Alaska, Problem Solving, and PFAS/PFOA with Shannon Oelkers

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Shannon Oelkers, Owner and Principal Consultant for Integrity Environmental about Alaska, Problem Solving, and PFAS/PFOA.   Read her full bio below.

This episode is sponsored by Integrity Environmental. Integrity Environmental is the premiere environmental permitting and consulting group in Alaska and Arctic regions. They have been in business for over a decade. Integrity performs high quality tank inspections to American Petroleum Institute standards, and are the 'go to' firm industrial operators turn to for help navigating complex regulatory compliance issues. They love tanks as much as you do! Check them out at www.integrity-env.com.

Showtimes:
3:42  Nic & Laura talk about mist netting
8:24 Interview with Shannon Oelkers Starts
16:22  Problem Solving
21:18  Alaska
33:51  PFAS/ PFOA

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Shannon Oelkers at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-oelkers-b8524423 

Guest Bio:

Shannon Oelkers is the owner and principal consultant for Integrity Environmental. Shannon previously worked at the State of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation in the Contaminated Sites and Terminal / Tank Farms division, focusing on industrial environmental compliance. Shannon holds a bachelor's degree in Biological Science and a master's degree in Community Development from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has more than a decade of experience inspecting and auditing bulk fuel tank farm operations. Shannon is also an MBA Instructor at Alaska Pacific University. Shannon is well-versed in the unique challenges of completing oil and gas related projects in Alaska.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Chapters

• 3:42 Nic & Laura Segment: Mist Netting
• 8:24 Interview with Shannon Oelkers Starts
• 16:22 Problem Solving
• 21:18 Alaska
• 33:51 PFAS/ PFOA

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Nic and I discussed Mist netting. We welcome back Shannon Oelkers to talk about all things Alaska, problem solving, and the impact of PFAS and PFOA on remote communities. And finally, Shannon came with another great animal fact for us. So take it away Shannon.

Shannon Oelkers 
So there is a bird called the Fulmar or the the Northern Fulmar, if you're in Alaska, and they're really common. They look like a full but they fly different they're related to the shearwaters in the petrels, so they have a much bulkier flappier wings. They don't look like gulls and they don't soar, they beat their way through the air. Right. So the interesting thing about the Northern Fulmar and the first time I saw one, I actually thought it had a mutated beak of a gull. If they have on the top of their beak, they have another formation that looks like the front end of a jet engine and it's called a naricorn. Like a unicorn but nasal. And it has this naricorn and it's a high powered saltwater treatment facility for the bird fresh water and so they drink fresh, they drink saltwater and then this naricorn processes that into fresh water. And then it creates this heavily salinated sort of acidic drip that comes out but it can start up and the naricorn sacks and it can spray it at enemies. And it's so thick and acidic it can actually damage predators feathers. So I learned all about this bird that I saw and I was dying. How ridiculous is this bird has naricorns and it can spray acid and take out predators. And the other cool thing about Northern fulmars is they're considered a indicator species for microplastics because they eat so much krill and small bird or small fishes sorry, when they start seeing population effects in northern fulmars, when they often look at the dead birds, they have a lot of microplastics and they've actually done a lot of studies on the fulmars. And they can actually see the increase in microplastics in their stomach starting to affect populations. And so when they the two are correlated, and so they can kind of tell when populations of fulmars are being affected by microplastics just by seeing declines in the population. So they're a very interesting bird.

Nic 
Yeah, so the bird has superpowers that's that's good to know. It's I'm terrified. But yeah.

Shannon Oelkers  
You should definitely google and see a picture.

Nic
Oh, I already did.

Shannon Oelkers
And then right on top is this giant nasal salt water treatment plant called the naricorn.

Laura
Hit that music.

[NAEP Event News]

Nic 
NAEP has several working groups if you are interested in biological resources, cultural resources, environmental justice, or many others, including NEPA practice groups, they're available  at www.naep.org. Today's episode is sponsored by Integrity Environmental. Integrity Environmental is the premier environmental permitting and consulting group in Alaska and Arctic regions. They have been in business for over a decade and Integrity performs high quality tank inspections to American Petroleum Institute standards and are the go to firm industrial operators turn to to help navigate complex regulatory compliance issues. They love tanks as much as you do. Visit their website at www.integrity-env.com. For details. Let's get to our segment

[Nic & Laura Segment: Mist Netting]

Nic
Maybe not. Nic explains mist netting. Not really a good segment idea.

Laura 
Oh, I have done mist setting. I thought you meant did we talk about it before?

Nic  
Oh no, no, no. You have done you have done. Yep. That's a fascinating thing. It is. Delicate is the way you have to be with your hands and it is nerve wracking.

Laura 
 I know, but some of the words like play dead in your hand or whatever.

Nic  
Yeah, like Yeah, and like gosh and so my roommate in grad school. He did his project on birds. They were looking for a St. Louis encephalitis in Prothonotary warblers. So you know, they're like, coastal bird and they mist net them and we band  them, if they're not already banded, and they draw blood from a bird, and it is the one. They pull the wing out and take just a little bit not a lot. And yeah, just terrified. I'm terrified to do anything wrong, trying to help them out, you know, because they're really delicate you can't manhandle them. You can't. You can't pull and push because you'll break their arms, legs, whatever. And so you're like, he says that right away, and I'm like, Okay , you're shaking. Yeah,

Laura 
Yeah, cuz it means that someone's done that, which would be heartbreaking.

