Below are descriptions of the work I performed at each of my Environmental and Regulatory positions.
2009-2010: Regulatory Compliance Specialist U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District North Carolina
At the Corps of Engineers, my primary job responsibilities involved on-site field visits for regulatory compliance inspections of permits issued by the Corps under Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act, and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Permitted projects mainly included wetland-fill and water-body discharge permits at or near residential and commercial construction sites; public and private utility work sites (culverts, sewer infrastructure, and cellular phone tower sites); NC State Department of Transportation work sites (bridges, stream crossings, and agricultural drainage canals); and National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) waterfowl and water-management impoundments. Field visits were performed to ensure that permittees complied with all applicable permit conditions and environmental regulations. I routinely corresponded with permit applicants and Corps of Engineers project managers, NC state Division of Water Quality employees, and other municipal, state, and federal employees. I updated and maintained permittees' electronic files throughout the regulatory review and on-site inspection process using the Corps of Engineers' Regulatory Database ("ORM2"). Work involved approximately 50% office duties and 50% field work, routinely traveling up to 3 hours each way to rural or remote field sites using a U.S. GOV (government-owned vehicle). I also helped draft Environmental Assessment (EA) documents for my supervising project managers to review. This job was a 12-month non-renewable contract position funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
2007-2008: Associate Scientist, Water Quality Group Environmental Consulting & Technology, Inc. Gainesville, FL
My primary responsibility at ECT, Inc. was management of a storm-water pollution study and sampling project for a contract awarded to ECT by the St. John's River Water Management District of Florida (SJRWMD). I helped install programmable water-sampling machines and intake equipment at a suite of five remote creek and tributary sites in central and eastern Alachua County (Fla.). I maintained the equipment by visiting these field stations twice monthly in addition to any rain storm events and baseline sample collection. Servicing of the field stations included: programming the ISCO Avalanche® samplers to meet SJRWMD contractual requirements for the sampling regime; recharging and replacing their power source (deep-cycle marine batteries); maintaining the creek bed around the samplers' intake equipment; and uploading all the data points recorded by the ISCO Avalanche® onto a notebook PC. Data points were collected in 15-minute increments and therefore totaled in the thousands for each biweekly data retrieval event. Once back in the office, this voluminous data required careful analysis and transfer from the raw format in which it was produced into a user-friendly format to be included in reports to the SJRWMD. Data was transferred from the samplers to the notebook PC in the field using Flowlink (an Access application), and tabulated in Excel. Additionally, I helped my supervisor prepare and submit applications for ECT, Inc.'s clients' industrial groundwater, source water, and effluent permit applications. I also assisted other project managers and staff scientists with review of Environmental Site Assessment documents (Phase I and Phase II); a local air-quality monitoring project; wetlands delineation and field surveys; and background research on regional greenhouse gas emissions credit and trading programs.
2006-2007: Graduate Research Assistant Soil & Water Science Department University of Florida Gainesville, FL
As a graduate research assistant, I managed the UF Campus Water Quality sampling and monitoring project for my Soil & Water Science graduate committee chair. This work involved manual collection of monthly water quality data and surface water samples from sixteen (16) creek and lake sites on the University of Florida's sprawling main campus in Gainesville. Data was collected using a YSI-556 hand-held meter and parameters included temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity. Upon collecting, I divided, filtered, acidified, and prepared the samples for analysis to be performed by Soil & Water Science laboratory staff. Upon receiving the sample analysis data, I compiled it in an Excel spreadsheet and ran a set of basic calculations for my professor. I also gave presentations about the Campus Water Quality project at two Environmental and Sustainability conferences, one hosted by the University of Florida in 2006, and another at Florida State University in Tallahassee in 2007. Occasionally I recruited undergraduate students to participate in campus service activities such as storm-drain marking events, whose goal was to raise awareness of the interconnectedness of the campus's storm-water infrastructure to local creeks, lakes, and groundwater systems.
2005: Graduate Internship Alachua County Environmental Protection Department Gainesville, FL
As a graduate intern with the ACEPD, I helped my supervisor perform baseline and storm-event sampling from Alachua County creeks and water treatment facilities. I helped collect, divide, filter, acidify, chill, and deliver the samples to a privately-owned environmental analysis laboratory. Other fieldwork involved collecting ambient water quality data using a YSI-556 hand-held meter; and keeping a log book of ecological field conditions at each sampling site, including cross-sections of creek depth, accurate descriptions of flora and fauna on site; and other noteworthy conditions such as weather or any other conditions which may be influencing the data. Back in the office, I uploaded new sampling and program data into the ACEPD's Access and Excel database, as well as sampling data from previous sampling periods (quarterly and annual reports). I also assisted with a native-plant collection project, and a storm water retention pond native planting; and I traveled locally with my supervisor to observe ecological field conditions and environmental compliance issues such as excessive silt runoff and other potentially illicit waste water discharges.