California Budget woes may cause the Board for Geologists and Geophysicists to be eliminated and its functions to be transferred to the Board for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors as reported by Ken at the GeoSlice blog. The proposed consolidation is described on Page 26 of the California State Budget 2009-10. According to Ken, the state board says the plan is not finalized yet and concerned Californians should contact their representatives.
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JTFAP Document Will Affect Every Geotechnical Engineer and Engineering Geologist
A document entitled “Engineering and Geology Practice Guidelines” has been prepared by the JTFAP or Joint Task Force on Areas of Practice. The JFTAP was comprised of representatives from The American Institute of Professional Geologists (AIPG), the Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists (AEG) and the Geo-Institute (G-I) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). A draft of the document was published in February of 2009 and members of AEG have already been providing comments to their board through the Section Chairs for possible revisions to the document or for opinions on whether or not AEG should adopt it. A recent email to AEG Members from the President of AEG, Mark Molinari, indicates that the G-I has released the document to their membership for review and comments. Read on for more info.
Landslide Blocks Road in LA, Inconveniences UCLA Hoops Fans
Mud and debris from a small landslide closed a portion of Sepulveda Blvrd. In Westwood California on Thursday. The slide took out at least one local resident’s backyard and was large enough to block several lanes of the roadway with debris up to 6-ft high in addition to knocking out several power poles and disrupting service. The material was cleared up by 10pm but not before it cause some inconvenience to UCLA basketball fans on their way to watch their team beat Stanford. The LA Times reports that there were questions about possible broken water lines, of course it is the old "chicken or the egg" argument that’s been seen before (including on a recent landslide) about whether the broken water lines contributed to the landslide, or the landslide caused the water line breaks. (Photo by Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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To all concerned,
I am a masters level geologist, specializing in asbestos mineralogy, with numerous professional publications. Geology is a science, and as such never have been a licensed any more than chemists, physicists, biologist, geneticists… If one penny of taxpayer money is going into this Board, it must be eliminated. It is illigetimate, and should not be part of any agency within the California government.
Many geologists are specialists in some area of geology, as are most real scientists, and they are excluded from the Board. I think you will find most University Professors in geology are not licenced.
The Board is a club of geotechnicians (for the most part, I am not generalizing to all Board members) whose sole purpose is the create for themselves a group that has a license to make money under certain requirements that no one practice geology in the State without a license. The state might just as well take taxpayer money and put it in their pockets. They are not qualified to practice under the scope that they practice.
So, worse than a total waste of money for the taxpayer – a rediculously underqualified group of geotechnicians who have usurped the science of geology.
You should have seen it when it was the RG exam with a 22% pass rate. In those days geology professors sat on the Board and made up the questions. The thinking was if you could pass such a tremendously difficult test then you really had to know your stuff. That was the theory anyway. The RG test was far more comprehensive, especially with regards to structure, than any college course I ever took. It’s easier now that it’s based on the Asbog. Smart MD like you ought to be able to pass it no trouble.