 So, up next is Bill Cease with the Department of Environmental Quality. Bill obtained a degree in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He then spent 16 years as an environmental consultant in the Midwest and Northern High Plains region. Bill joined the Department of Health here in North Dakota in the Groundwater Protection Program in February of 2014 and was named the Spill Investigation Program Manager on August 1st of 2015. Bill currently serves as the Department of Environmental Quality Representative on the State Emergency Response Committee and the Department of Emergency Services Advisory Committee. Bill's going to talk about the DEQ program around land treatment of hydrocarbon-contaminated soils. All right. Good morning. So yeah, for those of you who know me well, you know, realize I was a consultant for about 16 years before I joined the state, working in throughout the upper Midwest and the inner mountain region that and I'd utilized land application of hydrocarbon-impacted soils for years. It was used in Minnesota, Wisconsin, other states around the Midwest, and it was a common tool that we used for remediation. I've been a fan of it for a long time. I've argued for it here in North Dakota since the day I became the program manager. It's taken nine years, but we finally got it. So basically, this is what we call land farming or, you know, applying it to the soil, so what can be used? I mean, that's a good question, how we're going to go through it, what's the application process and everything. So soils impacted with API light or medium gravity crude oil. The real heavy crews can't be used in this, obviously, so the lighter ends, the your your bocking crude, it will be fine in it. Natural gas condensate works really well with this thing. Gasoline, diesel fuel, your refined products, fuel oils and stuff like that are good candidates for land application. And importantly, let's look at what can't be used in here. Soil's contaminated with heavy crude oil, obviously can't be used. Soil's contaminated with anything that's classified as hazardous waste under North Dakota rules. Soils are the EC greater than six millimodes per centimeter or an SAR greater than 12. Basically saying brine impacted soils can't be used. This will not remediate salt. And solid waste materials unsuited for any kind of land application, obviously. That's the permitting from that application process. It's two pages. So we kept it as easy as we can. The this was put together by our Waste Management Division. The first iteration of this came with Scott Radick was still working there. They sent it to me to be reviewed. The whole permit and everything sent it to me to be reviewed. My response back to them was you've made it so complicated and so restrictive that nobody's ever going to use it. We need to simplify this. So they came back and with Chuck Hyatt and Diana Trussell and myself, we kind of worked this out and we got what we think is a simpler process. Still going to need some information, though. So the minimum amount of information we're going to need from you is obviously the operator's name, address, phone number, email, all that. The landowner's information. That same who's land are you going to be applying this on? The site location, we need the Township Range section and at least a quarter section of it. We want to see a topo map and a soil survey map. So NRCS map of the site. So we know what kind of soils are out there. And it's a graphic map so we can see the ground contours. Schematic diagram of the site, including your water control features. There's going to be berms or ditches or anything like that that's in there. And the estimated soil volume that you're going to be applying. That's the minimum we need. So a little bit more in there. Project the date of application. When do you plan on applying this? We will have some restrictions on when you can apply it. Site and soil characteristics obviously can be obtained. We'll get into those a little bit more detail. Obviously you can contain that from NRCS as well. The land application procedure, how you're going to be applying this. And then a sampling and reporting schedule. And that's kind of we'll dictate a little bit of that. But then any previous history of waste or disposal at the site, as have been used, any previous spills at that site, anything else. So the site and soil characteristics, as mentioned before, we're looking for relatively level areas, nothing greater than a 6% maximum slope. We want to know the depth of water out there. Quite often you can get that through the state water commission or what are they now, the Department of Water Resources. We want a minimum of three feet for a seasonal high water table. So that's their permeability, less than two inches per hour with the soil permeability. pH, we want to see neutral to slightly alkaline soils. Nothing more acidic than a 6.5, which is pretty much neutral. Nutrients, we want to see moderate to high levels of fertility and organic matter out in that soil, because that's going to give you the biodiversity, the microbes to help break down this material. The hydrocarbons that you're putting in there. Make sure there's adequate soil, nitrogen and phosphorus levels. And then we prefer cropland to rangeland or anything like that just because of the nature of the soils and the use of it. What's excluded, where can't you put it? Within 200 feet of surface water or 200 feet of any stream. And when I separate the stream, because if you go on to a USGS topo map, you'll see solid blue and dash blue lines. We count both of those. So it's an intermittent stream. We still can't be within 200 feet of it. Because a lot of these, if they're a lot of your crude oils and that could take a couple of years for the whole breakdown to occur. And the intermittent stream is going to be flowing in that period of time. Within 500 feet of an occupied dwelling, you can get a variance from that from the landowner. If the landowner signs off on that, they're OK with it, as long as it's on his land. You know, we somebody brought that up yesterday. Our keynote speaker brought up yesterday. You know, the wind turbines are in the back of one guy's property right next to the house of another guy's property. Well, obviously, we can't have that either here. So within 100 feet of property boundary, again, unless the adjacent landowner has signed off on it and agrees to it. Within within a wellhead protection area, kind of chibill without saying, within 250 feet of a private well or within 1000 feet of a drinking water well. Which within 1000 feet of a public well, you're hopefully you're within a wellhead