Casey and her slugs

 Casey Kleppel, Hydrogeologist Extraordinaire.

Reading the Story the Sediments are Telling in Boston (there's a pun on city names worked in there)

Congratulations to the geoscience-minded professionals at WESTON & SAMPSON in Reading, Massachusetts!    Each participant successfully completed the day-long training TAKING THE MYSTERY OUT OF THE SUBSURFACE.  

This team of professionals gets the award for the most thoughtful questions so far.  Their engagement and dialogue enriched the depth of the training experience, but also their excellent questions helped each other relate to how they USE soil boring logs, not just CREATE them.  Well done!

One of the nuances of this particular training is weaving the Burmister System into the fabric the course module that teaches how to classify sediments according to the Unified Soil Classification System.  Both the Burmister and the USCS has merit based on purpose and each system has pitfalls related to it's procedure.  What resonated with me during this course was the input from the senior technical leaders who participated in the course. Now that I better understand both the Burmister and the Modified Burmister, I'm inspired to produce an online course segment to teach the system.

Thank you to the wonderful management team (Frank, Kevin, and Blake) who participated in the 6.5 hour long training, and for nurturing a positive corporate culture between staff from different office locations.  Well done!  Keep up the good work!

New Jersey Team of Stars, Superstars, and Rockstars: GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc.

New Jersey has lots of unique measures and circumstances that set it apart from other states.  Licensure, permitting, and conditions can make the path to completing work a challenge, but I recently met a group of professionals that do it with ease.

What a great group of professionals with an already-established technical mastery of reading the story the sediments are telling.  GZA GeoEnvironmental has 700+ employees scattered across the United States but I'm convinced the team I worked with in New Jersey is a group of shining stars (ie. super stars and rock stars!)   

The NJ team demonstrates synergy with how they work together through the group tutorials and exercises.  Their collective problem-solving approach is inspiring to me and it was confirmed during the group testing for soil classification (I believe they scored perfect which might be the only time that ever happened!)  Well done!

Thank you to the GZA management and the team of professionals for hosting me during the 6.5-hour training event.   Your operation, your facility, and your energy is five stars!

Hallowed ground of the infamous Woodstock Music Festival.  The festival occurred in 1969 but this week we inspected the grounds and conference facilities for possible future training events. 

Facility managers routinely conduct geophysical investigations to identify buried objects but they don't normally drill 100+ feet to determine geologic history of the sedimentary sequence.  This might lead to another historic moment at this sacred site.

New York Annual Meeting of the State Council of Professional Geologists

Annual meetings are generally fun because it's like a homecoming for friends and colleagues.   The annual meeting of New York State Council of Professional Geologists is no different.   Here's some photos of this year's meeting.