September 16th Brook Park, MN

Today Steve and I did a job for the city of Brook Park. They are putting in a water tower, pump station, and a retention pond.

We put in 8 shovel tests in the area of the pump station and retention ponds. All of them were negative. It was a pretty piss poor area for a site. No water very close, except the crappy swamp on the south and west sides of the APE. This made for very wet shovel testing in some gravely silt and sand. We also put in a core test at the west end of the APE of the pump station, as we assumed, the soil was completely saturated and had plenty of redox mottles.

It turned out that the APE for the water tower itself was an ice skating rink. Let's just say the area was a "little" disturbed. In fact, there was so much clay deposited under the rink that it was holding water while we were there. Almost the whole rink was under water, but we did find a couple spots that were high enough to allow for some cores to be taken. Again, very saturated and a LOT of clay! So, it turns out that the second core hole filled with water before we could even examine the stratigraphy!

Let's just say this was a wasted trip, because everything was disturbed. Of course that also made for an easy quick day of work.

Tomorrow and Thursday Steve and I are off to Black Bay on Lake Vermilion. We will be staying in the great town of Cook. So I will write again Thursday.