My most recent rotation within my Challenge Detroit Fellowship at PM Environmental has brought me to field services. A project typically starts as a Phase I assessment, looking at the historical uses of a specific property to determine the likelihood of contamination on or near that property. If a Phase I project manager believes that a property could potentially have contamination, the project moves into Phase II where the field team samples soil and groundwater to determine the presence and levels of potential contamination on the site. Although I was not permitted to touch the Geoprobe (the soil drilling equipment) or any of the samples taken from the ground, spending a few days with the field team taught me more about the life of a project beyond the Phase I environmental site assessment.

 
My three outings with the field team brought me to two gas station sites and an apartment complex. The days spent at the two gas station sites helped me to realize what the field team looks for when taking samples and how they obtain these samples. PM does a lot of work at gas stations because they contain several underground storage tanks that hold all of the gasoline that powers our cars. USTs frequently leak, especially as they age, causing issue on the gas station property as well as neighboring properties. Watching the Geoprobe send metal tubing to depths of five to twenty feet into the earth is honestly fun and mesmerizing! Someone from the field team then cuts open the plastic lining that collects the soil in the metal tubing to take readings for potential contaminants.

 
I didn’t understand how much of an issue a UST could pose until I smelled the high levels of gasoline in the soil collected from the sample areas around the gas station. More importantly, I learned how these contaminants can travel through the soil and groundwater onto other surrounding properties after the team took groundwater samples and conducted soil-gas tests. I have read and written about the potential for these types of recognized environmental conditions (RECs) to exist on subject and adjoining properties, but physically watching the process put a face to the name, allowing me to appreciate even more the work that PM does across the country.