June 3, 2022 • 31 mins
When your project calls for environmental solutions, this team has you covered. Based out of Nanuet, New York, this group of biologists, environmental scientists and technicians operates out of a modern, state-of-the-art facility with everything you need to design and execute your customized environmental study. That includes a fleet of survey vessels, a fabrication shop to design original equipment for the job, and a taxonomy and water quality lab to analyze samples collected in the field. Behind all that equipment and technology is a team passionate about the environment.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The environment and the health of our ecosystem
is very important to me, and I wouldn't
be in this job if I didn't feel
I was helping
the situation. As someone who really cares about
the environment, I wanna make sure we're doing
the type of studies and work that are
are gonna be a benefit.
I'm John Torrick, and I'm Danny Sullivan. And
(00:20):
you're listening to Speaking of Design, bringing you
the stories of the engineers and architects who
are transforming
the world one project at a time.
Today, we'll meet a team of environmental scientists
and biologists
whose job entails everything from managing their own
boat fleet to using high powered
within their own lab, to the custom fabrication
(00:43):
of the specialized equipment needed for the water
quality and biological monitoring jobs. Together, they offer
some of the most interesting perspectives
of aquatic life surrounding New York City and
the Tri State area.
Most of my friends were on the pre
med track, but I quickly learned that, you
(01:04):
know, I wanted to be outside. I wanted
to be, you know, on boats doing field
studies and
really, you know, gain that passion during my
college years. That's Dave Davis, who today is
more than thirty years into a career as
an environmental
scientist.
Right out of school, I started with HDR
Engineering, one of their predecessor
(01:25):
companies, and instantly fell in love with being
on the water, especially in New York Harbor,
and had some really interesting surveys, water quality
collections, trips around Manhattan.
The view and the excitement just couldn't be
beat and really was hooked for life. Dave
returned to school for a master's degree in
science and environmental journalism,
(01:45):
spending several years as a freelance journalist
before returning to HDR.
That ability to communicate scientific information
made Dave a natural fit for writing reports
for clients conducting environmental studies. He also manages
a group crossing several specialized disciplines
throughout New York and New Jersey, including a
(02:06):
cutting edge team that performs environmental field work
and laboratory services out of Nanuet, New York.
I think in the simplest
terms, what these scientists are doing is they're
collecting environmental
data. They're doing
environmental studies, water quality collections,
a whole variety of different type of,
(02:27):
soil sampling,
remediation.
It sort of covers the whole environmental field.
The Nanuet team is officially known as the
Environmental Measurements and Data Acquisition Center. We've typically
marketed ourselves as, like, a one stop shop
here, a full service field operation center capable
of taking a project start to finish. That's
Aaron Deppert, the facility lead of the center
(02:50):
and a field equipment and fabrication specialist.
I manage a 12,000 square foot facility,
which includes a 7,000 square foot equipment storage
warehouse.
Also included in that is a fab full
fabrication shop. We have 13 full time environmental
scientists slash biologists here
and higher up to 10 to 12 temporary
(03:10):
staff annually for, seasonal work. In a roundabout
way, it was seasonal work that led to
Aaron's unique career choice. You know, what got
me interested in this field, I don't know
if it's conventional or not, but I grew
up in a family that enjoyed the outdoors,
spent a lot of time hiking, camping, fishing,
all the typical stuff.
My father owned a landscape design company, so
(03:31):
I got involved with that at a very
early age.
You you would think that maybe that led
to the environmental field from a work standpoint,
but for me,
you know, my father always reminded me of
this. I I didn't wanna landscape for the
rest of my life. So my natural choice
was environmental sciences, environmental studies. But in college,
I sort of found a passion for it.
(03:51):
Aaron's team of environmental
scientists and biologists
operates like a small business within a much
larger firm,
nimble enough to customize their specialized services
based on the job. We can custom design,
build, and execute field monitoring and sampling programs
to address our clients' permitting and compliance monitoring
needs,
as well as provide the scientists and equipment
(04:13):
to complete the project, which I think separates
us from a lot of other groups
where they're subbing out a lot of the
the field work and or having to rent
equipment and procure a boat and a captain.
Aaron manages a fleet of more than 10
custom boats ranging from a canoe to a
28 foot Parker Research vessel
equipped with sonar to map the depths of
(04:35):
the ocean. And if you're talking about boats,
well, Aaron is definitely your guy. Here in
Nanuet, we have two larger research vessels. One
is a 28 foot Parker with twin 250
horsepower outboards.
This boat has a custom davit with an
electric capstan winch, full GPS navigation system.
(04:55):
Basically, just an all around high speed
research vessel
capable of
doing fisheries work, water quality, and it's a
fast boat, so we can cover ground, mobilize
down to the Lower Bay or Jamaica Bay
at the New York Harbor. The other research
vessel is a 25 foot Parker. Very similar
boat. This boat has the same davit and
winch system as well as an a frame
(05:17):
off back for a tow and bottom. The
fleet also includes two eighteen foot Maycraft center
consoles,
a 19 foot Carolina skiff,
two eighteen foot aluminum john boats, and a
smaller 12 foot aluminum john boat. Not to
mention an inflatable Achilles raft, two canoes,
and a handful of custom boats permanently deployed
(05:39):
on jobs.
But before members of Erin's team ever get
out to the water or in the field,
they start each job in the lab.
I love the diversity
of work that we do. I like having
a little field work, a little lab work,
(06:01):
some writing, some management. It never gets boring.
That's Kate Esler, who supervises the team's 5,000
square foot tax onomy laboratory. We identify larval
fish and invertebrates and also do some water
quality analysis.
We're using microscopes. We have a digital camera
that's connected to one of them so we
can digitally measure these fish and come up
(06:22):
with measurements that we can then see what
technologies could maybe screen these organisms out. But
I'd say the technology is not what makes
our lab great. It's the staff. It's the
taxonomist.
Kate emanates the type of enthusiasm
for her work that drives someone to become
an expert in their field.
Invertebrates,
(06:43):
in particular,
fish also, some of those little
vital creatures are so unique and cool.
And, you know, in our work, we're always
finding new ones with every new, you know,
habitat we're working in or every new area
we're working in. It's always,
exciting to see what what we can find.
Not surprisingly,
(07:04):
Kate's doing what she always wanted to do.
I was lucky enough to spend a lot
of time during summers as a kid, you
know, wandering through tide pools in New England
and some lakes in Adirondacks.
So that always inspired me, and I've been
taking science classes from middle school through grad
school.
