As a young engineer (Part 2)…

After some seasoning doing projects as a young civil engineer and after becoming more expert with drainage and stormwater projects with L. Robert Kimball & Associates Inc., it was then I first came in contact with the subject at hand - the Riders Dump (Rosedale) Disposal area. Our consulting engineering firm got a contract for remediation type design work for the Riders (Rosedale) Disposal area. This site was a hazardous waste cleanup site. Because of my specialization with mining, industrial, drainage and stormwater management projects I was assigned to the team for this particular project. At first I thought “cool” I get to work on a project that is near where I lived. My next thought then was “WOW - a known hazardous waste site near my house. What does that mean? Why is deemed hazardous? How is it hazardous? What or who is it a hazard to?”

At the time, it was a remediation site which meant they were doing things to fix or clean-up contamination and pollution that existed. I helped develop grading plans and design plans/specifications for surface drainage features at the site. I specifically designed a large size high density polyethylene (HDPE) slope drain pipe that carried runoff from rainfall that fell on the top landfill cap area safely down the coal refuse slope to the receiving stream which was Hinckston Run. The slope drain had to be designed hydraulically to carry estimated peak discharge (flow) from large storm events and it had to be designed structurally to ensure pipe integrity and slope stability. This was done with anchors that wrapped around the pipe and connected to concrete foundations built into the slope of the coal refuse pile.

During that time, Hinckston Run stream was just as polluted and orange, yellow and red in color as it always was and as I had always remembered. No changes there. In the past, I had always thought the stream was polluted from various acid mine drainage seeps from the old coal mine shafts in the area. However, I now found out it was also polluted because of soil, surface water, and groundwater contamination associated with the Riders (Rosedale) Disposal area which was designated an hazardous waste cleanup site by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (PA DER now PADEP).

You can probably say that this event in my life continued me down the path of all this research.

As a more experienced engineer…

In 1994, I moved to Virginia just before getting married. This was because my wife and I wanted a fresh start somewhere else to raise our family. We felt there was just not much job opportunity or security for an experienced engineering professional in the Greater Johnstown and Cambria County area. Once in Virginia, I continued my work with two other private consulting engineering firms in the Fredericksburg area for about five more years and I became a registered professional engineer in Virginia in 1998. I also applied for and obtained reciprocity to become a professional engineer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania just in case I ever moved back. Currently that license is in an inactive status, but can be reinstated to active status if needed.

I then switched gears and applied for and got a job as an engineer in 1999 with the environmental division for a local government in the Tidewater Region of southeast Virginia. I got the job and we moved to Newport News VA and then later to Williamsburg VA. This division mainly worked to review development plans, issue land-disturbing permits, and inspect site erosion and sediment control and stormwater management measures. This locality was small in size compared to other jurisdictions in Virginia - just about 144 square miles in land area. Just for comparison purposes, Cambria County PA is about 695 square miles in size. However, this Virginia county was one of the fastest growing at the time. During my tenure there, it was at one time the 4th fastest growing locality in Virginia. This is some pretty significant development when you think of that ranking as compared to other Northern VA and Tidewater VA areas like Fairfax and Prince William counties and cities like Chesapeake, Lynchburg, Norfolk, RIchmond, Roanoke, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach.

With this locality, I quickly worked my way up from staff civil engineer, to senior engineer, to chief engineer, and then director of the division. I worked for this local government for 17-1/2 years and was director for 10 of those years before I assumed a role as a regional dam safety engineer with the Commonwealth of Virginia, Department of Conservation and Recreation, Division of Dam Safety and Floodplain Management in Richmond. For that state program, I handled state dam safety program permit and compliance issues associated with dam safety Region 3. The assigned territory for Region 3 covered 17 counties and 11 cities and went from Lynchburg VA south to the North Carolina line then east across southcentral Virginia and the Southside to the beach in Tidewater VA and up the Eastern Shore. All of the region was south of the James River. The region had about about 400 state regulated dams, covers about 8,225 square miles, and has about 1.7 million people.

In my last career-related move, I went from state government back to local government to become a project management supervisor, overseeing stormwater capital improvement program and sea-level rise mitigation projects for a coastal community in the Hampton Roads region. Many of the projects are to solve local drainage, stormwater management, and tidal related issues and to adapt to rising sea levels.

In my capacity for the first local government, I was designated as program administrator for several local urban sector non-point source pollution programs including the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area program, the Virginia Erosion and Sediment Control (VESCP) program, the Virginia Stormwater Management Program (VSMP), the state VPDES construction general permit program, and the tidal wetlands program. I was designated agent for two locally appointed 5-member boards, the county Wetlands Board and the Chesapeake Bay Board. I was responsible for divisional program areas which included program administration, plan of development review, compliance inspection, enforcement, watershed management planning, and public education. I was part of the team which administrated the local National Flood Insurance (NFIP) and FEMA floodplain program, was responsible for implementing certain provisions of the local Phase 2 municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) permit program plan, and performed parts of the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) action plan.

I performed plan of development reviews for well over 2,300 plans in my 17-1/2 years with this locality. Plans included both legislative and by-right cases such as rezonings, special use permits, master development plans and master stormwater management plans, subdivision plans and plats, commercial site plans, concept plans, nutrient management plans, stream monitoring plans, water quality impact assessments (WQIA’s), agricultural-forestal district AFD applications, and soil and water quality conservation plans (SWQCPs) that were necessary for agricultural activities under the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area program. All work required a complete and thorough understanding of planning, engineering, construction, hydrology, hydraulics, drainage, erosion and sediment control, stormwater management, stormwater pollution prevention (P2) and associated laws, regulations, minimum standards, ordinances, policies and technical guidance documents and interaction with other federal, state and local regulatory agencies.

In summary, I progressed and became expert in knowledge and experience with non-point source pollution, urban stormwater and water quality regulatory programs, watershed management planning, and coastal/tidal stormwater projects.

You can probably say that this step in my life continued me down the path of all this research.

Did You Know?

The Greater Johnstown area is situated near the edge of a physiographic province known as the Appalachian Plateau, and although we live “in the hills” at one time our region was flat with much less topographic relief and was without the present mountains and valleys we see everyday. The Conemaugh Gap is an example of such valley cut and topography that we are used to seeing. But millions of years ago the Greater Johnstown Area was located in a plain close to sea-level and in a very flat area and to our west was open water. Johnstown sat just to the land side of fluctuating shoreline which was situated mostly in the region at/near Pittsburgh. In this area there were lakes, rivers and swamps present which fed all fresh water into this the open water sea. Most times our location was in this plain above the open water sea, but sometimes the sea level rose to inundate our area. Hard to believe huh? Up in Richland, in the hillside behind what is now Giant Eagle (formerly Gee Bee) in the University Park Shopping Center, where Eisenhower Boulevard shoots real steep off of Scalp Avenue and goes up to UPJ, there is a formation called Brush Creek Limestone. In it you can find marine fossils - in Richland really? It is a well-known educational spot for geology enthusiasts amongst many other sites around Johnstown. (Source: The Geology of Johnstown, William R. Brice Ph.D., Chapter 1 of “Johnstown The Story of a Unique Valley” published 1985 by the Johnstown Flood Museum with assistance from William L. Glosser and edited by Karl Berger M.D.)