Crews mine the muck to obtain a pollution profile
The Sunday Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)
March 19, 2006 Sunday
Sunrise Edition
Kayla Webley, The Oregonian
SEATTLE –A boat pulls forward and then reverses several times to zero in on the spot plotted by a global positioning system. Crew members raise a long tube called a vibracore into place and plunge it through the murky waters and into layers of sediment below.
The workers are taking samples along a 5.5-mile stretch of the lower Duwamish River in Seattle to pinpoint pollution and figure out what to clean up next. They’re from Windward Environmental, a contracting company hired by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The crew members pull the tube out of the water after a few minutes and spray the outside to wash off the mud and get rid of any contaminants before bringing it aboard. They lay the tube flat, cap off the end to keep all the sediment inside and then load it into a truck for a trip to a makeshift lab in an old warehouse a few miles away.
At the lab, other workers, wearing yellow and orange rubber suits and tall boots, cut open the tube from end-to-end and discard mud that touched the inside to make sure they get accurate readings.
They use sterling silver spoons to dig out chunks of sediment at various intervals and mix them in a bowl to get a broad sample. They note the color, smell, composition and consistency and put it into jars to be processed elsewhere.
The samples will help determine where to turn next in cleanup of the lower Duwamish.
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Link to accompanying story.
Anonymous on May 28th, 2008
is it really sterling silver sampling equipment? I’d never heard of that before- I thought stainless steel was standard.