(07:24):
And I kinda feel lucky to have always
known that my passion lies with science and
aquatic science. Kate and her team in the
lab facility
help plan each study as she and Dave
explained. We're definitely involved in the planning and
the writing of the work plan to make
sure
what they're collecting is exactly what we need
in the lab. This is very detailed and
(07:46):
intricate work. Most of our folks here are
cross trained, so our taxonomist has done all
all of the things in the field. And
the other way around too, a lot of
the field folks have spent some time in
the lab, so they know what we need
to be careful about in the field. And
a lot of our project managers too, some
of them have started here, so they know
(08:07):
what it's like in the field and in
the lab. I think that's really well said,
Kate. And I think, like, one of the
unique things that Kate and others can
help for clients is actually the design of
a study, and we can make it we
understand, you know, what the permitting requirements are,
and we can design a study to be
cost effective.
We can often get studies done in a
(08:29):
shorter period of time. We can demonstrate to
the agencies that you only need to collect
a certain amount of data. So I think
it really starts in the design of a
study. The studies can support a wide variety
of projects with an environmental component. We have
a whole group of water client who need
to do various studies
associated,
(08:49):
whether it's a reservoir, drinking water, wastewater facilities.
But then there's also
a lot of clients in the power and
industrial sector as well that need to acquire
permits or do certain studies as part of
permitting compliance. And so, yeah, that's sort of
what we do
best historically.
We collect the data. We can fabricate the
(09:11):
equipment. We could execute the studies, and then
we take that data and we turn it
into, like, permit applications
or
design studies. For example, the team might support
a federal or state regulatory agency to evaluate
how a facility
or proposed construction project
might impact the water quality of a river
(09:32):
or lake
in the aquatic life within the body of
water.
It could be a wastewater facility that discharges
treated water into a stream, or a power
company might be looking to relicense a hydroelectric
plant
or install new underwater cable. It could involve
the impact of building a new bridge across
the water or dredging the river to accommodate
(09:54):
larger cargo ships.
But a lot of the work evaluates
the ongoing impact of existing facilities. So a
lot of the work we do is for
facilities that have cooling water intakes.
So they need to
document how many larval fish and shellfish they're
pulling in. So we would collect
(10:15):
samples from that intake,
bring them to our lab, identify and measure
each of those fish to species. We would
also can collect benthic samples, so taking grabs
of sediment, either freshwater, estuarine, or marine,
and then look at what organisms
invertebrates
are in the sediment. Again, identifying them to
(10:37):
species if possible and putting that information into
reports. Then as Aaron reminded us, there's the
fish. Historically, and I think what our group
is most interested in is the fishery side
of the environmental field. We've done population studies
in New York Harbor and all its surrounding
estuaries. Once a study is designed, it's time
(10:58):
for the team to venture out in the
field.
So
a typical day out on a boat, whether
you're doing fisheries work or
water quality work, you're gonna start your day
generally at our laboratory and pick up the
(11:20):
supplies that you're gonna need for the day.
That's Casey Stokes, an environmental scientist and field
coordinator. His job involves being the conduit between
a project team and the field staff, helping
to select the right specialists and equipment for
each job. You may need some consumable supplies,
ice to keep samples cold,
gloves or
(11:40):
formalin for the samples that you collect,
certainly data sheets and labels and that type
of stuff. And you'll head out to a
marina and hop in a boat and have
a set of sites that you need to
hit for that day. Like many of his
colleagues, Casey grew up on the water. I
grew up along the shore of the Hudson
River in Upstate New York, and we spent
a lot of time
(12:00):
outdoors and on the water when we could.
And then at 13, I asked my parents
if I could get scuba certified, and, surprisingly,
they said yes.
We'd go down and see some wrecks or
take one trip down to do some coral
reef diving down in The Caribbean.
I did end up working as a scuba
diver for three years in the summers during
college.
(12:21):
Kinda paid my way through college. From there,
Casey became more interested in learning about animals
and plants,
leading to his career in environmental science. Each
day on the job brings a new set
of tasks
requiring a methodical approach to work in the
field. Every site that you're hitting, you're collecting
date, time, weather,
GPS location information,
(12:43):
and then you have the
sample itself. Maybe it's water sample. Maybe it's
some readings that you take with a water
quality instrumentation, or maybe it's some fisheries data.
And that may involve
pulling fish up onto the boat with a
net and then measuring them, weighing them, and
then tossing them back. Or it might involve
collecting ichthyoplankton
fish eggs and larvae, putting them into a
(13:04):
jar, putting formalin into the jar so they're
preserved, and then labeling that so it can
be brought back to the lab for Kate
and her taxonomists
to identify. To do the job, Casey and
his team need to know as much about
the equipment they're using as the organisms they're
studying.
We have, a whole lot of handheld instrumentation
that can just be dropped into the water
(13:25):
for instant readings. We have data loggers that
can be deployed
and log internally
and then recaptured
to download. We've installed telemetry equipment that will
send us data from the field in real
time, either along the shorelines or in ponds,
rivers,
and even off of buoys. Then there's the
(13:46):
Doppler radar technology.
We have used ADCPs extensively. That stands for
acoustic Doppler current profiler. They basically emit sonar
pulses and listen for the Doppler shift of
the
return signal bouncing
back to it through the water column to
determine water speed and direction. And we've used
(14:06):
them to also
map out in real time sediment plumes coming
off of construction activity because the more sediment
they disturb, the stronger the return signal is.
And quite a few other technologies. We've got
a whole lot of GPS equipment, everything from
kind of a lower accuracy handheld unit to
high accuracy devices that can do horizontal and
vertical positioning to within a couple centimeters.
(14:28):
Those can be integrated
onto a boat or used, for terrestrial applications.
We've done bathymetry where we're measuring the depth
of the water in a project area
to inform design decisions or even combine that
with the ADCP to map out how the
currents behave around a project site. And then
we've got the drones
on a pretty wide variety of projects,
(14:50):
either collecting data or just collecting imagery.
However, a lot of the equipment the team
needs is so specialized that it requires someone
like Aaron to get creative. If you're working
in the environmental field, you know that a
lot of the equipment is specialty equipment purposely
built for the task at hand. So it's
either not available on the general market or
(15:11):
it costs an arm and a leg to
hire somebody to create and fabricate.
More often than not, it's just not available.