Nic 
Of course. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So that's one of those things where, you know, they also have nests and all the nests are marked and they actually have a way to review the nest, you know, without disturbing everybody. And it's just basically like, a clear panel that they can see into things and they come up to one nest and they're like, Okay, well, whenever the nest is whenever they fledged out they kind of just reset it or something. I don't know. I don't know, I'm not the bird person here. So and in one of them was just a snake was hanging out. He's like, You know what, we'll come back to that one later. Like, I think everything in here is dead.So you've already done that, right?

Laura 
I don't know, nature's tough. Yeah, I have actually have just helped set up the nets, and then work with the birders on Water Restoration sites that we had. I didn't I was not qualified to actually handle the birds so I did not, but I've seen it and I've seen them in action. It is like amazingly delicate work. Especially when they've gotten good at it. And but Sierra mentioned deer getting stuck in the net. Like I can't, I've never experienced that. I can't imagine.

Nic
That I would be tough.

Laura
I would imagine getting something else out of the net.

Nic 
So I would imagine to be antlers and that's super dangerous. I don't know how you honestly don't know how you would get it out of there. That'd be really terrifying.

Laura  
But yeah, there's always that like, dark side of science. You know, I shop cruelty free and I won't buy shampoo that's been tested on animals and stuff and then we're like, Okay, well over here we have this birds and we're gonna pull them out of their natural habitat and draw some blood.

Nic 
I'm sure it's fine.

Laura 
Okay, that's not a hypocrisy or anything. And then I had to do, we may have talked about this before, but in my research work in college, we were looking at fence lizards in Florida, which are native lizards that are kind of like, they look like a little tiny bearded dragon almost. Yeah, but the blue spot. They're super, super cool, but they're hard to find. So we'd be out driving around in trucks looking for lizards. So ridiculous. And the Eastern fence lizard I think is the other one.  You literally see them on fences when the sun is hitting it. Then you have to catch them and that's a whole nother like, chasing chickens right? Except you're chasing a lizard.

Nic 
Yeah, that sounds wild. Yeah, it's fun. I mean, like I was doing like, I did the same thing with Box turtles. Right? But they're way easier to catch. Got to be honest with you. And they're like trying to run away like, Ah, never catch me, you know? But no we have to take blood from, you talk about taking blood from them. Yeah, that's hard to do from a boxer turtle.

Laura
Where do you do that from?

Nic
From the base of their neck. So you have to get you have to have them open. You have to pull their head out and you have to get it at the base of the neck. Yeah. It's not easy

Laura 
Oh, it gives me the super heebie jeebies. Oh my gosh.

Nic 
It's not easy. Yeah, it's actually wild. They actually have their blood cells have a nucleus in them. It's the weirdest thing in the world. So it's like you still, they look like regular cells instead of blood cells. And it's, it's odd, but kind of neat. And you can see parasites and stuff in there too if they have them. It's pretty cool stuff. Once you get it getting it is impossible. It's it I'd never want to do that again ever at rest of my life. And no, thanks.

Laura
No.

Nic
But yeah, it was neat.

Laura 
Cool. Well, I'm creeped out so I think we can stop now

Nic 
Yes, I think we're good.

[Interview with Shannon Oelkers Starts]

Nic
Hello, and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Shannon Oelkers returning to this show. Shannon is the owner of Integrity Environmental, based in Alaska. So welcome back, Shannon. Good to have you.

Shannon Oelkers 
Thanks for having me back. I'm really flattered and pleased to be here.

Nic 
Yeah, absolutely. So how are things going? How's Alaska doing?

Shannon Oelkers  
Alaska is doing really well. We have a lot of wildfires right now. That probably would be horrific in the lower 48, and they're also horrific. Here. But they involve a lot of wildlands.They're very large, like hundreds of 1000s of acres all across the state. So we have a lot of smoke. We have some of our interior cities are being hit harder. In western Alaska in particular, there's a lot of tinder fires this year. Most of them caused by really dry summer one of the driest in history, which is wonderful for hanging out at the lake in the sun but not so great for the Tundra. The Tundra gets very dry when we have this kind of weather. So lightning strikes are the cause of most of these fires.

Nic 
I mean, I'm assuming they're in fairly remote areas, and maybe that's why we're not hearing as much about them.

Shannon Oelkers 
No, the one and Clear just went to Clear Air Force Station.

Nic
Oh, wow.

Shannon Oelkers
Like evacuate everybody.

Nic
Oh, gosh.

Shannon Oelkers
Just a lot less people. There was a very large one near a community called St. Mary's and we were involved with that. St. Mary's has the whole fuel farm. That's one of the ones we help regulate. And there was some discussion about evacuating because in Alaska you only get fuel a few times a year or some for them are really remote locations and so the the tanks get very low fuel so they're almost empty before you know the spring barge comes and when they're low on fuel, they're high on vapor content, so they're more likely to catch on fire.

