A Couple Days Off

I'm taking a couple days off at the end of the week to recharge. This has been an almost non-stop busy year and I haven't taken much vacation time. The boys are off school for these two days and it's youngest sons birthday, turning 11. He's having some friends over Saturday for a sleepover, where they will "Destroy all Humans" and other fun electronic games.

I managed to push my Renton Phase I, the Silicon Valley parking lot Phase I, and the noise assessment reports out the door. We are also working on a much larger parcel in Silicon Valley that we're already into Phase II subsurface investigation for the usual suspects - gas stations and dry cleaners. I added my site visit findings to the OC Phase I report and sent it down to my colleague in Irvine.

I prepared a proposal for some additional contamination characterization at a Seattle Central District redevelopment project and we got the go-ahead for that. Now I need to schedule the drilling and find staff.

I prepared a proposal for remedial action services for a redevelopment site near downtown Tacoma to address lead contamination in surface soil. When old houses are demolished they usually leave behind traces of lead paint and that's what happened here. This is a soup-to-nuts project - workplan, excavation oversight, sampling, and closure report. We work with the Washington State Department of Ecology through their Voluntary Cleanup Program. We submit a Workplan that spells out how the lead soil will be removed, how and where we'll collect soil samples for analysis, and what criteria we'll use to confirm the site is cleaned up. I did a similar site just two blocks up the hill and obtained a "no further action" determination from Ecology. This new project is essentially the same as the one I did last year.