther: Yeah, yeah.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: . . . the new sediment on top.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Take her back to Wondaland
? She thinks she left her underpants
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take her back to Wondaland
? She thinks she left her underpants
Jordan Baker: If you’re just joining us, this is Spark Science and you’re listening to KMRE 102.3 FM in Bellingham. I’m Jordan Baker.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: And I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff. Today we’re talking about toxic cleanup with hydrogeologists John Guenther and Heather Good.
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? My supernova shining bright
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take her back to Wondaland
? She thinks she left her underpants
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
Regina Barber DeGraaff: I want to talk, go away from these like, national horrible events, and get like more light-hearted and talk about how is, like, toxic cleanup, hydrogeology, all that kind of stuff, how is that portrayed in pop culture and the media? The first thing I thought of was that movie Evolution. Apparently, I looked it up, and it’s like 2001. I seriously, I was like, “That movie just came out.” Turn of the century.
Jordan Baker: Right.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. It did not.
Jordan Baker: It just happened. [Laughter.]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: 2001. Nobody liked it. It was an awful movie and it had David Duchovny in it. And, but apparently, it had like toxic waste and they were like mutants. I’m trying to click on it here so I can read the synopsis but . . .
Jordan Baker: It’s not working out.
John Guenther: It’s not responding.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s not responding, yeah.
Jordan Baker: Uh, when I think about toxic cleanup I would think about something like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, where it’s just like this sludge and you just like, get a shovel and then put it back in another, like, tin barrel or something or . . .
John Guenther: A lot of toxics takes the form of sludge . . .
Jordan Baker: Yeah?
John Guenther: . . . so that’s not far from the truth [laughter.]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: So the, so, I think I’d mentioned TV to you John, and you said, actually, the real world is crazier. Tell me why. [Laughter.]
John Guenther: It can be stranger than fiction, you know, that’s for sure. I, some of these sites, I remember being down at the Georgia-Pacific, there’s an area of the site called the Log Pond. It’s a little embayment, a little indentation where they used to float logs that they would bring up and chew up and turn into pulp or something. But . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: I was, we were collecting sediment samples, and we had to go out there during low tide, which happened to be at like two o’clock in the morning, you know, we probably got down there at midnight and we were down there until four or five o’clock in the morning, and that was with a couple of our former coworkers. And being down there in the middle of the night, walking around knee-deep in this, it was sediment, but it was like sludge, and it stunk, you know. It’s an anaerobic . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh . . .
John Guenther: . . . you know, sulfur-producing . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh!
John Guenther: . . . sludge environment, and we had headlamps on, and you know, you’d see critters kind of scurrying . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh!
Jordan Baker: Gross! [Laughter.]
John Guenther: It was [laughing], it was . . .
Heather Good: Turtles [laughter.]
John Guenther: . . . a little bit uncomfortable. Yeah. But . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: But you’re alive.
John Guenther: But I’m alive, I’m still here [laughter.]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well, but, and then there’s also, in the media, A Civil Action, right? So, I didn’t read the book, because I don’t read very often, but Heather was talking about that, right? So, how accurate was that, the legal part of this cleanup and like going after companies that leave these chemicals and don’t take care of it?
Heather Good: Yeah, I think that was a more accurate portrayal of real life, you know. When you first started talking about movies, of course, the first movie that came to my mind was The Core . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh god!
Heather Good: . . . which was just horrible from a geological perspective but I saw from your website that Jackie [inaudible.] had already talked . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah!
Heather Good: . . . about that movie on your program, so I was like, “We can’t talk about The Core.”
Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Talking over Heather Good.] No, but I feel like every geologist like loves, like, has a very love-hate relationship with that movie. I keep on bringing it up.
Heather Good: A Civil Action, you know, from a, for a hydrogeologist that was an exciting movie for me, because they are talking about toxic releases and toxic cleanup. I know it’s been a while since I, I did read the book and see the movie but it’s been a while so I’m not recalling specific details.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: John Travolta. It’s so funny, because, seriously, this episode has been going up and down and up and down and I feel like, this is very scary stuff but everything you’re saying is like, you know, the Department of Ecology is really looking out. It’s really paying attention, and if people are in danger, things will happen. And the only times we have these, you were saying, these brown areas, is if people aren’t there. Is that a good, like, recap of what we talked about or?