Nic 
Oh, wow. I didn't even think about that.

Shannon Oelkers 
So it was  especially concerning to FEMA since the fire was heading sort of straight towards the community and the tanks are pretty close to the community.

Nic 
So what's the solution for that? What do you do in that situation?

Shannon Oelkers 
You evacuate. There's not much you can do I mean, filling them up with fuel and reduce paper but then you also know how combustible liquid right. Fortunately, the wind turns in it turned away who did not come through town so everything worked out at any time, but it was something I had not ever really thought about before.

Nic 
I haven't either. That's wild.  So it's a nice little segue to how's your company doing are there any new or exciting projects you guys have since the last time we spoke?

Shannon Oelkers  
Yeah. Well, our company's doing really well. We're still trucking right along and doing lots of really good and interesting work. But one of the things I'm excited about is we reached out to, as you may remember from last time, we worked really hard to promote science literacy, and get more kids especially interested in and knowledgeable about science. And so we reached out to the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, which is called ANSEP, and they have a whole bunch of different programs for high school kids that are on a science and engineering track. But in the summer they host a whole lot of summer research academies for high school students from all over the state of Alaska. Most of them are Native Alaskan, but some not all, but they are definitely from rural and remote locations in Alaska. And we are teaming up with them to teach a three hour course in soil sampling. And I'm so excited about that because we get to talk about fate and transport of fuel which is one of the most common contaminants in Alaska. So we get to educate them about how fuel affects and interacts with their environment. And then we're going to take them out and we have a whole unit that we developed with ANSEP. We're going to have them use a photo ionization detector. PID, and they're gonna actually sample soil and measure the vapors and I feel like a hands on program is the best way to show them what an environmental scientist does. And I think there's a lot of power in using these highly technical pieces of equipment, especially if you're a little intimidated. It's really easy and nice to get kids interested in a PID when learning how to calibrate it and how to use it and how to take data. And we're just going to focus on that piece of it, hopefully to get them excited about it and give them something to be able to say, I did that. Yeah, so we're kind of focusing on that piece of it. If we have more time and the program gets evolved, I would also like to teach them how to take qualitative samples or quantitative samples instead of qualitative samples because that's the next step. But I only got three hours with the kids.  I'm excited.

Nic 
How did it come to be? It's really, really cool. How did you guys pull that together?

Shannon Oelkers 
Well, I know kids, I've done a lot of work in the past with kids, especially older kids. I actually worked at the University of Alaska Fairbanks for a long time. They had a summer research Academy and I actually was a residential assistant and I taught courses in stream ecology for high school kids. And so we were talking about the fact that we were doing all these really interesting STEM nights at elementary schools and I was doing science projects in classrooms with younger kids. And I felt like I probably had better reach with high school kids too, because I've got all these consultants that are really interesting people and engaging and I've got a couple of friends of mine who are persons of color and are native Alaskan and they talked specifically about being inspired to join science by actually seeing the results of something they went into IT because they wrote code and they could see that it immediately gave me the power to do something and they hopped into a bobcat and learn how to do operations and how to move soil around and that doing, you know kids get talked to a lot they get talked at a lot, they get told all about the things and they very rarely get to do. And so I thought let's do this program and actually ANSEP straight up in their documentation when you apply to be a partner with them. They're like, make sure that your thing is hands on because there's only so much classroom time these students can take. And I'm the same way I mean, nobody likes to sit at the desk for eight hours a day for their whole life. That's why I have this job so I can get out in the field and field work and talk to people and interact with the environment. And so all that kind of distilled into it's really easy to use a PID. It's easy to teach kids how to use a PID and in a short amount of time, and it gives them a lot of things to do and think about you have to fill the sample bay correctly. You have to develop vapor you have to be able to use the machine and calibrate it and all those skills are real world skills for an environmental scientist. So it would give them literal taste of what it's like to do something that we do. So that's why we developed it and I felt like that probably have a bigger impact to a high school student about what kinds of jobs they might apply for or what kinds of trainings they might look into post high school or even during high school.

Laura 
Yeah, that's really awesome. A lot of jobs look really great on paper. And then you actually do them and you like, I don't know, I don't think so.

Shannon Oelkers 
Well I mean I found a few people who applied for field work and didn't realize they would be taking 1000s of PIDs and did not really enjoy it. It can go both ways, right? It just I feel like kids need more. It's more hands on right. We've become a very theoretical, you know, a lot of our education is theoretical, and you know, when a kid is  16 They're ready to work. They're basically a grown up right. And I think that there's some responsibility and some delegation that can be handed to them at that point. I would trust almost any 16 year old he's a PID, right? Push the button, see how it goes. And I think I think there's a lot of people that don't really give kids that chance until they're 18 and they hire them for a job.

Nic
Right.

[Problem Solving]

Laura 
Yeah, that's true. Speaking of education, you're also an MBA instructor at Alaska Pacific University. So what drew to that work and what do you do?

