 Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the last of the North Dakota Reclamation webinar series. Glad you could take the time to join us this morning. A couple housekeeping items before we get to our speaker. First off, webinars will be recorded and posted at NorthDakotaReclamation.com, and I encourage you to go back and take a look at those if you have interest in that. During the webinar, feel free to use the chat to discuss amongst yourselves, but if you have a question for our speaker, please use the Q&A to ask questions, and we'll get to those either during the presentation or at the end when we will have time for questions. As always, we provide service to all citizens North Dakota, and that's our non-discrimination statement. So with that, we will introduce today's speaker. As we have speaking for us, Bill Cease. Bill obtained his degree in geology and geophysics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He spent 16 years as an environmental consultant in the Midwest and Northern High Plains region before joining the North Dakota Department of Health Groundwater Protection Program in February of 2014. It's a pleasure working with Bill in that role and also in his current role as Spill Investigation Program Manager, which he assumed in August of 2015. With that, I will turn it over to Bill Cease. All right, thank you, Carl. Good morning everybody. Welcome to this last presentation of the conference. Yeah, my name is Bill Cease. I'm the manager for the Spill Investigation Program for the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality. And my goal here today is to talk to you a little bit. I should start out by saying it should be interesting because anybody who knows me will know that when I do these kind of presentations, I tend to move around an awful lot. So we'll see how I can do just sitting still here and not trying to talk with my hands too much. So I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about the one thing that a lot of people doing a cleanup just view as that necessary evil, something they have to do and that is sampling. But what I want to talk to you a little bit about today is how sampling can actually do a couple of things for you, not only can it save you time, it can also save you money. And also by doing a proper delineation and starting off at a slow pace, you can actually in the long run save yourself time and move faster. What I refer to as go slow to go fast. So the question comes down to what do I mean by go slow to go fast. Well I liken it to a big cat, in this case a leopard, who basically is going to go through this long slow stock. And what that leopard is doing, she's setting herself up to get in the best position to put on a burst of speed and complete a task in this case in her case is bringing down probably a gazelle or something like that. But her goal there is to go very slow. So in that long run she can expand the least amount of energy in bringing down her prey. Well, a leopard spending spending energy is kind of like you doing a cleanup and spending money. It can be associated the same thing. If you take the time to go slow. In the long run, you can expend the least amount of energy or spend a less amount of money. So how do you, how does that work before putting on that burst of speed, take the time to properly delineate a site, determine where the contamination is, you can't really clean up a site or you can't do anything until you know where it is. And also just as importantly find out where the contamination isn't, we don't want to be having to clean up areas that don't need to be cleaned up. Proper delineation allows you to determine the most efficient method of remediation to do a more thorough remediation to save time and more importantly to save money to expend that least amount of energy to complete your tasks. So, all of this requires sampling. So there are certain types of sampling, there's delineation kind of referred to already. There's also confirmation sampling, and there's monitoring will touch up based on all of these, as we move forward. So why, why do you sample in the first place, well, it's common sense. Now you're going to start off you want to, you've got to clean up to a certain level, you have to show that you've cleaned up to that level. It's peace of mind or otherwise known as covering your own backside. It basically gives you that documentation to prove to anybody at any time, you know, in the future, that yes you properly cleaned up the site here as my proof of that. In many cases it's required for you to sample that, especially that confirmation sample. And then in the end, and the reason for this presentation is that it can save you money. Now, I know what you're thinking. Most of you are sitting there going sampling doesn't save you money is just expensive. Yeah, how can I do that. And yes, yes you can. And anytime I can work in a Phineas and Ferb into my presentation it's usually a good thing. So, so how can that work. I have had producers tell me it costs them $3,000 per sample to do any sampling. And this being a family show I won't tell you what my response to that was but yes, you can make, you know, make it work for you. So what I want to first look at is the delineation of the site, and that's going to be our primary focus. Imagine if you will, and know what I'm about to tell you does not come out of the Twilight zone. This is realistic we're looking at, you know, realistic scenarios, and in some cases, actual spills that we do it. I just like this slide. So, imagine if you will produce water spill tank overflow really doesn't matter what the cause of the spill was well pad flows off the well pad. The