I’ve been very impressed with the geotechnical group at the Ohio DOT. They seem to be on the cutting edge of using modern technology to manage their geotechnical data. A few years ago, I posted about a presentation that described efforts to create and implement a geotechnical data management program at ODOT. Thanks to a colleague of mine (Thanks Sanjay), I found some more recent presentations at the EarthSoft website describing the work for ODOT. EarthSoft is the maker of the Equis family of database products, which is the key component of ODOT’s system. I’m pleased to see that ODOT is also using gINT for boring log and fence diagram output from the Equis managed database. [Source: Earthsoft]
Miscellaneous
Starting a Geotechnical Drilling Company
The geotechnical drilling business is not an easy one to enter, just ask Michael Cox of PalmettoINSITU in Charleston, South Carolina. He recently celebrated two years in business and sat down with National Driller magazine […]
Conferences
Seattle Area Project News
When I arrived in Seattle for the ER2010 conference, I was thinking about the kinds of stories I post on the site. I think I probably post more about Seattle area projects than any other […]
Failures
Continuing Problems for Ohio Landfill
The Countywide Recycling & Disposal Facilities in Stark County, Ohio have a new round of problems. There has been much debate over an underground fire reportedly caused by the disposal of aluminum dross waste, a byproduct of aluminum production, dumped between 1993 and 2001. The site has long received complaints for odors and for a long time denied that there was a fire. They have also had problems with slope stability, including a failure of a portion of the south slope in 2006, possibly a result of the destabilizing effect of the fire. Early this year the Ohio EPA cited the facility for violating 8 environmental regulations after waste was found to have migrated outside the permited waste area.
Their latest problems involve a tear or leak of a geosynthetic lining that caps the facility to control gas and odors from the underground fires and regular landfill gas. The leak resulted in 500 to 5,000 gallons of leachate spilling into a sediment pond. The material fortunately did not leave the site and was pumped out of the pond and transfered to a treatment plant where their leachate usually goes. The landfill, one of the largest in Ohio, handles about 6,000 tons of trash a day, including about half of Summit County’s residential garbage.
Story by way of Geosynthetica. Image from Long Live the Village Green.