John Guenther: I think so. I mean, I don’t, I would be aware of any known current serious risks associated with, you know, toxic exposure.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: And I’m not, you know, the exception is, or, are these releases like we were talking about, that occur. Oil spills . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
John Guenther: . . . or the breach of the mining waste and that sort of thing.
Heather Good: Well I think to put it in perspective, there’s a lot of consumer goods and household products [laughter] that have much greater toxicity than the contaminants that we might come into contact with at a toxics cleanup site or a contaminated property.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Heather Good: You know, your shower curtain that has [laughter] that releases vinyl chloride. . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Heather Good: . . . at very high concentrations. You know, your cleaning products . . .
John Guenther: [Talking over Heather Good.] Unless you have a cloth shower curtain.
Heather Good: That’s right, yeah, so. [Laughter.] You know, consumers are . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Again, up and down, up and down, up and down. [Laughter.]
Heather Good: The paint that you might use . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. Right.
Heather Good: . . . and historically, lead-based paint, you know . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Heather Good: . . . consumers are getting more savvy to these toxic chemicals in the products they use, and so you’re seeing less of it than we used to, but it is still prevalent. But, you know, just to put it in perspective, the risk levels are pretty low for these cleanup sites in general. And, you know, they’re pretty well-contained. So, you know, the types of sites that we’re dealing with, generally what we’re looking out for is if someone were to excavate soil from this property, come into contact with the soil, and they happen to get some of it in their mouth [laughter] . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: They’re not going to drop dead.
Heather Good: Right.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: OK.
Heather Good: Exactly. So, it’s, we’re looking at exposure durations . . .
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Heather Good: . . . and what types of activities that you might come in contact with these chemicals. And they’re, it’s pretty minimal and under very specific circumstances usually, for most properties that you’d come into contact with the chemicals at all.
Jordan Baker: So, basically, I should be more scared of what’s under my sink than going for a walk in Boulevard Park?
Heather Good: Yeah, for sure.
John Guenther: I think so, yeah.
Jordan Baker: Excellent.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Back to the pop culture aspect of this, there’s, I think, a writer that writes about, like, mutants from Hanford. It’s a local, like, Washington state author, and I think that to get away from this like public perception of, if you, like you said, if you touch the soil you will have suddenly super powers and be a mutant. No! That’s, so that’s what I think maybe our listeners should take away from this. That’s not how we’re all going to become superheroes. Not toxic chemicals.
Well thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us about toxic cleanup and scaring us, then reassuring us, then scaring us again.
Jordan Baker: Yeah, [laughter] thank you.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Thank you.
Heather Good: You’re welcome. Thank you for having us.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Thank you for joining us. We just spoke with hydrogeologists John Guenther and Heather Good.
Jordan Baker: If you missed any of the show, go to our website KMRE.org and click on the podcast link. Listen to us Sunday at 5:00PM, Wednesday at 9:00PM, and Saturday at noon.
Regina Barber DeGraaff: If there’s a science idea that you’re curious about, send us an email or post a message on our Facebook page Spark Science. If you liked our show and would like to help us out, go to KMRE.org and click on the button “Donate.”
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take her back to Wondaland
? She thinks she left her underpants
Regina Barber DeGraaff: Today’s episode “Toxic Cleanup” was produced in the KMRE Spark Radio studios located in the Spark Museum on Bay Street in Bellingham. Our producer is Katie Knudsen [sp?]. The engineer for today’s show is Eric Faburetta [sp?]. Our theme music is “Chemical Calisthenics” by Blackalicious and “Wondaland” by Janelle Monae.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Don’t you freak and hide
? I’ll be your secret Santa, do you mind?
? Don’t resist
? The fairy gods will have a fit
? We should dance
? Dance in the trees
[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
? Lead, gold, tin iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent and
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And then they hit the ground
[End of podcast.]