Blog
Forensic Isotope study by Glorieta Geoscience and LANL collaboration
Mr. Jay Lazarus presented an overview of the Forensic Isotope Study that GGI and our Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) collaborators, Dr. Jeff Heikoop and Dr. Patrick Longmire are conducting in conjunction with Paul Drakos, V.P. and Sr. Geologist of GGI to determine if nitrogen compounds in ground water originate from dairy wastewater (green water), dairy manure or chemical fertilizers.
Mr. Lazarus, President and Sr. Geohydrologist of Glorieta Geoscience, Inc. (GGI) was a member of a panel for the LANL New Mexico Small Business Assistance Program. Ms. Lisa Henne of LANL was the panel moderator.
For more information, please contact me at lazarus@glorietageo.com or at 505 983 5446 Ext 111.
About GGI:
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance and environmental sciences. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes.
For more information please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
Water Energy Food Nexus: Sustainable Agricultural Production
An article on Water/Energy/Food Nexus was recently published in Water Resources IMPACT, a publication of the American Water Works Association by Jay Lazarus, President and Sr. Geohydrologist of Glorieta Geoscience, Inc. The article discusses water, energy and food relations that the 5th World Water Forum (WWF) found to be critical issues and proposes recommendations for achieving the goals established in the 5th WWF.
For more information, please contact me at lazarus@glorietageo.com or at 505 983 5446 Ext 111.
About GGI:
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance and environmental sciences. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes.
For more information please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
Characterization and remediation of PCB-contaminated sediments
GGI utilizes geomorphology, dendrochronology, and stratigraphic description of sediment deposits for characterization and remediation of PCB-contaminated sediments at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), New Mexico, USA.
GGI collaborated with Dr. Steven Reneau and Ms. Beckey Coel-Roback of LANL to characterize PCB-contaminated sediments at a site in Los Alamos Canyon, a watershed that drains the Pajarito Plateau and is tributary to the Rio Grande in New Mexico. GGI utilized geomorphic mapping, dendrochronology, and measurement of thickness and stratigraphy of sediment deposits to determine the horizontal and vertical extent of PCB-contaminated sediments. Contaminated sediments were excavated, and GGI conducted confirmatory sampling to verify the removal of PCBs from the site. The chemical analysis and fingerprinting of PCBs at this site can also be used to determine if PCBs have been transported downstream from this site to the Rio Grande (see related Blog “GGI completes Sediment Sampling in Los Alamos Canyon“).
Geomorphic characterization at LA‐SMA‐2, the site with the highest concentrations of PCBs in the Los Alamos Canyon watershed. Tree was buried by 43 cm of sediment after it began growing in 1985. Note bend in tree caused by damage by a flood in ca 1998.
Graph showing distinctive chemical signature of PCB’s at site in Los Alamos Canyon.
Soil samples collected from base of excavation to remove PCB‐contaminated sediment at LA‐SMA‐2, December 2009 (upper Los Alamos Canyon)
If you want to know more about sediment sampling and contaminant transport or want to discuss your geomorphology projects please contact me at drakos@glorietageo.com or at 505 983 5446 Ext. 108.
About GGI:
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance, alternative energy and environmental sciences. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes.
For more information please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
Evaluation of PCBs in the Rio Grande
Utilization of Geomorphology and Analysis of Recent Sediment Deposits for Evaluation of PCBs in the Rio Grande Near Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.
Glorieta Geoscience, Inc. (GGI) in collaboration with Dr. Steven Reneau at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), has completed the initial phase of a geomorphology investigation evaluating concentrations of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in Rio Grande sediments in northern New Mexico. PCBs are a class of organic chemicals that had widespread use in electrical transformers and other industrial applications. Although production of PCBs in the U.S. was stopped in 1977 because of environmental concerns, PCBs are persistent in the environment and present risks to human health and ecosystems in many areas. PCBs have distinctive chemical signatures that can allow for source identification, and this study utilized the “chemical fingerprinting” of PCB’s to evaluate relative PCB contributions from different source areas.