So we sort of purchased a welder and
took on fabrication of our own. To take
it and actually fabricate it is fun to
do. It's rewarding, and you're creating something that
just basically you can't go buy off the
shelf to get task done. When Aaron describes
(15:32):
the team's fabrication work, it sounds very much
like the neighbor who's always working on something
in the garage, except his weekend projects involve
some of the most sophisticated
fisheries and water sampling technologies
in the world. So some of our custom
work is the boat setups, and I think
that's where it initially started was building davits
and a frames and winch mounts for the
(15:55):
sampling gear. But a lot of the fabrication
is far more complex. We've built some custom
low profile ADCP mounts, the acoustic Doppler current
profile
mounts,
ADCP
mounts, the acoustic Doppler current profile mounts. Casey
was involved with this designing it and able
to deploy these ADCPs
subsurface
with no surface buoys or anything leading up
(16:15):
to the surface. So we'll put out a
low profile mount with the ADCP attached to
it to, say, a 50 foot pickup line
with an anchor, and then we'll mark GPS
cords at both the anchor and the unit
itself. And next time out, when we wanna
service it, we throw out a grappling hook,
grapple up that line, retrieve the ACP, download
the data, and redeploy.
(16:35):
Additional fabrications have included a customized van beam
dredge to sample sediment off the river bottom,
underwater video sleds, and an underwater video quadrant
for submerged vegetation surveys.
Some of the team's unique fabrications are particularly
innovative,
including a mobile PFAS testing lab to test
(16:55):
for harmful chemicals
found in products like Teflon nonstick pans
and a wicking well mechanism to remediate
suspended solids such as metals or arsenic in
groundwater. Though it sounds like a lot of
work to essentially invent your own equipment, Casey
and Aaron said it offers significant advantages
during a field study. Because everything's in house,
(17:17):
we work very closely and have a lot
of feedback between the fabrication side of things
and the field side of things.
So the field crew who are using it
maybe have the better ideas for how it
should perform. And then if something needs to
change because of unexpected
factors, then we can pretty quickly
respond and make changes to our designs by
(17:39):
bringing the gear back into the shop and
having them reworked. So we're always trying to
come up with ideas on how to better
what we're doing. And having those capabilities in
house, we can make adjustments overnight. We can
make adjustments
over the weekend. We can do it on
on-site. Yeah. Work smarter, not harder.
(17:59):
From working in an advanced science lab to
inventing new equipment in the fabrication
shop to taking boats out on the Hudson
River, the team's hands on work sounds like
it would make the day go by quickly.
Not necessarily,
Aaron said.
Typically,
folks here, fisheries work, boating, and this is
(18:19):
the general public and family members, and they
think it's all, you know, rainbows and sunshine.
But we work through the harsh winter months,
long cold days. We work through the summer
months, the the heat of August, which is,
in my opinion,
as challenging, if not more challenging
than the winter months. Quite often, these are
(18:39):
long days days meaning
fourteen plus hours.
A lot of our work on the water
incorporate,
tidal cycles. So if we need to hit
a full tidal cycle, that's twelve plus hours
on the water. Casey said the extreme conditions
can make it difficult to perform
what would typically be a simple task. I
had a day where it was something like
(19:00):
negative seven or or negative nine degrees Fahrenheit
around there, and it was very windy.
And it was a challenge to
keep the fish alive just to get them
out of the water, measure them quick enough
so that they're not freezing to your equipment,
and then get them back in the water.
One example involved a three mile signature bridge
being constructed across the Hudson River. Anytime that
(19:20):
there was any construction activities, we were required
to be out there monitoring water quality. So
the first couple years of this project, they
chose to try to work through the winter
months here. And in the Northeast,
we see, specifically on the Hudson River where
this job was taking place, you run into
a lot of icing and the freezing water
temperatures.
(19:41):
So
quite often throughout this period of time, crews
would come in. We'd have to de ice
the boat and get the snow off it.
We had keep bubblers in the marina.
So,
basically, it just keeps the water from freezing
around the boat, and we'd spend up to
two hours chipping our way out of the
marina, breaking the ice in front of us
to get out of the marina. That adds
(20:02):
an extra concern is that's great, you got
out of the marina, but you spend six,
eight hours in the water, you come back
If the temperatures are such, that, area can
refreeze
in that time period. So we'd be faced
with the challenge of breaking the ice to
get back into the marina
and safely back to harbor. Those conditions make
it important to plan for the safety of
the team. Quite often with the freezing, you
(20:24):
end up with
the deck freezing, which becomes hazardous, so we're
dealing with that, putting down melting agents or
sand to create a attraction, freezing on the
windshield,
and visibility is always a concern there too.
Some of the other that whether it's nice
conditions or not, we do some harbor work
overnights.
So you're out in the harbor long days,
(20:45):
and you're working through the night. So that
can be a challenge as well, just staying
awake and paying proper attention for safety purposes.
With such long days out on the water,
Erin, Kate, and Dave recalled passing time between
tides while waiting for the right conditions for
the next sample. There's been downtime that we
have hours to kill in between sample sets,
(21:08):
and we'll cook up a little bit of
food, maybe play a game of backgammon or
whatnot or other online games that we now
have access to. I remember listening to one
of the World Cup games waiting for some
work activity to start. You do each what
you can to to pass it by, but
most times, it's a good time. I thought
you were gonna say favorite pastime was to
(21:28):
complain about the project manager.
Nah. Nah. Come on, man.
But, yes, that that could still you know,
we could spend hours doing that.
With the team doing such specialized environmental work,
Dave said that the niche studies often lead
(21:48):
to repeat
business
and larger jobs. You know, a lot of
times,
our work with clients may start,
with something that is a simple field study
or data collection.
And then,
really, that type of information,
that type of data, we demonstrate to the
client our value and then using that data
(22:10):
in reports. And then very often,
that leads to future engineering design work at
these facilities. So there really is that progression
and that relationship.
One example
involved a study to access how the deepening
of navigation channels in New York, New Jersey
harbor would affect aquatic habitats,
(22:30):
especially that of the winter flounder.
Dave's team had become quite proficient at data
collection after years of research.
Kate and her lab developed, I would call
it innovative
solutions. What we were actually able to do
with these very small eggs and larvae under
the microscope,
we were able to identify
what stage of growth
(22:52):
the eggs and larvae were in. So we're
not only able to give information to the
client, you have eggs and larvae, but we're
also basically to tell how old these were
and how developed they were. And that information
became super helpful
to sort of understanding
what the winter flounder spawning was like in
New York Harbor. And so this federal client
(23:12):
was able to to design and execute their
project in a way to minimize impacts.