Shannon Oelkers 
I was invited to teach, they have an entrepreneurial certificate or MBA students who are looking to basically start up a business right? They want the MBA because they either have a small business that they own and they want to make it better. Although, most of my students had an idea for a business and they wanted to start it up. And so it's a four part course and one of the course or it's four courses to get this certificate and one of the courses was entrepreneurial leadership. And so I taught it kind of like a networking 101 because really being a leader, as an entrepreneur with a startup is about networking and understanding like bringing in people and focusing your time in places that will not only help you grow your business, but also allow you to bring that culture and ideals and the things that you the reason you started the business in the first place. Right, that allows you to be a leader in the community for those things. And so that's how we sort of approached the entrepreneurial leadership portion of that course. So I was asked to teach that piece because I have started a successful business.

Laura
Which is awesome.

Shannon Oelkers
And I also have thoughts on leadership. It was really fun.

Nic 
I mean, teaching seems to be something that even though it's a it's not your main job, but it's like, can I call it one of your hobbies? Is that fair?

Shannon Oelkers 
I think well explaining. I like explaining, or I guess that's teaching right and helping people understand something that I feel really passionate about. Yes,

Nic 
You have a really unique way of approaching a problem. Maybe there's another example you have where you get to be creative while also solving a problem.

Shannon Oelkers 
So the science fair can be problematic for a lot of students because it requires parent involvement. It requires time spent out of school. And so we've seen a decline in participation in the science fair recently. And so I put my my mind to it, and I kind of thought, well, what if we did this? What if we can be experiment part of the science fair project in a classroom because there's 25 kids in the class? And if we do that, we could get 25 sets of data and then they can get the value of experimenting and getting repeatable data and doing the data management and conclusions instead of just one data set, which is what many children do for the science fair. Like we'll go to the class and I just did one with my son's group, the spring. I came in once a week for 30 minutes and we built in designed a science fair experiment. It was an experiment and we did it as a class. So there's 50 kids between the two classes, and we grew scarlet runner beans and we totally did the Idiocracy test where we gave it gatorade because it's got electrolytes like plants need. And we compared that to water and they did a method, we developed methods as a group we did data management, because we had 50 sets of data. Now, because each kid did the experiment. We had a control variable, or we had controlled variables. And we had, you know, the things that they chose to change and then they wrote abstract science fair posters and shared them with younger grades. And that was all the things I love about the Science Fair, but we did it in class during school time. And I think the kids got a much better science experiment experience out of that.

Nic 
Yeah And it's really cool. It really is really awesome.

Shannon Oelkers  
It is so cool. Well, and it's so neat. You just go in, right I just go into the principal and I'm like your science is broken. So I would like to teach science to these kids. And I've got 30 minutes a week and she's like, great. The school district only gives us 30 minutes. So we did science. And so I just come in and we the teachers were really cool too. I will say this because of the way classrooms are structured. They only have so many minutes for so many things. And these teachers took their language arts and applied it to their science notebooks. And so writing methodology and conclusions became a language arts exercise and data collection, tabulation and averaging that was all placed into a mathematics lesson during their math time. So I was fortunate that the principal supported it, but I was also really fortunate to have these two creative thinking teachers that were willing to put in the extra work to make it happen in their classroom.

Nic 
That's really, really incredible. I love that I was gonna say it's, you have lots of different hats and you find solutions to problems and that's really, really cool. We need more of that truthfully.

Shannon Oelkers 
It's also lucrative. So I solve problems for our clients, but I also solve problems for science in our classrooms.

[Alaska]

Nic 
Which is great. And last time,

Shannon Oelkers
Yeah. It's my superpower.

Nic
Yeah, it is. It is a superpower. What's funny though, last time we had you on we also talked briefly about Alaska's unique history. And this time, we wanted to focus on the Port Hobron Whaling station. I hope I'm saying that right.

Shannon Oelkers
Oh, Port Hobron.

Nic
Tell us a little bit about that?

Shannon Oelkers 
Yeah, sure. So Port Hobron, it's a port in the island of Kodiak and I came across it for another project. I flew over it in a helicopter and I saw three steel tanks in the middle of nowhere. And there was a bunch of really large steel drums scattered all over the tundra there. And then, like an old ship, like old wood and steel sided ship, and as we're flying over it what caught my eye was the entire tundra had sheen, like oil sheen. And I was like, What is this? And the helicopter pilot, he was like, Oh, those are the old whale oil tanks. And I was like, whale oil? And these are big tanks like they're like 50 feet in diameter and probably 40 feet tall steel tanks. And there's three of them. And anyway, he did a circle for me because I was like now I'm really interested. Could you please circle back to that? And he went, we went through it. I was not able to land but there are YouTube videos of people who've gone over there and you can kind of get a birds eye, get a lands view of the same place. But basically, in 1920 whale oil was still a viable industry. And so there was a company called the Port Hobron Whaling company and they set up a whale oil station, there a whaling station, which I prior to this, I hadn't really thought about what a whaling station look like. But they had a fleet of three ships and they would go out and get whales and then they would bring them back to the station which had giant sheds called cleansing sheds. That word is gross. He was wondering but they basically would haul whales in on a conveyor belt and they would use heat from coal to melt the oil out. Process a whale and then they would melt all the whale oil out and it would drain into a collection sump and then they would suck it with a pump and piping and store it in these big tanks in the tundra. And then once or twice a year, a big cargo vessel would come and this is in the 1920s Right. So we think steamship would come and they would decamped the whale oil into these very large casks that were made of metal and they would roll them out on these like little railway lines and they would load the vessels up, and then they would take them for sale in the lower 48. And they did this until 1936. It was the last operating whaling station in North America. When they finally shut it down in 1936. And the records from the Baranov museum that I saw, they took on average 350 Whales a year from the area. So the thing that I thought about what you which was, I have a lot of thoughts about that. One is that the abundance of whales must have been so amazing, prior to the turn of the century, that they could pull 350 Whales out a year for 16 years and still be able to meet targets you know like, right like it's crazy. And then as we know anything in excess can be a pollutant. So they of course were they were just like everyone was before modern regulations. There's whale oil all over the tundra and it is a contaminated site and every spring when they have lots of snowmelt and rainfall. They do get sheen that goes out into the water and it's EPA federal site. And I think Old Harbor is the village across the way and every year it gets mistaken for a fuel sheen, but it's actually whale oil. And so the tundra and the funding sheds and all the area around it is just almost permanently saturated with this natural oil. Concentration and quantity is so high that it is functioning like a contaminated site and you can tell there's no trees growing there. There's small shrubby trees all around that valley and Bay except where they have and it's just flat grass there. So it's not supporting like deeper rooted trees because they just can't get enough nutrients. I think.

