Last night a "barn-burner" of a thunderstorm blew through the Upper Hudson (especially here in River Section Two).
I learned the term "barn-burner" when I lived in Iowa about 40 years ago: of course it is a five-ring-circus of thunder, rain, lightening that doesn't quit! We had that here last night.
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| Iowa: a Swing State that rocks |
So, anyway, in the middle of the night all hell breaks loose -- barn-burner -- and Beth is closing the upstairs windows and I run down to batten down the hatches. When I return a 117 pound black rescue dog is blocking the way to my side of the bed:
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| What a BABY! |
Who knows what Bosco experienced in his life before we adopted him two years ago but he has a big fear of wind and loud noises. So he weathered the storm at the foot of our bed, letting Sammy snag his miracle foam bed.
So when Beth and I were enjoying the sparkling, beautiful, and awesome morning on the River Porch just now I was thinking about wind.
This led me to The Journal of Physical Oceanography and a fascinating monograph by Choi and Wilkin: "The Effect of Wind on the Dispersal of the Hudson River Plume." You will want to click here to read it!
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| Thar She Blows! |
Yes, wind does effect water flow!
So I thought, "wow, if the wind can 'mix it up' like that, imagine what a strong, protracted storm -- like Irene, which broke all modern records for volume and flow on the Upper Hudson -- could do."
Well of course it could scour the riverbed and shoreline. This could render readings of PCB "hot spots" somewhere between inaccurate and useless.
Two summers ago I watched a clamshell dredge "working" the river. In and out, in and out. The puzzling thing was it kept dredging up... water. Clear, sediment-free water.
Our part of the river is pretty narrow. Sometimes I could actually talk with the guys on the rigs. So I had to ask "hey how come you aren't digging up any stuff?" And the crew member said "oh, we don't decided where to dredge, we just use the GPS coordinates they give us."
Well, right, you guessed it. The extremely precise GPS readings had been measured before Tropical Storm Irene.
So. How can a 60% removal goal result in a 30% actual removal? If you are dredging where the PCBs used to be.
The REAL QUESTION, though, is, knowing that WHY DID THE PROJECT STOP?
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| The first morning of summer, 2016, at the Most Beautiful Superfund Site |