That work led to further scientific breakthroughs.
For many years, the prevailing thought within the
scientific community,
I'd go to scientific conferences. There was a
belief that winter flounder eggs could not be
collected
by sampling gear because the eggs collect on
(23:35):
the bottom. They're sticky.
And so the belief was is that the
eggs were out there, but they weren't able
to be collected. As you might guess,
that didn't stop this team.
So several years ago, we fabricated
some custom
ichthyoplankton,
which means eggs and larvae,
sampling equipment. So
the aluminum
(23:55):
sleds that were mentioned earlier, we attached
a net to them so they were bottom
oriented. They had skids on the bottom so
that they slid along the bottom. And then
we also
experimented with what was called a tickler,
chain, which was basically a chain in front
of the net to sort of stir up
the bottom. And
(24:16):
lo and behold, doing these winter flounder studies
over the years, we began collecting winter flounder
eggs. Which Dave was proud to share with
the wider scientific community. And so I remember
going to my first scientific
conference and presenting these results, and
there was some skepticism.
But once I showed them the data, I
showed them the photographs.
(24:37):
We had the samples, the actual winter founder
eggs in house in our collection. You know,
that thought of not being able to collect
winter founder eggs in the field has changed,
and so I really feel I was a
good example of leading the scientific
side of things. Some jobs involve looking at
how nutrients such as phosphorus or nitrogen
might be impacting aquatic habitats.
(25:00):
Kate said that can lead to additional work
with wastewater treatment operators. We just did a
pretty big study in Jamaica Bay
related to nitrogen,
and we collected basically everything in that bay
that we could from water to sediment to
algae to invertebrates
to understand
the nutrients in that system and how they
(25:22):
may have changed by some reductions
done by the city. And that data then
went into
some modeling. I feel like that job
really brought a lot of field folks, modelers,
engineers
together, and it was a great way to
network our field and lab and our our
modeling. Microorganisms
(25:43):
often get drawn into the water intakes of
power plants that are drawn in water from
the river for cooling,
which has led to some interesting work for
the team. Aaron described at the deployment of
a 15 foot boom with a mesh fabric
stretching to the full depth of the water
to prevent those organisms from getting trapped in
the intake. It was probably the most challenging
(26:05):
project I've been involved with here. These are
organisms drifting in the currents and carried by
the currents away from the intakes. And, basically,
they'd hit the net, they'd roll off or
cling to it, and this system had a
air burst
system
in involved and incorporated in it that would
discharge air every, say,
thirty minutes or hour to clear the sediment
(26:25):
off of the net and any organisms back
into the currents. Once again, this wasn't an
off the shelf solution. These were fourteen hour
days, seven days a week
once it started because you'd assemble this boom
on land and use a series of boats
and
heavy equipment on land to shuffle
the portion out into the river. Then you'd
spend the next day or two assembling the
(26:46):
next sections on land, all while the previous
portion was out floating in the river. So
to keep everything secured and in place was
very, very challenging,
and there was no quit. You you could
not stop once you started, so this would
go on for
a month plus for the installation
and then the maintenance and monitoring throughout the
season, the the breeding season. And then the
(27:08):
removal process was just as tiring and and
difficult. The team has also been involved with
multiple oyster projects,
including some related to the Billion Oyster Project.
The nonprofit's mission is to restore oyster reefs
in New York Harbor to provide habitats and
provide natural shoreline protection from waves, flooding, and
(27:28):
erosion.
Casey talked about his work in that area.
The oyster work definitely tends to capture the
public imagination because I've been in the newspaper
for oyster work at HDR twice, and I've
only worked on two oyster projects, one with
the HDR hardware. The stuff we did was
up in the Hudson River, and there was
some
construction that was gonna be disturbing oyster bed.
(27:49):
And we basically spent, I I wanna say,
about a week straight just harvesting as many
oysters as we could and relocating them. I
mean, we must have relocated thousands and thousands
of oysters
and pulling them up with rake style dredge
and putting them into
large buckets and then pretty quickly transporting them
to a part of the river that wasn't
(28:10):
gonna be disturbed by the construction to try
to maintain as much of that community as
we could. The team occasionally lends its fleet
to projects outside of the Tristate area. Typically,
if we're sending a boat out to a
remote location or somewhere across the country, we
would be towing it, and it would come
(28:30):
with an operator. I've personally trailed a boat
as far North as Maine, as far South
as Virginia, and as far West as Quad
Cities. Having cross trained staff that have worked
in the field, in the lab, and directly
with engineers
ultimately raises the level of everyone's work. The
lab is filled with professional scientists. Right? It's
professional,
(28:50):
you know, degreed
scientists
who are executing these projects, who have a
larger understanding
of the work and the context
of it, I think, is really important. Because
in the end, as a project manager,
I understand that having those trained, experienced people
is a benefit to my project. We have
staff
(29:11):
that have twenty, thirty, forty years of general
environmental field work, And that's a big asset
and a tool that we often use tapping
into some of the more experienced staff to
get historic data or how they've done it
in the past. And to have those tools
and assets to us definitely help out because
there's no substitute for experience. All that experience
certainly gives the team a different perspective of
(29:33):
recreation on the water. For me, having spent
so many hours on the water,
I avoid boats in my off hours. Something
that I I have friends with boats, and
they could could not pay me to go
out on their boat for a long period
of time. More recently, over the last few
years, I've learned to enjoy it again and
and appreciate it. If I'm out on a
friend's boat and whatnot and we got family,
(29:54):
it's always nice to have the inside information
that we all carry and be able to
share that. Yeah. I'd rather go on a
kayak than a boat because the kayak can't
break down. Yep. Absolutely. That's the large part
of it. Sometimes you pinch yourself. You're you're
heading out of the marina in Lower Manhattan
seeing the
skyline. Just realize how lucky you are that
people will pay money for the for these
(30:16):
type of, sightseeing tours and to be working
in this area. But more than the adventure
of the job or the intellectual
pursuit of their research,
perhaps what most drives the team
is their commitment to the environment. I I
think for
most of the folks we work with here
and we're involved in this portion of the
(30:37):
field, you know, or industry,
they have a passion for what they're doing.
They're not simply out here collecting a paycheck.
I think it takes a lot more than
that to be a good scientist
and not just go out there to to
collect the data and go home. I think
everybody has a personal interest in this at
some level, whether it's in the environment,
(30:58):
a local community of some sort that they
wanna see better. But I I think it's
a true passion that all of us carry
for the environment.