Laura 
That's mazing. I want everyone to see Nic's face right now though. expressing how I'm feeling

Shannon Oelkers 
The other thing that I find interesting is that in 1920, this was there was newspaper articles about the exciting new economic development for the island of Kodiak. And now it's something that's horrifying, right? And so it gives me a little bit of hope that maybe in 100 years from now, some of the things that are sort of normal, we'll also maybe be closer to the horrifying. I also think it's important from a historical perspective to when people come to Alaska and see whales and it's rare and it's beautiful. I have a feeling if we went did that exact same trip in 1898. It would not be rare. at all and there were in fact whales everywhere. We have seen such a loss of species and reduction in population. And I feel like we should keep that in mind. Or it might be even less than 100 years and it'll be not just rare but almost magical. It is so rare to see them or they may be gone.

Laura 
Everything right? Whales and glaciers and birds, everything. Oh, it's so awesome to hear about your Alaskan just hearing about you flying around looking over at things is like oh I want to do that. It's so cool. So, to that end, are there other projects that you're working on that I'm going to be jealous of?

Shannon Oelkers 
Ah, I don't know about jealous of, but we worked with a client in southwestern Alaska and the community of Bethel because of clean air regulations. We assisted them in installing something called the vapor combustion unit, a VCU, and that's to help control vapors from the loading of gasoline products. So higher fraction carbon products, short hydrocarbon products. And what was interesting and challenging is that in environmental management, which I think a good number of your listeners are involved in. When you're doing operational management, you are required to keep records of, you know the EPA requires you to keep records of whether something's functional or not. So if it's required to meet a regulation, you have to make sure that you can show that you've maintained it, it's operating correctly and that you have not released vapors. And one of the challenges with this project was we didn't have very good Wi Fi connectivity where this unit was being installed. And typically what happens for a lot of companies is they do something they manually do record keeping and so they have like a checklist on a clip board at the unit. But the Clean Air Act is a it's a pretty big regulation that nobody wants to get sideways of. And so in this case, the client wanted to have specific data recording to show that it was operating and it's something we see a lot of a lot of our clients are like, well, if it's not broken, I don't record that right. So we assume it's to be operating we only record when it's not, well the problem is is if you get audited by someone from the federal or state regulatory community, and you've got a machine that's obviously down now we have no records of when it was up or when it was down. That leaves a lot of open space to prove that it was working but you can't because you have not been written down. So we work really hard with clients to create sort of like defensible record keeping so that they can say look, I have a record this was operating on all these days that only went down this day. Right. And so one of the challenges we ran into is that the engineering group, they installed the machine but there was no data recorder in it because the Wi Fi connectivity was problematic. And we worked with the engineering group and we actually worked with the manufacturer to install an aftermarket data logger that was able to wirelessly transmit it to a laptop that was in a nearby office that can be kept warm and have access to internet through a cable and then that laptop was able to submit the data on a daily basis to the main office back in Anchorage, which is really far away. And that way, everybody was happy because the local guys don't have to keep the checklist that they did. We don't have to fill it out two three times a day right. And Anchorage, the main base can look at the readout and say oh, data loggers working this machine, this machine is working, everything is good. No vapors are being emitted and they're creating a continuous digital log. And I was really proud of that, because this is a very remote location, we're able to apply this very modern solution to it with just a little bit of creative thinking. So I don't know if that project I'm really proud of, and I'm pleased with how it turned out because I feel like the point of the EPA regulations is to reduce vapors being emitted from the transfer of gasoline products. And we did that but we were also able to help our clients sort of create this record keeping that was defensible and will help show the EPA that they are doing what they're supposed to be doing. It's just like a win- win for everybody. So I was really excited about that project and how we were able to sort of wrap it up to where everybody's happy.

Laura 
Yeah, that's great. Those are the best kinds of projects. We've been talking a lot on the show about increasing technologies with environmental projects. Do you have any other, you just mentioned that one of course but other projects were incorporating some new technologies as well?