flow width is about 12 feet wide, it's full path length is about 450 people on some areas range land and there's no surface water involved. And it looks something like this. So pulls up in the corner of the well pad here makes its way through the berm and then travels down a fairly steep hillside. That's when a lower area where it continues to flow and then ends up pulling up down here fairly common scenario that we see we've got an area in here that was obviously fill we've got an area here that's probably more native. We got an area down here we can tell it's a naturally high salt bay area. You got a couple of different landscapes you're looking at on this. So, so we're going to be like I said as I go through this I'm going to be making some assumptions. I'll try to tell you where all my assumptions are that I make. And one of the biggest assumptions in this is I'm going to be only looking at that upper foot. So when we're doing an excavate when I talk about the excavation the cost I'm going to give you and everything is going to be dealing with the upper foot, as will my delineation, as we'll only deal with the upper foot as you delineate deeper you excavate deeper your costs are going to go up, you know, on both probably at a similar rate. So that's one of the first assumptions I'm going to be making here. So what is the cost to excavate. Well you got a potential impact area of 600 square yards, or 200 cubic feet per depth. Now I talked to a number of different producers to try to get what's the cost to dig and haul, how much to excavate and dispose mobilize to the site what's general. We've got a wide range of responses back anything from $65 a ton to $800 to $1,000 a ton of kind of astronomical range. Most of those spell into that 65 to $150 per ton range. I decided to go with the $65 ton range because the producer who gave me that number spelled everything out very clearly that it involved the mobilization to and from the site. It involved one excavator with one operator, it involved one truck with one truck driver, and that the landfill was fairly close to the site. So we'll take those assumptions. We'll make this a best case scenario and say it's $65 a ton. We'll assume about 1.5 tons per cubic yard basic average of density, and then giving us a total cost of $19,500 per foot of depth for your excavation. Keep that $19,500 number in mind. So what's the cost to delineate. Okay, so again I'm going to be making some assumptions here I'm going to be making the assumptions of a single environmental professional. It is fairly close to the site within an hour of the site. And what I'm looking at is the cost of that environmental professional to mobilize to and from the site to collect the samples on the site and ship them to the laboratory, the laboratory costs. And then basically delivering those results, you know, to for that laboratory, the environmental professional deliver the results to you. I'm not including costs of any fancy reports or anything like that it's all very simple. So we're looking at one sample for roughly 100 feet 125 feet in this case so we're looking at four samples to background samples. I'll show you why two background samples in a little bit cost per sample for looking at diesel range organics gasoline range organics because you can have crude oil hydrocarbon component to produce water. You're looking at the electrical conductivity of the seed. So what they are the sodium absorption ratio and chlorines. You could a sample for more, but this is the minimum of what we'd like to see you sample for talked with a number of different chemistry labs to get a generalized cost per sample. And we came up with $137 per sample to sample all of these total laboratory costs will be $822 for your six samples costs for environmental professionals collect the sample. Again, it's going to be a wide range. I was consulting for a number of years. I kind of calculated out what would I have charged to do this again, being fairly close to the site within an hour site came up with $600 for that total cost $1422 to do that delineation. And that's going to look something like this, we'd like to get a sample of where it came through the berm remember I'm only focusing on the off pad impacts here. So we're going to we want to sample up here basically you make sure where it came through the berm. This is a fairly steep hillside where it's coming down we want to sample flowing through that to see what kind of impact we had there. This is that transitional spot we want to get a sample there and of course down here were pooled near the end. Plus, we've got a background. So we're running again through this area of this transition area between the fill and the native so we want to capture something similar to that. You could capture it up here, there's number of spots we could. And then this is at higher sulfate area and this natural occurring area we want to make sure we're capturing something in that it's a background. Now, one of the things we do see with saltwater spills that flow down steep hillside so that they have the ability to flow over that hillside so fast that they don't soak in and do much damage on the hillside. So, when you get your sample results, you may find something that looks like a little bit like this, where you have impacts here were soaked through the berm. This and down here were impacted, but this in the steeper hillside is more like your background samples or maybe there's some slight impact there but well below our cleanup criteria. So, maybe we can ignore, you know, not have to do too much with that spot. Now we're going to go into a second phase of delineation. And yes, I am doing a very in depth