For more information on this podcast,
visit hdrinc.com/speakingofdesign.
You'll find links to pictures, articles, and more
(31:20):
information. If you like what you heard, be
sure to rate us or leave feedback on
iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The environment and the health of our ecosystem
is very important to me, and I wouldn't
be in this job if I didn't feel
I was helping
the situation. As someone who really cares about
the environment, I wanna make sure we're doing
the type of studies and work that are
are gonna be a benefit.
I'm John Torrick, and I'm Danny Sullivan. And
(00:20):
you're listening to Speaking of Design, bringing you
the stories of the engineers and architects who
are transforming
the world one project at a time.
Today, we'll meet a team of environmental scientists
and biologists
whose job entails everything from managing their own
boat fleet to using high powered
within their own lab, to the custom fabrication
(00:43):
of the specialized equipment needed for the water
quality and biological monitoring jobs. Together, they offer
some of the most interesting perspectives
of aquatic life surrounding New York City and
the Tri State area.
Most of my friends were on the pre
med track, but I quickly learned that, you
(01:04):
know, I wanted to be outside. I wanted
to be, you know, on boats doing field
studies and
really, you know, gain that passion during my
college years. That's Dave Davis, who today is
more than thirty years into a career as
an environmental
scientist.
Right out of school, I started with HDR
Engineering, one of their predecessor
(01:25):
companies, and instantly fell in love with being
on the water, especially in New York Harbor,
and had some really interesting surveys, water quality
collections, trips around Manhattan.
The view and the excitement just couldn't be
beat and really was hooked for life. Dave
returned to school for a master's degree in
science and environmental journalism,
(01:45):
spending several years as a freelance journalist
before returning to HDR.
That ability to communicate scientific information
made Dave a natural fit for writing reports
for clients conducting environmental studies. He also manages
a group crossing several specialized disciplines
throughout New York and New Jersey, including a
(02:06):
cutting edge team that performs environmental field work
and laboratory services out of Nanuet, New York.
I think in the simplest
terms, what these scientists are doing is they're
collecting environmental
data. They're doing
environmental studies, water quality collections,
a whole variety of different type of,
(02:27):
soil sampling,
remediation.
It sort of covers the whole environmental field.
The Nanuet team is officially known as the
Environmental Measurements and Data Acquisition Center. We've typically
marketed ourselves as, like, a one stop shop
here, a full service field operation center capable
of taking a project start to finish. That's
Aaron Deppert, the facility lead of the center
(02:50):
and a field equipment and fabrication specialist.
I manage a 12,000 square foot facility,
which includes a 7,000 square foot equipment storage
warehouse.
Also included in that is a fab full
fabrication shop. We have 13 full time environmental
scientists slash biologists here
and higher up to 10 to 12 temporary
(03:10):
staff annually for, seasonal work. In a roundabout
way, it was seasonal work that led to
Aaron's unique career choice. You know, what got
me interested in this field, I don't know
if it's conventional or not, but I grew
up in a family that enjoyed the outdoors,
spent a lot of time hiking, camping, fishing,
all the typical stuff.
My father owned a landscape design company, so
(03:31):
I got involved with that at a very
early age.
You you would think that maybe that led
to the environmental field from a work standpoint,
but for me,
you know, my father always reminded me of
this. I I didn't wanna landscape for the
rest of my life. So my natural choice
was environmental sciences, environmental studies. But in college,
I sort of found a passion for it.
(03:51):
Aaron's team of environmental
scientists and biologists
operates like a small business within a much
larger firm,
nimble enough to customize their specialized services
based on the job. We can custom design,
build, and execute field monitoring and sampling programs
to address our clients' permitting and compliance monitoring
needs,
as well as provide the scientists and equipment
(04:13):
to complete the project, which I think separates
us from a lot of other groups
where they're subbing out a lot of the
the field work and or having to rent
equipment and procure a boat and a captain.
Aaron manages a fleet of more than 10
custom boats ranging from a canoe to a
28 foot Parker Research vessel
equipped with sonar to map the depths of
(04:35):
the ocean. And if you're talking about boats,
well, Aaron is definitely your guy. Here in
Nanuet, we have two larger research vessels. One
is a 28 foot Parker with twin 250
horsepower outboards.
This boat has a custom davit with an
electric capstan winch, full GPS navigation system.
(04:55):
Basically, just an all around high speed
research vessel
capable of
doing fisheries work, water quality, and it's a
fast boat, so we can cover ground, mobilize
down to the Lower Bay or Jamaica Bay
at the New York Harbor. The other research
vessel is a 25 foot Parker. Very similar
boat. This boat has the same davit and
winch system as well as an a frame
(05:17):
off back for a tow and bottom. The
fleet also includes two eighteen foot Maycraft center
consoles,
a 19 foot Carolina skiff,
two eighteen foot aluminum john boats, and a
smaller 12 foot aluminum john boat. Not to
mention an inflatable Achilles raft, two canoes,
and a handful of custom boats permanently deployed
(05:39):
on jobs.
But before members of Erin's team ever get
out to the water or in the field,
they start each job in the lab.
I love the diversity
of work that we do. I like having
a little field work, a little lab work,
(06:01):
some writing, some management. It never gets boring.
That's Kate Esler, who supervises the team's 5,000
square foot tax onomy laboratory. We identify larval
fish and invertebrates and also do some water
quality analysis.
We're using microscopes. We have a digital camera
that's connected to one of them so we
can digitally measure these fish and come up
(06:22):
with measurements that we can then see what
technologies could maybe screen these organisms out. But
I'd say the technology is not what makes
our lab great. It's the staff. It's the
taxonomist.
Kate emanates the type of enthusiasm
for her work that drives someone to become
an expert in their field.
Invertebrates,
(06:43):
in particular,
fish also, some of those little
vital creatures are so unique and cool.
And, you know, in our work, we're always
finding new ones with every new, you know,
habitat we're working in or every new area
we're working in. It's always,
exciting to see what what we can find.
Not surprisingly,
(07:04):
Kate's doing what she always wanted to do.
I was lucky enough to spend a lot
of time during summers as a kid, you
know, wandering through tide pools in New England
and some lakes in Adirondacks.
So that always inspired me, and I've been
taking science classes from middle school through grad
school.
