Kent Armstrong visited AP Environmental Science during E block on February 6th. As the owner of TerraStryke, Kent introduced us to bio remediation. He told us that he has been in the industry for around 35 or 36 years, and the purpose of his job is to restore contaminated environment.

He talked about how the Brownfields project clean up and redevelop contaminated sites so they could be reused. The idea is to "bring this back into a revenue generating property," such as apartments and offices. The Greenfield is "an area that has not been developed yet," and the Greenfields project is to keep the place pristine and not contaminated. 

As Alan asked about the difference between a Superfund cite and a Brownfield, Kent repsponded: "a Brownfield is more often a private investment, that often times will go get a grant or a loan... is pretty much doing all the work based on grant loan." A Superfund cite has a greater impact and is "impacting more people, more places, more water, and it costs a ton." At a private project, cleaning up dirt or trash is charged in tons but the projects are still under your control, instead of under the rule makers'. However, at a Superfund site is controlled by the government and it creates and then implements the plan without the owner of the property have any say in it. And "anytime the government makes the plan it always cost you more money, because there's so many more people..." involved.

 When he talked about how we determine a site's value and liability, he used his example of checking the Osram company. He said he found "mercury even in a dust form" in the tile of the kitchen. Kent was fired from the job because "I made them aware of the health and safety risk they were exposed to." He was never to be allowed to set foot on Osram property again although he kept doing his job for two and a half years. "It gets hard core man, it gets pretty hardcore." Some of the contaminants that could be found at these sites are metals (lead, mercury, calcium), which are in-organics that cannot be destroyed, solvents (chlorinated, dry cleaners, manufacturing facilities) that are organics that can be destroyed, and petroleum hydrocarbons (gasoline, Diesel).

Kent's job can be divided into four phases. The first is mainly to walk around the property and make visual assessments to the property by walking or driving, checking the ground to see if there's stain and some records. Then they move onto phase two where they "collect samples... From those samples we analyze them..." They're not delineating or saying where the problem is but to tell them what they found in what. After being informed and if they still want the property, Kent would move onto phase three assessment. In phase three, Kent starts delineating. "I'm giving them an idea of what's the magnitude and the scope necessary, associated with your property that you wanna buy to make it so it's functional." This phase gives perspectives of the strategies and efforts required to realize the site compliance. Then in phase four they design remediation and implementation. "How do we clean it up? One of the most expensive way to do it is incineration." Some of the other ways are excavation, stabilization, and bio-remediation (augmentation, bio-stimulation), etc.

After a 48 minute lecture from Kent, I definitely learned a lot about his company and the techniques he uses to assess properties. I am interested by the science behind it. Moreover, I really hope that with the work that Kent and his company does to assess the chemicals and contaminants at sites and properties, more people (owner of the properties) will put time and effort (or money) into cleaning those sites and getting rid of the hazardous chemicals in the environment. I believe his work will help people understand more about toxic wastes and therefore make the environment more healthy. His presentation enlightened me about bio-remediation and I'm glad to see people treating and purifying our one and only Earth.