Guy Patrick had the Symposium audience fully engaged with his presentation of the new site characterization guidance document for British Columbia. The new guidance is designed to allow environmental consultants to meet government requirements, as well as meet monetary and time constraints put on them by clients.

 

It aims to do this by providing answers to important site characterization questions, including:

• When is groundwater investigation necessary?

• How do you design the field program?

• What is a conceptual site model?

• What about LNAPL and DNAPL?

• What level of investigation is necessary?

• What are acceptable methods and approaches?

The approaches set out in the guidance favour those that increase the amount of spatial and temporal data, as well as chemistry, with the overall objective of creating a larger three-dimensional data set.

The guidance also aims to correct common issues seen throughout the industry, such as not enough monitoring wells at a site, the use of long screened wells that average groundwater chemistry, and not enough sampling. These issues lead to erroneous conceptual models being created, and therefore the wrong conclusions and decisions made.

Guy hopes this document will ultimately even-out the playing field for the consulting industry in the province, and reduce the number of “professional judgement” decisions made during site characterizations, and replace them with decisions based on accurate, representative data.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER - Guy Patrick, M.Sc., P.Eng.,
Golder Associates Ltd.

Guy is a Principal with Golder Associates Ltd., and has over 25 years of experience in environmental consulting.