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What is environmental forensics and could it help bring clarity to your current site assessment or remediation effort? Could forensic tools be helpful in your environmental litigation case? In this previously recorded webinar below, you might find the answer to these questions.

Environmental investigations often try to answer the basics of site investigation: was there a release, what was released, and how much was released?

Forensic methods are often used to help dig deeper and answer questions such as, who is responsible for the release and when did the release occur. Answering these questions and subsequently providing convincing scientific proof of your position, are often useful when there is a legal dispute or you need to provide more convincing evidence to a state or federal regulator.

In this webinar, Dragun’s Senior Hydrogeologist, Dr. Michael Sklash provides a high-level overview of some of the tools use in environmental forensics. Mike introduces you to Tritium, Isotopes, Modeling, Soil Vapor Mapping, Chemical Ratios, and more.

In a typical soil and groundwater investigation, you answer question such as, what's the problem, how much is there and where is it.

In an environmental forensics investigation, it's a little different. You still use the scientific method but it's a little different forum. It's legal, mediation, or negotiation forum as opposed to business or regulatory.

You try to answer, why, when and who. Here you actually do "finger pointing."

One of the things we find is very important is to get the Conceptual Site Model (CSM) right. The court makes decisions, the regulator makes decisions, everyone makes decisions based on the CSM, not what is actually in the subsurface. So you have to develop a good CSM.

A good CSM integrates everything you know about the site such as, site history, hydrogeology, the chemical(s) that were released, etc...and integrates this into a model or drawing.

The CSM is what you use to try convince regulators or the court of your position.

What has worked for Dragun the last 25 plus years is bringing all the tools. We have lot's of different tools and techniques and they go together like a jigsaw puzzle. These tools, properly used, help you reach a fairly definitive conclusion.

It is very important to get the basics right. You have to understand the geology, the groundwater flow, the site history, groundwater chemistry, and chemical behavior before you use advanced tools.

Fingerprints are something you add on to the CSM, to make it more robust.

Because you are only looking at a small fraction of the entire site when you are doing a site investigation, you have to be able to effectively integrate a lot of data.

Preliminary CSM includes: Literature, Records, Air Photos, and Interviews.

Revised CSM includes: Geologic Framework, Groundwater Flow, Soil and Groundwater Chemistry, Contaminant Transport.

Robust CSM includes: Geophysics, Groundwater Modeling, Fingerprints, Isotopes.

To make your CSM more robust, we use independent and complimentary data.