delineation in two phases, not everybody is going to do that. But this is the most the best way to really capture everything you need to capture with the least amount of sampling to do it is to do it in two phases, you can do it in one and save yourself a little bit more money but what you save in the delineation you'll tend to spend in more samples. So, but based on the phase one results additional sampling to additional sampling to zero in on those impacts, I'm going to assume 10 additional samples. Okay, that may sound like a lot but in reality it's really not cost per sample. So, one of the things I should tell you is whenever when we got our first sample back, we did not find any petroleum hydrocarbons on, we're going to make that assumption. So now we don't need the sample for those. So we're just going to look at the electrical conductivity that sodium absorption ratio and our chlorides, we're going to cost of $80 per sample. That's the laboratory cost of nose. So a total laboratory cost 10 samples $800. Your environmental professional again we're making those same assumptions. Okay, we're taking 10 samples rather than six a little longer on site. So we're going to go $700 for that, the total cost of $1,500. Again, we're only looking at that upper foot. We're going to keep it similar to our excavation on that. So that's going to give you something like that, where you sample kind of you want to get a good delineation around where it's up to the burn came through so you get that you're trying to get us a bracketing of this clean area or bracketing of this impacted area delineate here around where it's soaked in. Okay, so. So we're going to look at so total cost sampling costs $2,922 call it 3000 rounded up. Right. So what did we save. Well that's going to depend on what you can learn how much of that area you can eliminate. If you eliminate 20% of that area, you're going to save yourself $3,900 and excavation costs. $3,000 on the on the on the delineation. So you'll have saved yourself $900. That may not sound like all that big of savings for you, but add 5% to get 25% removal, you're going to more than double your savings on those over your excavation costs on it. So a little side note on it, I said I'm looking at digging hall as your remediation another option for remediation on these. In the case of a hydrocarbon impact might be thermal disruption, which is basically excavating it treating it on site. My look checking on that I got cost of anywhere from 55 to $65 a ton on that depending on gas availability and what you need. So we're looking at some similar savings and doing over thermal disruption and so. So, as you see the more you can remove from your site, the more money you can save on your remediation. So now let's look at confirmation sampling. You know you think confirmation sampling. How do you save money on that that's just showing what we cleaned it up. Well, in most cases that is the truth. It's, this is the one that's going to be required. Most time, verify you cleaned it up. This is your proof that you did do the cleaning up, but there are times when it can save you money. So this particular company spent a lot of time and money excavating site in 2012 about a two and a half eight recite. We did a lot of digging on it they dug down about eight feet. They hauled away the old soil the back brought in clean backfill put in top soil seeded at five years later in 2017 it looked like that. It was still bearing, or it was bearing again. So what happened on this particular site while it was improper confirmation sampling. They did do and collect a couple of confirmation samples, but three samples of our two and a half acre site. Those confirmation samples actually did show some impacts being left behind in 2012. It's amazing what we've learned about produce water spills and how they react and how saltwater reacts with the ground and groundwater. Over the years in 2012 we're still kind of naive on things and I thought at eight feet. That isn't going to do too much damage, but impact in soil and groundwater were left in place impacts migrated back to the surface through capillary action. Capillary action and soils in North Dakota a lot of these tight cells can easily pull up five and six feet, and then the plants, the root can pull everything up even further than that. So, although the rebate the revegetation on the site was initially successful, the vegetation soon died off due to re impacting of soils. There again a better confirmation sampling could have shown them that they still had impacts left there needed to do more work before they back filled everything and spent and wasted all that time and money. Also we tend to get a lot of situations where they've done the excavation, they go in the collector confirmation sample send them off to the lab and then back fill immediately. They need to get their lab results back saying that it hasn't been cleaned up thoroughly. Then it's either did redig the stuff, or find a way to justify leaving it in place, and that justification would be to go through a risk assessment. And so we'll get into the risk assessment as part of the monitoring here in a little bit. But for confirmation sampling, what's going to allow you to do is not to have to redig a site. You won't have to, you know, if you do a proper confirmation sampling, it's going to show you've done it, and you don't have to redig it. You don't have to dig more than you have to by doing a proper confirmation sampling. If you got 100 foot by 100 foot excavation, and you collect one confirmation sample and it comes back dirty. Well, the assumption you've just made is that the whole bottom of that excavation is