(07:24):
And I kinda feel lucky to have always
known that my passion lies with science and
aquatic science. Kate and her team in the
lab facility
help plan each study as she and Dave
explained. We're definitely involved in the planning and
the writing of the work plan to make
sure
what they're collecting is exactly what we need
in the lab. This is very detailed and
(07:46):
intricate work. Most of our folks here are
cross trained, so our taxonomist has done all
all of the things in the field. And
the other way around too, a lot of
the field folks have spent some time in
the lab, so they know what we need
to be careful about in the field. And
a lot of our project managers too, some
of them have started here, so they know
(08:07):
what it's like in the field and in
the lab. I think that's really well said,
Kate. And I think, like, one of the
unique things that Kate and others can
help for clients is actually the design of
a study, and we can make it we
understand, you know, what the permitting requirements are,
and we can design a study to be
cost effective.
We can often get studies done in a
(08:29):
shorter period of time. We can demonstrate to
the agencies that you only need to collect
a certain amount of data. So I think
it really starts in the design of a
study. The studies can support a wide variety
of projects with an environmental component. We have
a whole group of water client who need
to do various studies
associated,
(08:49):
whether it's a reservoir, drinking water, wastewater facilities.
But then there's also
a lot of clients in the power and
industrial sector as well that need to acquire
permits or do certain studies as part of
permitting compliance. And so, yeah, that's sort of
what we do
best historically.
We collect the data. We can fabricate the
(09:11):
equipment. We could execute the studies, and then
we take that data and we turn it
into, like, permit applications
or
design studies. For example, the team might support
a federal or state regulatory agency to evaluate
how a facility
or proposed construction project
might impact the water quality of a river
(09:32):
or lake
in the aquatic life within the body of
water.
It could be a wastewater facility that discharges
treated water into a stream, or a power
company might be looking to relicense a hydroelectric
plant
or install new underwater cable. It could involve
the impact of building a new bridge across
the water or dredging the river to accommodate
(09:54):
larger cargo ships.
But a lot of the work evaluates
the ongoing impact of existing facilities. So a
lot of the work we do is for
facilities that have cooling water intakes.
So they need to
document how many larval fish and shellfish they're
pulling in. So we would collect
(10:15):
samples from that intake,
bring them to our lab, identify and measure
each of those fish to species. We would
also can collect benthic samples, so taking grabs
of sediment, either freshwater, estuarine, or marine,
and then look at what organisms
invertebrates
are in the sediment. Again, identifying them to
(10:37):
species if possible and putting that information into
reports. Then as Aaron reminded us, there's the
fish. Historically, and I think what our group
is most interested in is the fishery side
of the environmental field. We've done population studies
in New York Harbor and all its surrounding
estuaries. Once a study is designed, it's time
(10:58):
for the team to venture out in the
field.
So
a typical day out on a boat, whether
you're doing fisheries work or
water quality work, you're gonna start your day
generally at our laboratory and pick up the
(11:20):
supplies that you're gonna need for the day.
That's Casey Stokes, an environmental scientist and field
coordinator. His job involves being the conduit between
a project team and the field staff, helping
to select the right specialists and equipment for
each job. You may need some consumable supplies,
ice to keep samples cold,
gloves or
(11:40):
formalin for the samples that you collect,
certainly data sheets and labels and that type
of stuff. And you'll head out to a
marina and hop in a boat and have
a set of sites that you need to
hit for that day. Like many of his
colleagues, Casey grew up on the water. I
grew up along the shore of the Hudson
River in Upstate New York, and we spent
a lot of time
(12:00):
outdoors and on the water when we could.
And then at 13, I asked my parents
if I could get scuba certified, and, surprisingly,
they said yes.
We'd go down and see some wrecks or
take one trip down to do some coral
reef diving down in The Caribbean.
I did end up working as a scuba
diver for three years in the summers during
college.
(12:21):
Kinda paid my way through college. From there,
Casey became more interested in learning about animals
and plants,
leading to his career in environmental science. Each
day on the job brings a new set
of tasks
requiring a methodical approach to work in the
field. Every site that you're hitting, you're collecting
date, time, weather,
GPS location information,
(12:43):
and then you have the
sample itself. Maybe it's water sample. Maybe it's
some readings that you take with a water
quality instrumentation, or maybe it's some fisheries data.
And that may involve
pulling fish up onto the boat with a
net and then measuring them, weighing them, and
then tossing them back. Or it might involve
collecting ichthyoplankton
fish eggs and larvae, putting them into a
(13:04):
jar, putting formalin into the jar so they're
preserved, and then labeling that so it can
be brought back to the lab for Kate
and her taxonomists
to identify. To do the job, Casey and
his team need to know as much about
the equipment they're using as the organisms they're
studying.
We have, a whole lot of handheld instrumentation
that can just be dropped into the water
(13:25):
for instant readings. We have data loggers that
can be deployed
and log internally
and then recaptured
to download. We've installed telemetry equipment that will
send us data from the field in real
time, either along the shorelines or in ponds,
rivers,
and even off of buoys. Then there's the
(13:46):
Doppler radar technology.
We have used ADCPs extensively. That stands for
acoustic Doppler current profiler. They basically emit sonar
pulses and listen for the Doppler shift of
the
return signal bouncing
back to it through the water column to
determine water speed and direction. And we've used
(14:06):
them to also
map out in real time sediment plumes coming
off of construction activity because the more sediment
they disturb, the stronger the return signal is.
And quite a few other technologies. We've got
a whole lot of GPS equipment, everything from
kind of a lower accuracy handheld unit to
high accuracy devices that can do horizontal and
vertical positioning to within a couple centimeters.
(14:28):
Those can be integrated
onto a boat or used, for terrestrial applications.
We've done bathymetry where we're measuring the depth
of the water in a project area
to inform design decisions or even combine that
with the ADCP to map out how the
currents behave around a project site. And then
we've got the drones
on a pretty wide variety of projects,
(14:50):
either collecting data or just collecting imagery.
However, a lot of the equipment the team
needs is so specialized that it requires someone
like Aaron to get creative. If you're working
in the environmental field, you know that a
lot of the equipment is specialty equipment purposely
built for the task at hand. So it's
either not available on the general market or
(15:11):
it costs an arm and a leg to
hire somebody to create and fabricate.
More often than not, it's just not available.