In 2008 and 2009, GGI sampled recent sediment deposits along the Rio Grande upriver and downriver from Los Alamos Canyon and other canyons draining LANL and portions of the Pajarito Plateau to help evaluate sources and concentrations of PCBs in the river. These samples were collected during November-December low-water conditions, and included a range of particle size and geomorphic settings in each sample area (e.g., high-water deposits from snowmelt runoff and slackwater deposits representing late-season flows).
Sediment samples were also collected from four areas within the Los Alamos Canyon watershed, which includes the primary potential LANL sources of PCBs reaching the Rio Grande, to allow comparison with PCB signatures along the river. The sediment samples from the Rio Grande show that the chemical signatures in each area vary between sampled layers, indicating variability in the sources of sediment and associated PCBs in each depositional event.
Data on PCB concentrations in sediment were compared with estimates of sediment flux to estimate average annual PCB flux in the Rio Grande and in lower Los Alamos Canyon. Based on the average PCB concentration and annual suspended sediment flux along the Rio Grande at Otowi Bridge, an estimated PCB flux of 0.16 kg/yr was calculated. In lower Los Alamos Canyon, we utilized the average PCB concentration determined from this investigation, combined with the estimated average suspended sediment flux to calculate a PCB flux of 0.005 kg/yr, or 3% of the total in the Rio Grande. These flux estimates, although preliminary, support the interpretation based on chemical signatures that Los Alamos Canyon is a minor contributor to PCBs in the Rio Grande.
For additional information, see Reneau, S. L., Drakos, P.G., and Schultz-Fellenz, E. S, Use of Congener Homologs to Evaluate PCBs in the Rio Grande Near Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico [Abstract] and [Poster]; See related blog on PCB site investigation and remediation.
If you want to know more about sediment sampling and contaminant transport or want to discuss your geomorphology projects please contact me at drakos@glorietageo.com or at 505 983 5446 Ext. 108.
About GGI:
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance, alternative energy and environmental sciences. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes.
For more information please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
Geothermal heat pump project
As part of a geothermal heat pump project at New Mexico Highlands University, GGI provided oversight for drilling and testing of a geothermal test well. The geothermal test well will be utilized to design a larger well field that will provide efficient, green, heating and cooling for the University. The wells will be part of a geothermal heat pump, aka ground source heat pump (GSHP), system. GSHPs are heating/cooling systems that pump heat to or from the ground using earth as the source of heat (in winter) and a heat sink (in summer).
The NMHU geothermal test well was drilled and completed to a total depth of 400 feet with 1.25 inch CENFUSE EARTH LOOP and BENTHERM GROUT with 30/70 silica sand. The borehole was drilled by Air Hammer method and drill cuttings were analyzed and lithlogic logs were completed by GGI. Geothermal well drilling and completion were performed by Lujan Drilling. Thermal conductivity tests were performed on the geothermal well, two weeks after it was completed.
For more information on geothermal projects and services offered by GGI, please contact me at hall@glorietageo.com or at 505 983 5446 Ext 105.
About GGI:
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance, alternative energy and environmental sciences. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes.
For more information please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
GGI manages Dairy Manure to Methane project
Glorieta Geoscience, Inc. (GGI) is managing dairy manure to methane project for the Pecos Valley Biomass Cooperative, Inc. The Coop is composed of 25 family-owned dairies. The Coop is in the planning stages for constructing a centralized anaerobic digester which will use the manure and green water from 25 CAFOs near Roswell, New Mexico. The project has significant environmental benefits as using the manure and green water from the dairies for methane gas production will reduce methane emissions from dairy lagoons and reduce nitrogen loading to land application fields.
For more information, please contact me at lazarus@glorietageo.com or at 505 983 5446 Ext 111.
About GGI:
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance and environmental sciences. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes.
For more information please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
GGI website ranks No. 1 in the world!