Shannon Oelkers 
Yeah. We have been sub contracting groups that have been using drone technology, and it's pretty interesting to me what drones can do right now. And I think we may be incorporating it into our own work. So two things. We had a pipeline that was difficult to access. We do standard inspections, which includes a visual component and also ultrasonic thickness testing and steel pipelines. And in this case, this pipeline ran along a dock and it's anywhere from 15 feet from the water surface to almost 50 feet off the water surface at the far end of the dock face and it's cantilever it out over the edge of the dock, so we can't access it to look underneath it and perform visual. But in this community there was a drone operator and we were able to retain him to fly his drone underneath. And this is a long pipeline like 1,900 feet is the length of this dock and he was able to fly under and get us good visual like high enough resolution we could see corrosion or four spots we didn't like and then we were able to have him fly back up and get a better look at some of those pieces that we were like can can look at this closer right and our inspector had him fly it up and get right in there. And we were able to actually look we can't take quantitative data, but we can do the visual and at least identify spots that we want to watch more closely, which before we couldn't, it was just unable to look at. And then the second project we had a client in a very remote location that had a pretty significant spill and the subcontractor that we used, they were able to take daily site photos with the drone to show the progression of the remediation or removal of contaminated soils. And they were able to provide aerial photos also. We had a land spread area that was approved in Alaska if it's just hydrocarbons contaminated with soil. One of the approved treatment methods is in an appropriate location right where it's not going to damage things. You can spread the soil to six inches or less and then they use a grater to mix it up and it erodes the soil and allows the use of a breakdown. It's very cold in Alaska. And so some things like bioremediation are less successful because the bugs die every winter when it gets cold. So this land spreading is actually one of the most effective tools we have. And in this case, we were able to use the drone to kind of show the land spreading area as it extended all across this place. And it was just real time data which we never get. Because it's so remote, like if I waited for an aerial image from the Google Earth or arrow math, it would be months and all of a sudden we have real time data and so based on these two contracting experiences, I feel like we may become commercial drone pilots and may have a drone ourselves next fall. You'll have to call me back and find out.

[PFAS/ PFOA]

Laura 
Awesome. I love listening to all your different projects. We've also talked about PFAS and PFOA, and the EPA announced new and updated drinking water health advisories that basically state if the chemicals are detected at all, that's too much. So how's that impacting Alaskan communities in particular?

Shannon Oelkers 
So people keep asking if it's impacting some of our rural communities really strongly because without guidance is easy to understand, or concrete. A lot of them are sort of sending out emails to communities like we just saw that the EPA lower this number. Our numbers are above that. So don't drink the water until we know more. But you got to keep in mind these are places that have to fly everything in on an airplane there's no railroad, there's no trucks, there's none of that. And so for a lot of these communities, they can't afford to fly in bottled water. Right. And there are filtration devices that work against PFOA, PFAS or are rated for it, so they say, but they're expensive. And so they may or may not have the ability to purchase these filtration systems and install them in their own house. And then on top of all of that the cities and communities themselves don't have the ability to purchase these big filtration systems and it creates a waste stream issue as well because when you're filtering using a resin base which is one of the approved methods, you now have PFAS contaminated resin filters that are being disposed of in your landfill. And so that's a secondary problem and NAEP actually just have this amazing webinar right after the June 15 regs hit. And I had every single one of my staff attend it and we were like, there was three presentations. One was on how to calculate the numbers and why they're so small, which really helped us understand and answer some of the communities that are calling us like the questions like why is this number so small? What is the most important piece of this and then there was two other presentations. One was on how to treat it and the subsequent waste streams that were generated, which was also very useful for us trying to help guide these communities that are turning to us. And then the last one was like specifically on the health effects of it and how the testing on animals is not comparable to the testing on humans. And anyway, the whole kit and caboodle was amazing start to finish. Like it was over we all turn to each other and we're like comparing notes like this is applicable. We can use it right now.

Laura
That's great.

Shannon Oelkers
But just to give you an idea of how this is impacting communities, I had a member of the city council and one of our communities she's also a mother of three, one of whom is young enough to still be taking formula in a bottle and she emailed me on Facebook actually, I guess messengered me and she said okay, so the city just told us we can no longer use the city based drinking water for our family. And she's like, I don't have enough money to buy the filter until maybe two or three months from now. And so she's like, What should I prioritize for bottled water between now and then? And I said, Do you have enough bottled water for everything? And she's like, No, no, I don't and I was like well, okay, baby formula first, right? Brushing teeth, drinking water for the kids. I was like maybe use a Brita Filter for you and your husband. If you don't have enough for you to have bottled water. We know it impacts kids probably more than it does adults. And my heart is like breaking like this is what people are having to do. When the EPA sends these things out like I think a lot of people don't realize that there's a very real mom and city council member that's like, Okay, I only have enough money for this much bottled water. Right? Right. That's that's a hard decision to make. And there's not a lot of resources. And so I sent her to the EPA guidance page, and I sent her information on filtration systems, and I hope I'm right, you know, this is developing so fast. I don't even know if what I'm telling her to do is the best they know it's protective, right? I'm like, Okay, let's protect it like do these things. And that's probably better than doing nothing. But I do wish that the EPA would resolve some of its behind the scenes stuff so that we could get better guidance or maybe funding for communities to install the kind of filtration systems that would make it so that families are having to bear the brunt of this cost.

