Environmental Geology

The environmental geology discipline, often a part of engineering geology, involves studies, investigations, and reviews that often include:

a) environmental site assessments (ESAs) for real-estate transfers, mergers, or for impact of long-term production of oil and gas or injection well operations,

b) environmental hazard investigations of growth faults in urban areas, water-well failures, hillside slumping, landslides, subsidence, etc.,

c) soil contamination investigations resulting from leaks from undergound storage tanks at service stations, from dry cleaning facilities, and other from industrial sources of leaks or spills of hazardous materials,

d) remediation studies of ground-water contamination from USTs, dry cleaning facilities, oil & gas production, and

e) other subsurface investigations requiring sampling, interpretation and assessment of hydrogeologic data and hydrochemical analyses to determine conditions in the subsurface.

Subsequent evaluations require:

f) a definition and interpretation of correlative subsurface lithology and stratigraphy,

g) an evaluation of local hydrogeologic conditions for dewatering of open-cut and underground mines,

h) an assessment of the potential development of drinking water supplies and associated impact of contaminants on the ground-water resources,

i) an assessment of risk exposure from any potential contaminant present in the subsurface on human health and the environment, and

j) a cost-benefit analyses of all applicable remedial approaches to clean-up.

This discipline may also be involved in mining to determine potential environmental impact of mining operations, or to evaluate subsurface conditions (i.e., ground-water quality and hydrogeologic parameters such as ground-water flow direction and rate, dewatering, water supplies, etc.).

Placed in a context of litigation, each of the above activities, analyses, evaluations, or assessments may have been conducted in a biased manner, by inadequate methods, or by personnel without appropriate training and experience and the associated professional certifications and/or state licenses. These actions contribute, to one extent or another, to errors which can lead to unnecessary financial losses or injury to human health and/or the environment.

In litigation, cases may involve discriminating between a failure of an industry standard(s) of care and / or practice, of an engineered structure as a result of improper design or construction, or as a result of some natural subsurface conditions that changed, thus altering the original input assumptions. Other cases may involve shallow contamination in soil and underlying sediments or rocks as a result of leaking underground or aboveground tanks (USTs and ASTs), which store, and leak, a variety of petro-chemical and industrial products, intermediates or solvents to the subsurface and the ground-water reservoir.

The likely source of such contamination must be sought, often in an urban environment where access is limited, forbidden, or dangerous. Litigation is common in cases where a contaminant is found on the water table at depth in the subsurface but has migrated beyond a property boundary. Other types of contamination sink through the water table, seeking subsurface avenues to sink to even greater depths. What damage has occurred? Who has been exposed and damaged, and for what duration? Who is responsible for the damage and for the cost of clean-up? These are all typical questions and elements encountered in many cases.