Environmental Scientist, Environmental Systems Analysis, Inc.

>> My name is Charlotte Churin and I'm and environmental scientist at a small environmental consulting firm. So the majority of what I do is involving the water quality monitoring that we do for developers primarily in Montgomery County. So they have certain requirements that they have to follow during construction and after construction. My day is pretty much different every day I come to work which is -- I really enjoy that. This is the flow meter. This is the flow rod. When we get down there I'll hook them up and the flow rod goes into the stream and the flow meter gives you the velocity of the water as it is coming through. Prior to construction on these sites we installed ground water wells and we have to go out and check the level every month. We have two tank flow readings which, in certain streams on the site which sort of helps us gauge how much water is coming through the streams which can increase when there is an increase in pervious surface and that sort of thing. We do storm sampling so during rain events we'll gather our water samples at various BMP's which are best management practices. And during construction those are like sediment traps. So there's, you know, as they're grading the land there's a lot of dirt being moved around basically and during rain events that can be washed into waterways so they put these sediment basins on there that are supposed to capture the majority of the runoff and the sediment and let the sediment sort of filter out before the water is discharged into the stream. So we have to capture the amount of water coming in and what's going out. And then we sample that for sediment and then in post construction we also sample for pollutants and nutrients. So heavy metals and things like that.