Laura 
Right. Yeah, it seems like here's a problem you all need to go that that you didn't create it you need to go fix, you know,

Shannon Oelkers 
The source of this PFAS contamination in this community, it was almost certainly the American military. So yeah, it's right. That's it's a hard place to be put into as an environmental,

Laura 
And I can see people are coming to Shannon, who was the problem solver to say what do we do?

Shannon Oelkers 
Yeah, well and we had done work for them mapping monitoring wells when PFAS first came out because they wanted to know which community wells were still being used for drinking water and which were being used and monitored or specifically for like, ongoing contaminated sites like they didn't know which was which so we did that mapping for them. I think that's why they came to us. But yeah, it was really like, it really was like, who do we trust and then trying to figure that out. So we it's odd because our firm doesn't actually do PFAS remediation, but because we're environmental and we're in the communities right they're sort of like anybody, does anybody know? This question? And I'm like, nobody knows. But here's some guidelines that I think are smart. If I was in your position and I'm a Mom too, right like that's what I would do.

Laura 
Right? So next year, you're gonna have drones. You're gonna have PFAS solutions. You're gonna have building your portfolio here. You know, if there's a bird out there that can turn saline water into fresh through its beak, we can we can fix something right? There has to be some sort of solution.

Shannon Oelkers
Agreed.

Laura
So it's nice that you're there as a resource. So for them to have someone to talk to you about it.

Shannon Oelkers 
Yeah. I would like to see the state and the EPA also become resources for local people and make it easier for those questions to get answered.

Laura 
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I've been to Alaska a couple of times, and it is my favorite place. I love it. It's gorgeous. It's remote. It's actually wild. I can only imagine that the shows that come out attracts people who from all different walks of life, and some maybe that shouldn't belong there. And some people who actually love it for what it is, but have shows like The Deadliest Catch and Life Below Zero that changed some of what you do?

Shannon Oelkers 
Yeah. They, it's funny because reality TV does impact what we do, because I'm frequently asking contractors from the lower 48 to come up and do work in really remote locations. And like, one time, I was trying to get a contractor to go to Adak Island, and he was like, yeah, see I don't know if I want to fly there. And I was like, Oh, well why wouldn't you want to fly to Adak? And he's like, Well, you know, Sue Aikens right? He's from Texas. So you'll hear my Texas my bad Texas drawl. And I was like, I do know, Sue, was like really confused. I was like, how do you know Sue? He's like, everyone knows Sue and I was like, Okay, maybe this contractor works with Sue Aikens a lot, right. And then he's like, I don't want to go to Adak. I don't want to be on those tires, cylinder tires. I was like, oh, yeah, she's got that camp Yeah. In the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Right. Okay. And I was like, well, that's totally different. She's like landing on the tundra. There's not really a one way so much like, we've got a runway in a Boeing 737 That goes to you that it's like a commercial flight. And he's like, I don't know, man. I just I'm really nervous. I don't want to tell you I was like, how do you know Sue? And it turns out, he watched the reality TV show, Life Below Zero, which I had never seen. And I went to school with Sue and UAF, which is how I knew her. Because  I was like so confused for like that whole conversation. And then now Netflix just recently has a show called the Pirate Gold of Adak Island. And it's really big and I got to Adak like every single year there. They were our first client with Adak Petroleum for my business. And so I've been getting like nonstop messages, texts about did you find the gold? Do you know anything about this gold? How can we You never told us about it? And I had heard about it. The first time I heard about it was in 2012 Because a fisherman went missing looking for it. He unfortunately did not survive that experience. And everyone was like, oh, we gotta go look for this guy hasn't come back yet and we hope to help look, you know, but Adak Island is enormous, like hundreds of square acres and I don't know where that gold is. Well, if I did, I wouldn't tell you guys. But it's funny how like random people I've talked to from they'll be in like Florida. You know, do you know where the gold is?  If I did, I wouldn't be working. Right. So anyway, I just find it interesting that those shows kind of show up in the collective United States conscious but then somehow it directly affects us.

Laura 
Yeah, totally. And my friend Rachel lives in McCarthy, and she was on she's not on it, but she was on set when they were filming. I can't remember one of the earlier Alaskan shows. She says you, I haven't watched it since you could hear her laughing in the background on one of them. But McCarthy's had this insurgence of tourists. I think it's died off a little bit now. But right when that show was on there was all these people coming out there and of course, they're coming out unprepared. McCarthy is remote. And so these people are showing up and you know, they have these expectations. They're like yeah, there's one bar here. One. This is not a resort you know.