Glorieta Geoscience, Inc. (GGI) is proud to announce that our website now ranks No. 1 in the world for the following keywords in Google search, which are our primary service areas.
- “water rights consultants” Rank 1 of about 2,830,000 Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
- “dairy environmental consultants” Rank 1 out of 178,000 SERPs and
- “geomorphology consultants” Rank 1 out of 1,620,000 SERPs.
“Google the above keywords and see it for yourself” said Reddy Ganta, Sr. Agronomist/Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialist for GGI. He further added “We did a major website redesign and optimization upgrade to our existing website in May 2009 and took advantage of social media networking as well. We developed a unique SEO Plan involving extensive keywords research, setting up keyword tags, and performing regular updates to our website through blogs. We dedicatedly followed our stringent SEO plan and within five months we rank No.1 for our target keywords. Our SEO plan is working beyond our expectations and we are all very excited.”
“I am very pleased with the success story of our website; we did not rank for any keywords before May 2009 and now we are No.1in the world” said Jay Lazarus, President, GGI.
“Here is our real success! We got our first project from internet in August 2009 and we are expecting more” added Paul Drakos, Vice President, GGI.
We want to share our success with you. GGI can help you improve your website rankings using our proven and unique Search Engine Optimization Plan. We are very confident that our stringent SEO plan can boost your website rankings and can help you draw qualified traffic. However, we would like to point out that we do not offer this service to our competitors in our primary service areas (groundwater, water rights and environmental consulting services). We don’t want to compete with our ourselves after all!
For more information, please contact Reddy or Jay at 505 983 5446 or email ganta@glorietageo.com.
About GGI:
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance, environmental sciences, internet marketing and search engine optimization services. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes.
For more information please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
GGI staff presents Groundwater Aquifer Characterization and Water Quality Zone Testing methods in AWWA Conference
GGI staff members presented their work on Groundwater Aquifer characterization and Water Quality Zone testing methods in the American Water Works Association California-Nevada Annual Fall conference held in Las Vegas NV October 5-8, 2009. AWWA is committed to leading, educating and serving the drinking water community to ensure public health and to provide safe and sufficient water for all.
Paul Drakos, P.G., GGI Vice President and Senior Geologist, and Jim Riesterer, P.G., GGI staff geologist, were invited to present to the Water Well Technology section of the AWWA meeting.
The purpose of GGI talks was to teach water system operators not familiar with the water well drilling and construction procedure how detailed geologic and geophysical data collected during the drilling process may be combined with geologic mapping, pumping test, water quality, and remote sensing data, to allow correlation of basin fill units between wells and assist in the siting and design of future wells. Emphasis was placed on the benefits of exploratory drilling and testing prior to production well drilling in situations where aquifer productivity and water quality are relatively unknown and/or variable.
Mr. Drakos’ talk focused on how geologic investigations utilizing deep well drilling, geophysics, geologic mapping, and remote sensing data are used to characterize shallow aquifer and deep aquifer systems in New Mexico.
Please click here for Mr. Drako’s presentation: “Aquifer characterization and analysis of structural controls on groundwater flow in Southern San Luis Basin using data from municipal, subdivision, and domestic supply wells”
Mr. Riesterer’s talk provided an overview of a variety of exploratory well drilling and testing methods that can be used to improve water quality and well production in municipal supply wells completed into a variety of shallow aquifer and deep aquifer settings.
Please click here for Mr. Reisterer’s presentation: “Analysis of various water quality zone testing methods – Case Studies and Results”
Based on feedback received from attendees after the talks, both presentations were well received and useful to the audience.
For more information please contact Mr. Riesterer at reisterer@glorietageo.com or Mr. Drakos at drakos@glorietageo.com or call us at 505 083 5446.
About GGI:
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance and environmental sciences. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes.
For more information about GGI please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
Pdfs of presentations :
GGI completes Sediment Sampling in Los Alamos Canyon
GGI has completed sediment sampling in Los Alamos Canyon for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). If you are unfamiliar with sediment sampling and why we do it, here is my sediment sampling 101. Stream sediments (referred to as fluvial deposits) form layers on earth surface typically composed of clay, silt, sand, and gravel, transported and deposited by water. Stream-transported sediments located outside the main stream channel are deposited during flood events. At LANL, we perform sediment sampling to calculate an inventory of contaminants within a watershed for monitoring contaminants and contaminant transport as part of the Environmental Restoration Program.
What’s interesting is we can determine the age of the sediment by calculating the age of the trees growing on the sediment. Rule of the thumb – age of sediment is older than the trees growing on top of a deposit and younger than the trees growing below a deposit. How do we determine the age of a tree? It is possible to determine the age of a tree by using dendrochronology techniques such as tree core analysis.
Now let’s take a look at a real time case study. In the figure below, the sediment should be older than the age of the Ponderosa Pine above the deposit (1969) and younger than the age of the tree growing below the sediment (1934). Therefore it can be safely concluded that the sediment was deposited between 1934 and 1969.
As part of Los Alamos Canyon sediment sampling project, sample locations were selected based on description of sediments, analysis of tree cores (dendrochronology) collected from flood-damaged trees or from trees buried by, or growing on sediment deposits. The extent of remediation required for this site will be determined based on GGI’s detailed site investigation, including GGI’s geomorphic map of the area and the thickness of post-laboratory sediments as determined by GGI, working in conjunction with LANL.
GGI surveyed in all sample locations using a total station on 8/6/09. Control points were also surveyed, which will allow for completion of a detailed geomorphic map, calculation of unit areas, and determination of the volume of sediments comprising each geomorphic unit.
GGI has completed several sediment sampling and contaminant transport, geomorphic mapping and soil stratigraphic studies in support of numerous environmental, archeological, water rights, spring inventory, geologic mapping and paleontological investigations. For more information please check our Geomorphology and Soils Investigations section on our website.
If you want to know more about sediment sampling and contaminant transport or want to discuss your geomorphology projects please contact me at drakos@glorietageo.com or at 505 983 5446 Ext. 108.
About GGI
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance and environmental sciences. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes. For more information please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
Final EPA Region 6 CAFO General Permit for New Mexico issued today!
The notice for Final EPA Region 6 CAFO General Permit for New Mexico appeared in today’s Federal Register (8/4/2009). Federal Register Notice, Final Permit, Response to Comments and Final Fact Sheet are posted on EPA’s website.
The question is: Do you need a CAFO permit? The answer varies depending on your dairy/CAFO’s potential to discharge to the Waters of the US and several other factors. The key is to make a wise decision on whether your dairy/CAFO needs coverage under the Region 6 CAFO General Permit. We understand that making this decision is complicated, since lot of factors specific to your individual dairy need to be carefully evaluated during this period of low milk prices.
However, if you decide you need a CAFO Permit, GGI can assist you with the whole CAFO permit application process involving preparation of Notice of Intent (NOI) and Nutrient Management Plan (NMP). If you already have a NRCS Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan (CNMP) and would like to build on it to prepare an NMP, please check out our Hoards Dairyman publication that details the differences between a CNMP and an NMP. Using your existing CNMP for the preparation of your NMP can save, you quite a bit of money on NMP preparation costs. For more information check out our Dairy/CAFO compliance services.
If you have specific questions on whether you need a CAFO permit or on the Permit itself, please contact me at lazarus@glorietageo.com or at 505 983 5446 Ext 111.
About GGI
Founded in 1979 in Santa Fe, NM, GGI has been providing quality professional consulting services in groundwater development, water rights, geomorphology, dairy regulatory compliance and environmental sciences. GGI serves federal, state, and municipal entities, tribal governments, private corporations, and individuals. We pride ourselves in our ability to listen to our clients’ goals and help turn these goals into successes. For more information please visit our website at www.glorietageo.com