dirty. And so you've got to go and dig more from that whole excavation. Where if you've taken five or six confirmation samples across the bottom of that, and only one comes back dirty, well now you know you've only got one little area that you need to continue digging on. It also lets you verify that you have met the cleanup criteria, gives you that peace of mind, it gives you that documentation that you've done the work successfully. And now I'll get into monitoring. So how can monitoring save you money? Well, a robust monitoring plan can be part of a risk based assessment that allows you to reduce the amount of remediation required. And that's a kind of a big mouthful. But basically it is, you have the ability to do a risk based assessment on things. And by looking at what is the risk of leaving contamination in place, will it impact, what will it impact, you know, we can do that but you need to do proper sampling in order to do that. So we're going to look at a curvilous spill remediation. This was an actual site, it was a spill into farm, into agricultural land. It was a big site. And after digging quite a bit, they did a lot of remediation on the site. And then the company asked for a site specific risk based cleanup criteria. The company provided a date and transport model that showed that the crude oil would naturally attenuate before it could reach the ground wall. The focus was the benzene on this, and that they show that benzene would naturally attenuate, would break down, would not actually impact groundwater. Groundwater at this site was 150 feet deep. But there was also a intermediate perched aquifer shallow at about 35 to 40 feet deep that we saw in some areas didn't see in others. But their focus was that deep groundwater aquifer. The company agreed to portally groundwater monitoring for five years. And they were given a site specific cleanup criteria of 1,500 parts per million total petroleum hydrocarbons. They had asked for 5,000. But they were given 1,500 because of that shallower aquifer, the perched aquifer at 40 feet. Not a very deep one. So groundwater monitoring included quarterly monitoring for five years. They had 18 monitoring wells that they were looking at. We had nine sets of monitoring wells, one going deep into that deep 150 foot aquifer, and one going into that 40 foot aquifer. They surrounded the excavation. They were sampling for total petroleum hydrocarbons of diesel range organic and gasoline range organics. Now in this particular case, the company does sample for more than this, because they choose to for comfort of their own and was what they agreed upon in a consent agreement legal document. But this would be the minimum that you wouldn't, you know, want to see in this particular case. This site had much had a lot of other cleanup. We know a lot of other monitoring sampling throughout it. It's a four year cleanup. So we had plenty of detail. So we knew this was all we really needed on it. So what's the cost of that monitoring? Well, we got a laboratory analysis for diesel range and gasoline range organics and $57 sample. A laboratory cost for his first sampling event will be $1026 the 18 samples cost for an environmental professional to collect the samples. And I don't know what they're actually spending what their environmental professional charges them. I'm just looking at what I would have charged as a consultant and I came up with $2,600, giving us a cost per sampling event of $3,626. Five years of quarterly sampling, 20 sampling events, sampling costs of $72,500. That's a lot of money. And maybe, you know, you're going to do more you want more you want VTECs in there or you think that should be higher. Let's even say $100,000. You know, for the sampling, you know, it's going to be how do you just say that saving you money. Well, do the complex nature of this site we cannot quantify exactly how much was saved. And remember we said it to a dig to $1,500, rather than a dig to 100 parts per million. So it's like, you can't say definitely, you know, definitely say how much was, you know, how much they didn't have to dig up. This particular site was fairly tight plays with sanding gravel scenes that ran everywhere through it, and the, the crude oil which track through these sanding gravel seems really hard to target exactly how much that the company does believe that the cleaning up criteria easily save them over $1 million in remediation costs. That was a cost of the thermal disruption that the onsite treatment they were doing. In reality, it probably saved them several million dollars in remediation costs. If you spend $72,000, you know, or $100,000 to save yourself one to two or more million. Yeah, you would. So it's a good play on their part. So in conclusion on this, I can't promise million dollar savings on every remediation, hopefully your clean your spills are small and don't need $1 million cleanups. But in many cases, the delineation and confirmation sampling will save you money. Okay, monitoring plan as part of a risk based assessment can potentially save money. You can potentially save even more money. And you cannot complete a rest based assessment without a thorough delineation. So in that scenario I talked about earlier that they did the excavation, they collected their confirmation samples they back build another confirmation samples came back that they still had impacts. Now they want to justify leaving in place. Well, that's doing a risk based assessment. So the how deep that delineate now, you know, unless they did a thorough delineation that they know it doesn't spread out wider at that they know it. You know how deep it goes. We can't do a risk based assessment. Do the