So we sort of purchased a welder and
took on fabrication of our own. To take
it and actually fabricate it is fun to
do. It's rewarding, and you're creating something that
just basically you can't go buy off the
shelf to get task done. When Aaron describes
(15:32):
the team's fabrication work, it sounds very much
like the neighbor who's always working on something
in the garage, except his weekend projects involve
some of the most sophisticated
fisheries and water sampling technologies
in the world. So some of our custom
work is the boat setups, and I think
that's where it initially started was building davits
and a frames and winch mounts for the
(15:55):
sampling gear. But a lot of the fabrication
is far more complex. We've built some custom
low profile ADCP mounts, the acoustic Doppler current
profile
mounts,
ADCP
mounts, the acoustic Doppler current profile mounts. Casey
was involved with this designing it and able
to deploy these ADCPs
subsurface
with no surface buoys or anything leading up
(16:15):
to the surface. So we'll put out a
low profile mount with the ADCP attached to
it to, say, a 50 foot pickup line
with an anchor, and then we'll mark GPS
cords at both the anchor and the unit
itself. And next time out, when we wanna
service it, we throw out a grappling hook,
grapple up that line, retrieve the ACP, download
the data, and redeploy.
(16:35):
Additional fabrications have included a customized van beam
dredge to sample sediment off the river bottom,
underwater video sleds, and an underwater video quadrant
for submerged vegetation surveys.
Some of the team's unique fabrications are particularly
innovative,
including a mobile PFAS testing lab to test
(16:55):
for harmful chemicals
found in products like Teflon nonstick pans
and a wicking well mechanism to remediate
suspended solids such as metals or arsenic in
groundwater. Though it sounds like a lot of
work to essentially invent your own equipment, Casey
and Aaron said it offers significant advantages
during a field study. Because everything's in house,
(17:17):
we work very closely and have a lot
of feedback between the fabrication side of things
and the field side of things.
So the field crew who are using it
maybe have the better ideas for how it
should perform. And then if something needs to
change because of unexpected
factors, then we can pretty quickly
respond and make changes to our designs by
(17:39):
bringing the gear back into the shop and
having them reworked. So we're always trying to
come up with ideas on how to better
what we're doing. And having those capabilities in
house, we can make adjustments overnight. We can
make adjustments
over the weekend. We can do it on
on-site. Yeah. Work smarter, not harder.
(17:59):
From working in an advanced science lab to
inventing new equipment in the fabrication
shop to taking boats out on the Hudson
River, the team's hands on work sounds like
it would make the day go by quickly.
Not necessarily,
Aaron said.
Typically,
folks here, fisheries work, boating, and this is
(18:19):
the general public and family members, and they
think it's all, you know, rainbows and sunshine.
But we work through the harsh winter months,
long cold days. We work through the summer
months, the the heat of August, which is,
in my opinion,
as challenging, if not more challenging
than the winter months. Quite often, these are
(18:39):
long days days meaning
fourteen plus hours.
A lot of our work on the water
incorporate,
tidal cycles. So if we need to hit
a full tidal cycle, that's twelve plus hours
on the water. Casey said the extreme conditions
can make it difficult to perform
what would typically be a simple task. I
had a day where it was something like
(19:00):
negative seven or or negative nine degrees Fahrenheit
around there, and it was very windy.
And it was a challenge to
keep the fish alive just to get them
out of the water, measure them quick enough
so that they're not freezing to your equipment,
and then get them back in the water.
One example involved a three mile signature bridge
being constructed across the Hudson River. Anytime that
(19:20):
there was any construction activities, we were required
to be out there monitoring water quality. So
the first couple years of this project, they
chose to try to work through the winter
months here. And in the Northeast,
we see, specifically on the Hudson River where
this job was taking place, you run into
a lot of icing and the freezing water
temperatures.
(19:41):
So
quite often throughout this period of time, crews
would come in. We'd have to de ice
the boat and get the snow off it.
We had keep bubblers in the marina.
So,
basically, it just keeps the water from freezing
around the boat, and we'd spend up to
two hours chipping our way out of the
marina, breaking the ice in front of us
to get out of the marina. That adds
(20:02):
an extra concern is that's great, you got
out of the marina, but you spend six,
eight hours in the water, you come back
If the temperatures are such, that, area can
refreeze
in that time period. So we'd be faced
with the challenge of breaking the ice to
get back into the marina
and safely back to harbor. Those conditions make
it important to plan for the safety of
the team. Quite often with the freezing, you
(20:24):
end up with
the deck freezing, which becomes hazardous, so we're
dealing with that, putting down melting agents or
sand to create a attraction, freezing on the
windshield,
and visibility is always a concern there too.
Some of the other that whether it's nice
conditions or not, we do some harbor work
overnights.
So you're out in the harbor long days,
(20:45):
and you're working through the night. So that
can be a challenge as well, just staying
awake and paying proper attention for safety purposes.
With such long days out on the water,
Erin, Kate, and Dave recalled passing time between
tides while waiting for the right conditions for
the next sample. There's been downtime that we
have hours to kill in between sample sets,
(21:08):
and we'll cook up a little bit of
food, maybe play a game of backgammon or
whatnot or other online games that we now
have access to. I remember listening to one
of the World Cup games waiting for some
work activity to start. You do each what
you can to to pass it by, but
most times, it's a good time. I thought
you were gonna say favorite pastime was to
(21:28):
complain about the project manager.
Nah. Nah. Come on, man.
But, yes, that that could still you know,
we could spend hours doing that.
With the team doing such specialized environmental work,
Dave said that the niche studies often lead
(21:48):
to repeat
business
and larger jobs. You know, a lot of
times,
our work with clients may start,
with something that is a simple field study
or data collection.
And then,
really, that type of information,
that type of data, we demonstrate to the
client our value and then using that data
(22:10):
in reports. And then very often,
that leads to future engineering design work at
these facilities. So there really is that progression
and that relationship.
One example
involved a study to access how the deepening
of navigation channels in New York, New Jersey
harbor would affect aquatic habitats,
(22:30):
especially that of the winter flounder.
Dave's team had become quite proficient at data
collection after years of research.
Kate and her lab developed, I would call
it innovative
solutions. What we were actually able to do
with these very small eggs and larvae under
the microscope,
we were able to identify
what stage of growth
(22:52):
the eggs and larvae were in. So we're
not only able to give information to the
client, you have eggs and larvae, but we're
also basically to tell how old these were
and how developed they were. And that information
became super helpful
to sort of understanding
what the winter flounder spawning was like in
New York Harbor. And so this federal client
(23:12):
was able to to design and execute their
project in a way to minimize impacts.
That work led to further scientific breakthroughs.
For many years, the prevailing thought within the
scientific community,
I'd go to scientific conferences. There was a
belief that winter flounder eggs could not be
collected
by sampling gear because the eggs collect on
(23:35):
the bottom. They're sticky.
And so the belief was is that the
eggs were out there, but they weren't able
to be collected. As you might guess,
that didn't stop this team.
So several years ago, we fabricated
some custom
ichthyoplankton,
which means eggs and larvae,
sampling equipment. So
the aluminum
(23:55):
sleds that were mentioned earlier, we attached
a net to them so they were bottom
oriented. They had skids on the bottom so
that they slid along the bottom. And then
we also
experimented with what was called a tickler,
chain, which was basically a chain in front
of the net to sort of stir up
the bottom. And
(24:16):
lo and behold, doing these winter flounder studies
over the years, we began collecting winter flounder
eggs. Which Dave was proud to share with
the wider scientific community. And so I remember
going to my first scientific
conference and presenting these results, and
there was some skepticism.
But once I showed them the data, I
showed them the photographs.
(24:37):
We had the samples, the actual winter founder
eggs in house in our collection. You know,
that thought of not being able to collect
winter founder eggs in the field has changed,
and so I really feel I was a
good example of leading the scientific
side of things. Some jobs involve looking at
how nutrients such as phosphorus or nitrogen
might be impacting aquatic habitats.
(25:00):
Kate said that can lead to additional work
with wastewater treatment operators. We just did a
pretty big study in Jamaica Bay
related to nitrogen,
and we collected basically everything in that bay
that we could from water to sediment to
algae to invertebrates
to understand
the nutrients in that system and how they
(25:22):
may have changed by some reductions
done by the city. And that data then
went into
some modeling. I feel like that job
really brought a lot of field folks, modelers,
engineers
together, and it was a great way to
network our field and lab and our our
modeling. Microorganisms
(25:43):
often get drawn into the water intakes of
power plants that are drawn in water from
the river for cooling,
which has led to some interesting work for
the team. Aaron described at the deployment of
a 15 foot boom with a mesh fabric
stretching to the full depth of the water
to prevent those organisms from getting trapped in
the intake. It was probably the most challenging
(26:05):
project I've been involved with here. These are
organisms drifting in the currents and carried by
the currents away from the intakes. And, basically,
they'd hit the net, they'd roll off or
cling to it, and this system had a
air burst
system
in involved and incorporated in it that would
discharge air every, say,
thirty minutes or hour to clear the sediment
(26:25):
off of the net and any organisms back
into the currents. Once again, this wasn't an
off the shelf solution. These were fourteen hour
days, seven days a week
once it started because you'd assemble this boom
on land and use a series of boats
and
heavy equipment on land to shuffle
the portion out into the river. Then you'd
spend the next day or two assembling the
(26:46):
next sections on land, all while the previous
portion was out floating in the river. So
to keep everything secured and in place was
very, very challenging,
and there was no quit. You you could
not stop once you started, so this would
go on for
a month plus for the installation
and then the maintenance and monitoring throughout the
season, the the breeding season. And then the
(27:08):
removal process was just as tiring and and
difficult. The team has also been involved with
multiple oyster projects,
including some related to the Billion Oyster Project.
The nonprofit's mission is to restore oyster reefs
in New York Harbor to provide habitats and
provide natural shoreline protection from waves, flooding, and
(27:28):
erosion.
Casey talked about his work in that area.
The oyster work definitely tends to capture the
public imagination because I've been in the newspaper
for oyster work at HDR twice, and I've
only worked on two oyster projects, one with
the HDR hardware. The stuff we did was
up in the Hudson River, and there was
some
construction that was gonna be disturbing oyster bed.
(27:49):
And we basically spent, I I wanna say,
about a week straight just harvesting as many
oysters as we could and relocating them. I
mean, we must have relocated thousands and thousands
of oysters
and pulling them up with rake style dredge
and putting them into
large buckets and then pretty quickly transporting them
to a part of the river that wasn't
(28:10):
gonna be disturbed by the construction to try
to maintain as much of that community as
we could. The team occasionally lends its fleet
to projects outside of the Tristate area. Typically,
if we're sending a boat out to a
remote location or somewhere across the country, we
would be towing it, and it would come
(28:30):
with an operator. I've personally trailed a boat
as far North as Maine, as far South
as Virginia, and as far West as Quad
Cities. Having cross trained staff that have worked
in the field, in the lab, and directly
with engineers
ultimately raises the level of everyone's work. The
lab is filled with professional scientists. Right? It's
professional,
(28:50):
you know, degreed
scientists
who are executing these projects, who have a
larger understanding
of the work and the context
of it, I think, is really important. Because
in the end, as a project manager,
I understand that having those trained, experienced people
is a benefit to my project. We have
staff
(29:11):
that have twenty, thirty, forty years of general
environmental field work, And that's a big asset
and a tool that we often use tapping
into some of the more experienced staff to
get historic data or how they've done it
in the past. And to have those tools
and assets to us definitely help out because
there's no substitute for experience. All that experience
certainly gives the team a different perspective of
(29:33):
recreation on the water. For me, having spent
so many hours on the water,
I avoid boats in my off hours. Something
that I I have friends with boats, and
they could could not pay me to go
out on their boat for a long period
of time. More recently, over the last few
years, I've learned to enjoy it again and
and appreciate it. If I'm out on a
friend's boat and whatnot and we got family,
(29:54):
it's always nice to have the inside information
that we all carry and be able to
share that. Yeah. I'd rather go on a
kayak than a boat because the kayak can't
break down. Yep. Absolutely. That's the large part
of it. Sometimes you pinch yourself. You're you're
heading out of the marina in Lower Manhattan
seeing the
skyline. Just realize how lucky you are that
people will pay money for the for these
(30:16):
type of, sightseeing tours and to be working
in this area. But more than the adventure
of the job or the intellectual
pursuit of their research,
perhaps what most drives the team
is their commitment to the environment. I I
think for
most of the folks we work with here
and we're involved in this portion of the
(30:37):
field, you know, or industry,
they have a passion for what they're doing.
They're not simply out here collecting a paycheck.
I think it takes a lot more than
that to be a good scientist
and not just go out there to to
collect the data and go home. I think
everybody has a personal interest in this at
some level, whether it's in the environment,
(30:58):
a local community of some sort that they
wanna see better. But I I think it's
a true passion that all of us carry
for the environment.
For more information on this podcast,
visit hdrinc.com/speakingofdesign.
You'll find links to pictures, articles, and more
(31:20):
information. If you like what you heard, be
sure to rate us or leave feedback on
iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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