Shannon Oelkers 
And they're lucky to have a bar. I hope for Adak's sake it does bring tourists, because Adak's economy is in a bad spot right now. They no longer have a fish processing plant. And so that was a big economic driver for the community. And I have a suspicion the Mayor, Tom Spitler approached Netflix with that economic development in mind, because Adak is I mean, it's an abandoned military base. They were active through 1997 and they abandoned it 1998 As part of the Base Realignment and Closure Act, or BRAC, and so it's a facility meant for 7000 people and 54 live in it right now. And it deteriorated significantly because there's no way 54 People can upkeep and afford the maintenance of a 7000 person Air Force or sorry,Naval Base. And so it very much feels like the end of days, and it's like the perfect zombie movie setting. I don't know why zombie movie has not been filmed there yet.

Laura 
Ok, well that just went high up on my visit list. It sounds really cool

Shannon Oelkers 
It's actually, Adak it's been one of my favorite places to go. I've literally gone there every year since 2008. Except for 2020. The only year I didn't go. So I know the history and the people really well. And it's one of the most beautiful places on Earth, but it's also heavily impacted by former military involvement. And yep, the Netflix series is good. It's drawing attention to it, but I was a little disappointed. It's focusing so much on the pirate gold but there's a whole lot more community history, you know, after World War II that they're kind of not addressing at all and they're not they're not talking about the current economic situation other than it's bad, but they're not going into the why. It's also a reality show.

Laura 
It's not the premise that it's looking for I guess.

Shannon Oelkers 
Yes, purpose is to entertain not too educate.

Laura 
Hm, interesting. We're getting close to the end of our time. The last time you're on the show. We get so many comments of people who just loved your interview and they really liked the advice you had for young professionals and appreciated your positive outlook. So we want to see if you had any other nuggets of wisdom for people starting their careers.

Shannon Oelkers  
I think if I was at the beginning of my career again, I would encourage people to try different things within their career. I think there's a real strong push for a lot of people to decide what they're going to do. And then in the scientific community, there's a strong push to become a very specific niche expert in one very, very small, limited tiny thing because that's the way you get scientific funding as a PhD. There's a whole other side of the environmental world where you're an environmental management or you're an environmental remediation and having a whole Swiss Army knife of skills and experiences makes you infinitely more hireable and more desirable on projects. And so I would say that outside of the research field, it would be a really smart idea to start looking at different skill sets that you could acquire and in evaluating jobs, not just on what they'll do for your your career and like a niche but also the skills that they will teach you and the experiences you will have. Because if you niche down too early, and I think I said this on my previous interview, like if what you can imagine when you're 18 is so limited to what you can imagine when you're 40 like me, are you thinking you have of all this world of experience. So don't don't eliminate experiences too early I guess. And be willing to add things to your toolbox that make you more hireable and sort of look at jobs and opportunities through that lens rather than just salary or just career advancement. Right. There's a lot of things you can do that might just be fun, but they might really light a fire under you and you might want to become a diver or you might want to do I mean, I didn't know I wanted to do any of the things so that you know when I was younger, and I really, drones didn't exist when I was younger

Laura
Yes, and you're just discovering them now.

Shannon Oelkers
I'm really excited. Yeah. That would be my advice.

Laura 
I love it. I've still discover things every day. I'm like, Oh, maybe I want it out the other day. I'm like, I'm gonna go get a certificate in ethics. I think that's what I want to do. I don't know. Why not?

Shannon Oelkers 
Just try it. Right, like, who knows the world is this infinite, amazing place. And I think if you have an open mind and you have a growth mindset, right, that I will always be able to learn you can learn your way into through and out of everything. Right, right.

Laura 
Oh, I like that. Yeah, I think some people doing some of the most important and interesting things are combining things you wouldn't normally traditionally think go together right? So having taking your English degree and then turning it into sustainability, which, like Matt Sekol's doing with Microsoft who was just on the show, like, you don't know what kind of different ways of thinking or ideas you bring to the table doing that,

Shannon Oelkers 
Especially as technology becomes more embedded in our daily life. We're going to need more people to cross those boundaries because I work in a world where engineers design and other people operate and it's becoming a real problem and I have a feeling that IT and technology is the same. And I think there's a lot of room for people that can take the technology, but help people operate it better or differently or use it on user end. Because as you know, when you design something, you're not using it every single day and finding all the weird quirks that come with it, right?

Laura
Yeah, absolutely.

Shannon Oelkers
And I do think people who can learn and take some of those different backgrounds and apply them to some of our environmental problems is what environmental management and science needs, you know?

Laura 
Yeah, for sure. Well, awesome. We're out of time. Is there anything else you wanted to mention that we didn't get to today?

Shannon Oelkers  
No, not today. You covered it all. Thanks.

Laura 
We'll just have you back in if we think of something else, thanks so much. This has been a blast again. And if you want to one more time, tell people where they can get in touch with you.

Shannon Oelkers 
Yeah, absolutely. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. And I've had quite a few people listen to this podcast and connect with me on LinkedIn. And I've been 2 informational interviews based on this podcast and I will leave that open. If people want to call instead of a brief 30 minute informational interview. I am happy to do that for and with them. No problem.

Laura 
That's very cool. Glad to hear that. Thanks. So that's our time. I look forward to talking to you again.

Shannon Oelkers 
Thanks, Laura. Thanks, Karalyn. Bye Nic.

[Outro]

Laura 
That's our show. Thank you Shannon for joining us again. Always a fun time having you back on the show. Be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Bye.

NIc
See you everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai