[ Music ]
Art Johnson: Well, with EPA again our mission being
to protect public health and the environment.
All of the information, all of the stuff we do is based on our science.
So it’s based on the data we collect in the field,
either through observation or for
sample analysis and collection.
So really to make sure we have sound data that is defensible.
We provide field work, inspections, data analysis,
data evaluation and interpretation
to make those sound scientific decisions.
Narrator: EPA must collect data with a purpose.
Data must be quality assured
so we can base decisions on it.
Rob Reinhart: Quality assurance is a system of
management activities that are there to ensure
the usability of data, in that it’s suitable
for its intended use.
So you implement things like planning,
scoping, quality controls, assessments to ensure
that the data you produce at the end is suitable.
Art Johnson: So, for example, if we have a site or
a project that needs sampling taken,
we will go out and collect samples in the field;
be they either soil, air or water samples.
We can then bring those samples back to our
regional laboratory to analyze them
for any type of a variety of different chemical
or biological contaminants.
[ Music ]
Dan Keefe: The Walton and Lonsbury Superfund site,
like a lot of sites here in the region,
is considered a legacy site.
Meaning that it existed prior to the advent
of a lot of environmental rules.
It began operations in 1940 as a hard chrome
and industrial chrome facility.
We have impacts to groundwater, impacts to soil,
impacts to surface water, and impacts to indoor air.
Bart Hoskins: Well, ecological risk assessment is
the process of determining what harm might
come to plants or animals, fish, birds from
contaminants that have been released at a site.
Well the Walton-Lonsbury site, has as one of its
biggest features, a groundwater plume of
hexavalent chromium, which is known to be very
toxic to things that live in water and sediment.
And that plume discharges to
a stream called Bliss Brook.
It was really very high concentrations
and we needed to do direct toxicity studies
to see whether there was toxicity in Bliss Brook
and how far downstream it extended.
And we did that by looking at the sediment
at the bottom of the brook and also surface water.
We did toxicity studies on both.
Dan Keefe: We had encountered some
unexpected results of petroleum
in one of our soil borings.
And wanting to get some additional information
on that in a short period of time,
I requested field support.
Jerome Keefe: The Geoprobe, which is a trade name,
pushes rods into the ground,
we’ve gone up to 70 feet to put in groundwater wells
to collect water samples.
We’ve also used it to go as deep as 60 feet
to collect soil samples.
Walton and Lonsbury, we used it there
to identify an underground source of oil
that they thought was coming from an old tank.
Dan Keefe: At a lot of our sites where the groundwater
is relatively shallow,
you get a phenomenon referred to as
vapor intrusion where you get these
volatile compounds evaporating out of
groundwater and entering into homes.
Scott Clifford: At Walton and Lonsbury we did
sub-slab vapor intrusion type samples,
where I could go in and take a grab syringe sample
and inject into my GC and we can get results
immediately to see if there’s a source of contamination
in a certain location in someone’s basement.
The mobile laboratory, our philosophy is you are able
to take a lot of samples in a short amount of time
and from those results you can decide where
to take your full of protocol laboratory samples.
Alysha Thompson: To this date at Walton and
Lonsbury I have done indoor air sampling at
residential properties.
We were looking for TCE and PCE,
the primary contaminates of concern there.
At each home, we set up a basement sample,
we set up a first floor canister sample.
Once the samples leave the site we put them on
a chain of custody and we bring them back to the
lab here where they are logged in and then our
chemist will perform the analysis.
Dan Keefe: It is project critical to have a good team.
I rely on OEME substantially at all my sites,
but Walton and Lonsbury really highlights that.
[ Music ]
Narrator: At the Palmer River, the states of
Rhode Island and Massachusetts and their
citizens have concerns about nutrient pollution.
Tim Bridges: We are sampling for water quality at
various stations along the whole watershed of
the Palmer River.
We’re trying to track down the source of what
started out as bacteria issues but is now nutrients here, too.
Specifically, there are some smaller watersheds
that are very high numbers here
and other seem to be okay.
Heidi Travers: Rhode Island DEM got involved
with this river because the shellfish grounds
downstream of the Palmer River in the saltwater
Palmer River are polluted for bacteria.
And a couple of years ago we had gotten a lot
of citizen’s request about what the status of that was.
EPA Lab’s been instrumental,
not only did they say yes they’ve also gotten involved
MADEP, NRSC has been involved
and other agencies as needed.
So we started with looking at the entire watershed
and we’ve narrowed it down so now we’re doing
a very detailed analysis of the lower Palmer River.
Narrator: After samples are collected they are
put on a chain of custody and brought to the lab for analysis.
To begin, the scientist makes a dilution.
Nathan Raines: So, I'm going to take 10 mils of
this sample and I’m going to bring it up to 100 mils.
[ liquid sounds ]
Once it goes through the sealer I’ll be putting it into
the incubator at 35° and if it turns yellow, like this,
that means bacteria is there
but it doesn't mean E. coli.
So you have to go further and check
and see if anything is florescent.
And we do have some florescent wells,
which means positive for E. coli.
Bhavita Patel: Today we will be analyzing
Palmer River samples that we have been receiving
all summer long and we will be
analyzing for nitrate nitrite.
So that is a combined form of nitrogen,
and digesting the same set of samples
for total nitrogen.
What we’ll do is take that sample,
log it out of sample log in, bring it to the lab,
check that the sample is in the correct condition
for the analysis.
Then we will take it through our tests using EPA methods.
Narrator: The analysis helps EPA and its partners
identify where nutrient pollution might originate.
Tim Bridges: It’s a complicated watershed
because you could have squash on one month
and have cattle on the same plot of land, too.
So, it’s been really complicated
to pin down a point here.
[ Music ]
Narrator: Sewage pollution in surface water has
been a challenge for New England for decades.
The lab helped develop a tool to test surface
water for human waste, a possible indicator
of infrastructure failure.
Todd Borci: Peter’s a chemist at the lab that I
worked with to develop sort of a different take
on pharmaceutical methods,
so we could focus solely on those pharmaceuticals
that we believe would be most associated
with human sewage.
So we collect water samples in the field,
I bring them up to Peter and he runs them.
Peter Philbrook: What we do here is we extract
the samples and determine whether there's
human source compounds in them such as
acetaminophen, Tylenol, caffeine.
Those source tracking compounds identify
that there is a component of human waste
in those water samples.
We’ll bring the bacteria data
to a town or municipality.
We can definitively identify that there
is a source of human waste,
that there is a broken sewer main.
Todd Borci: The lab’s analysis is critical for our
work because it basically provides the evidence
that we would use if we ever had to go to court.
Dan Keefe: The importance of having good data
and good science is paramount.
You cannot have it any other way
when you're basing clean up decisions
that might cost millions of dollars.
Art Johnson: Some of the decisions we make
require communities put in very expensive
infrastructure. So we want to make sure
that we're making those decisions based on the best
and most sound science that we can have.
[ Music ]