delineation, take your time, go slow, go fast. And, you know, you can save yourself money in the long run. I kind of blew through that little bit faster than I did in my center training, or my practice sessions but I think I covered everything but I'll open it up to questions at this point. Thanks, Bill. So we do have one question that relates to using field screening parameters and equipment to further guide your excavation. So what field screening parameters and test equipment supplies you feel are beneficial to help guide excavation real time. Okay, field screening. Yeah, is great tool to guide your, your excavation in this case, in the one I showed you was produced water with saltwater spill. You can use electrical conductivity to help guide your excavation. But as you saw in the map I put up, we're going into two different areas. One area coming down the hillside and then we're getting into that higher sulfate area. Now keep in mind that that higher sulfate area is going to have a higher electrical conductivity on its own. That's why you want a separate background sample in the same in that area. So you'll have to be also looking at that as you do your electrical conductivity. So maybe a better field screening tool in that situation would be a the chloride test strips that are available. The little the little quantab strips, what you do is you there is actually a documented method out there but you're going to be placing the soil in some water shaking it up letting it sit for a while. You're going to settle the sediment to settle out or filtering it through a filter, and then you use the chloride test strip, the quantab strip to measure the amount of, of done totally blanking on the chloride in the water. And that will give you a good indication on that. And so those are tools you can use PID a photo ionization detector is a really good tool to use for petroleum hydrocarbons. You want to go through the proper methods on that you want to collect your sample in a bag you want to let it warm up either in the sun or, you know, in the cab of your truck if it's a cold day to allow that those hydrocarbons to start to volatilize. The higher the range when you're looking at gasoline range PID is work really well diesel range they start to have some limitations you get into your motor oil range or your, or your, you know, as politics, they don't work well at all on that. So, so those are, but those are definitely tools you can use. They are great for guiding your excavation that they do not suffice for confirmation sampling. We do have a question regarding the risk based assessment. What are the key receptors we'd like to identify to ensure a proposed plan is comprehensive enough. That's going to depend on your location but we definitely want to look at water bodies, creeks, lakes, rivers, stockpons anything like that one with a what's out there. We want to take into account any other utilities or pipelines running through the area that can stuff can track along pipelines are fabulous preferential pathways. We've seen, you know, spills start to migrate one way and turn and take a 90 degree turn as they track along the pipeline corridor. Also any like potential houses that have basements, water wells, their stock wells or drinking water wells anything like that. Anything that could, you know, your contaminant can flow into. And again, as far as the distance from the site. That again is going to be determined based on your, your soil profile, your, the volume of your spill. Just, you know, and will that will dictate the distance to it. Yeah, we have another question here. Can you share what regulatory parameters you aim for in North Dakota regarding EC, SAR and sodium chloride. And then our second part of that I'll let you tackle that first. Okay, so we do have for for produced water spills we do have our guidelines that have been published. And they're, they're primarily based, we do have some, you know, tight numbers we have the 250 parts per million fluoride that's based on its ability to impact water. Otherwise, you're looking at primarily primarily trying to clean it up as close as we can to background on the site so usually are sodium chloride that's 250 parts per million or background on the site. And electrical conductivity we'd like to see that for it for a maximum we'd like to see that down around to again it's going to be dependent on the, the situation you're in whether you're in agricultural land or whether you're in range land. You know, the grasses can tolerate will hire ECs and a lot of your crops can. So, that's that and then there was a part two to it. Yes, and then also SAR values and then are these federal or state specific. Okay, SAR values. We'd like to see a minimum of 12 on that again it will be dependent on the area you're in whether it's range land or cropland. We're going to get into cropland we're going to look at it more specifically to the crops that are being rotated through that field. Use it. And then this is that particular one is state specific. There are not too many federal guidelines out there for produce water. Right additional question. Would the DQ and perhaps NDSU consider additional formats blogs on specific topic to share reclamation related information in addition to the conference. Certainly. Yeah, I think I guess that too definitely we'd be interested in providing additional opportunities like that. All right, well thanks bill again just reminder the recordings of the record of the presentation will be online and we hope we can all gather together for next year's reclamation conference so thanks everybody and have a good day. Do you have any additional questions by information right there.