protection area anyway. But other excluded areas within the corporate limits of any municipality can't have it within the city. Got to have it out in the country within 50 feet of a 100 year flood plain. Don't get too much of that here around here. But where the depths of an aquifer is less than 20 feet. And that is a surf, you know, that's that's a drinking water aquifer. That three feet I mentioned before is any surfacial aquifer. Where the primary subsurface material is sand or gravel to a depth of about 20 feet on land that has an average slope of greater than six percent brought up before. Any area that adversely affects wildlife, recreation or aesthetic value. It's of course is subjective to interpretation, of course, or any area containing containing threatened or endangered species. Luckily, we don't have many threatened or endangered species here in North Dakota. Probably the only one we're going to run into is Dakota Skipper. So so what is the procedure for it? So you want to apply when you want to apply it when the land is tillable, because you will be tilling this in. So anywhere between April 1st to November 1st as a general timeframe. Obviously with North Dakota, you know, winters and spring, that can vary quite a bit. But in general, those that time frame, we want to see what the stormwater control is. So we need ditches or berms to divert or contain stormwater. You want to make sure stormwater can't flow onto or off of your of your land application area. Should be applied no more than four inches thick. And then that can, like I said, that can vary by the nutrient, you know, amount of nutrients available in the soil. And with a loading rate of less than 2% or 20,000 parts per million at the time. So when we put it, apply it at your concentration, you're spreading it out. We want to don't want to see more than 20,000 parts per million in any given location till into the upper you'll be telling it into the upper four to six inches of the soil. And we will till it four times during the season. As the more you till that, the better it works. You've got to keep it moving, got to keep moisture into it. And being that irrigation, if needed in dry conditions, the bacteria need oxygen, they need moisture, they need water in order to work and to break down the hydrocarbons. They love to eat it, but they need the right conditions for it. So that's why the tilling is required and obviously got to keep it wet enough. And then you're going to add to active land treatment until we reach a level of 10 parts per million for GRO and 100 parts per million for DRO. That's a little more restrictive than what we normally have for cleanup. But it should be in GRO, it should be easily attainable. So we're going to be doing requiring you to do some sampling. Obviously, we allow composite sampling on this. If you're doing less than 10 cubic yards of material that you're spreading, we don't require any samples. 10 to 50, let's see the chart up there, 10 to 51. Up to 2,000 to 4,000 cubic yards, we'll see five composite samples collected. And then one additional sample for each additional 2,000 cubic yards of material. And that's, we're looking at the soil fertility in that. So this is, it's going to be a combination of sampling your stockpile, what you're putting on, so we know what's going on to it. And also the soil that you're going to be applying it to, so we know it's there. And looking at the soil fertility, we're going to do composite sampling of the upper six inches of that soil, because that's what you're tilling this material into, and then monitoring it three times a year per year in June, August and October. Of course, that's all going to vary by when you apply this. Remember, you can apply it anywhere from April 1st to November 1st. So obviously, you know, if you're applying it, you know, in September, you're only going to be doing your October monitoring for that first year. We want to see an annual report by March 1st. So what that annual report will contain is the origin of the impacted soil. Where to come from? Type of petroleum contamination that's in it. Is it crude oil? Is it gasoline? Is it a refined product? What is it? The date the soil was received, and that is not necessarily the date of the spill, but the date, you know, you've collected it and made that determination that you want to land apply it. The quantity of the soil, how much you applied. The date the soil was spread, and the data was tilled, the data was initially tilled in, and then any other till dates that you did. Document and document any applied amendments. Did you add anything to this? Have you done anything? You know, did you irrigate? When did you irrigate? You know, did you add any additional, you know, supplemental nutrients to it? What did you do? Any sampling results? You want to see all those, of course. Sample location map, where were you collecting these? Obviously, we're allowing composite samples so you can just kind of give a general box theory of where your composite came from. And then summary of any complaints from the landowner. You know, are there any odors or you not, you know, any complaints that the landowner had about regarding this and then what you did to address those complaints than any conclusions and recommendations you have. For the additional monitoring, additional work, or do you think it should be, you know, we're done with that, whatever. So how much will it cost? That's the big question a lot of you will have, I'm sure. And that's the fees for it. If you're between zero and 500 cubic yards of material, there's no fee for the application. There's no application fee for it. You're going from 500 to 1,000 cubic yards to $500 application fee. And greater than 1,000 cubic yards, it's 1,000. So. And the links to these, okay, are basically there. There's actually the application there. Guideline seven is, you know, just the guidelines for applying to doing the application and then they'll let the general permit that's out there for it. So that's pretty much it in a wrap with the listeners. Any questions on this? The turn around is that we can turn this around pretty quick. We can usually turn around within, definitely within a week, quite often within a few days. You know, the only thing, what time we run into it is if, you know, obviously myself, you know, myself in some cases or whichever program is dealing with this in the event of a spill, it would be myself and I would be able to do that. The only thing you're going to run into is I'm stuck out in the field for a week on the spill side. It may get delayed a little bit on that, but usually we can get it turned around within a few days.