Time for my annual landfill inspections in the Yukon / Kuskokwim region. This week promises to be busy with inspections, meetings, media events and fun with friends. I always miss the family when I am away, but I do enjoy this aspect of my job. I like seeing different villages and talking with communities as we try and figure out ways to improve solid waste management in rural Alaska.
The longer I am in my job as landfill inspector with the State, the better I get with planning. I contacted numerous people to go along on several of the inspections and was able to coordinate a ride on the Kuskokwim river for one of the inspections. I even had enough advanced notice to switch around a few of the inspections as to synchronize the schedule with a large group of important officials with the EPA and ADEC. It always looks good to be on the job when a big group of mucky mucks show up for a media event.
The flight to Bethel went well. I had to be at the airport at 5:15 am (brutal) for a 8:15 flight. I met my counter part at EPA, Ted, at the airport for the flight. He got there early enough to go to Chili's for breakfast, where my time frame required that I grab a quick bite at McDonalds. I got to the airport in plenty of time, but I had two large pelican cases with me as well as my camera gear so I required a cart from the airport. When I was parking I spied a rogue cart in the next isle, but by the time I parked and ran over there it was gone. So spent the next 15 minutes roving the airport looking for another cart. This delay was unfortunate as when I got to the check-in counter I was greeted by a large crowd of people with the same idea of flying somewhere on Alaska Airlines that I had. I had the cart so I picked a line that was near the door. The line was long but manageable with my time frame. After standing there for a few minutes I noticed a rough looking guy with two carts full of boxes and fishing rod cases. Great, he is going to take forever to check in. Not 30 seconds later, he added insult to injury by flagging down four of his close friends to hop in line with him so they could all check in at the same time. %$*&@!!! Now I may miss my flight. I know in these situations that one has to be smart and not just jump in any line, possible making a bad situation worse, so I took my time, wheeled the cart around for a minute or so, and then spied an out of the way line that had just a few people in it. Lets just say that for once I got in the fast lane. I was in and out in 10 minutes, off to security (another 10 minutes), finally making my way to the gate with plenty of time to spare, even with the stop for a #2 breakfast meal at McDonalds. I was glad that I hadn't made a scene at the check-in with the budgers, because guess who showed up for a plane ride to Bethel?
Flying to the villages can be challenging. When I go on these trips I like to maximize my time in each village and cover as much ground as possible. Therefore I planned on visiting three villages on Monday, two on Tuesday, a meeting in the morning and then Bethel landfill on Wednesday, and the finishing up my trip with two final villages on Thursday. Sometimes scheduling can be difficult, so I scheduled a charter from Grant Aviation to take us to the three villages on Monday. Usually I fly the scheduled flights, but for three villages a charter makes more sense. I was amazed at the cost to fly a Cessna 207 from Bethel to Russian Mission to Pilot Station to Marshall and then back to Bethel. The cost was around $2800!! Dang, I could go back to Dubai for less than that. I was splitting the cost with several people so it worked out in the end, but still, I guess I am in the wrong business.
The thing with traveling in the villages though is to expect the un-expected. The AK airlines jet arrived to Bethel with no issues. The people we were to travel with that day met us at the airport and drove us to Grant right on time and again no issue. The pilot was there, the plane was running and took off on time, the flight was smooth and going well then . . . we met up with some fog 8 miles outside of Russian Mission. So we headed over to Marshall . . . more fog. How about we try Pilot Station . . . Yukon River totally fogged in . . . back to Bethel. Dang, now more waiting and more uncertainty. At least they don't charge you for flight time if you don't make your destination.
We landed back in Bethel, agreed to meet together as a group around noon to asses the weather and our options and then Ted and I headed over to Bentley's to check in, and grab some lunch. Not the perfect start for my summer inspections, but you do what you can do, and then you eat lunch.
This is a big Caterpillar D-9 that was parked out front of the Front Street Cafe where we had lunch. Now this would make a serious dent in some of the rural landfills that I inspect!!
After a quick lunch, we headed back to Bentley's to unpack and then headed over to AVCP (don't know what that stands for) to talk with a few of the environmental professionals in that office. We met with Steve for a while to discuss landfills and a few of his recent travels.
At about noon we got a call that Grant was flying again so we headed back to the airport. The flight took off and up and away we went. No fog this time of day. What a difference. Still cloudy and lots of rain clouds, the concentrated cells of rain reminded me of the rain that would roll through the midwest during the summers. It was kind of cool looking. We had a full plane of six people. There was Ted and myself, Joan from the EPA, Kelsey and Brian health officers from YKHC, as well as Kelly their intern from Kentucky.
The first stop was Marshall. Due to the late hour of the day, and the fact that all villages shut down around 4:30, we decided to keep the inspection tour to two villages. That was fine by me, that just means one less inspection report to write. We met with two environmental coordinators in Marshall and they took us to their landfill. Not the worst I've seen, but still a dump (literally) non-the-less.
I am going to start trying to find the oddest items I can in up-coming landfill inspections. Should be fun as I see some pretty weird and gross stuff. This is my first in the series of weird items. I am pretty sure it is a bear hand of some sort, but to people who don't know any better I am telling them that it is a human hand! Either way it was a bit disconcerting to stumble across this item behind the burn box in the landfill. A little eerie to say the least.
After the tour we spoke to the Mayor of the community as well as some of the tribal council members. They were all concerned about their landfill, but not really sure just what to do about the situation. I never know if the communities are genuinely unsure what to do, or if they just act ignorant so someone will come in and do the job for them. To me it is glaringly obvious what to do at the landfill to improve the situation, but then again I work in the biz. I don't know about some of these communities, it is sad to see third world conditions in our beautiful state, job security I guess.
We stayed in Marshall for about two and a half hours, our next and final stop was Pilot Station. I was expecting more of the same from Pilot Station, but was pleasantly surprised at what we saw at the landfill.
I guess I impress easily because a trench full of garbage and a smoldering pile of brush is enough to get me excited. But come on, if you have been following any of the village posts over the past two years you KNOW this looks good!
This I though was a funny picture. Joan, Ted and the intern all getting a picture of the smoldering trash at the same time. Not too smart though and they should know better being in the biz. If you were taking pictures of burning garbage and toxic smoke, what side of the garbage pit would you want to be on?? I thought so.
You don't see this everyday. Garbage professionals taking refuge from the rain in the back of an old garbage truck.
The rain stopped and we headed back to our plane. It had been a somewhat abbreviated day, but we still got a lot of work done.
Off in the distance you can see some of the isolated rain showers I was talking about earlier. Pretty cools stuff from the air.
Luckily we were traveling with people who live and work in Bethel. This prevents us from having to take the taxi's. It is awesome having friends who go out of their way to help you while you are guest in their town. Thanks guys!! This is a picture of a Bethel traffic jam. Not quite like Houston, but for a bush community that's a lot of cars.
The next day we were to travel to Napakiak and Napaskiak for landfill inspections. One of the Environmental guys over at Y-K had offered to take us to the villages in his jet boat. I have always wanted to take the river to the villages, I always have to fly. Napakiak and Napaskiak were only 15 and 25 minutes respectively by river from Bethel.
However, there were some problems with Matt's boat the morning we were to leave. Matt lives in a really beautiful house for Bethel, right on the water. Unfortunatly, the water or slew behind his house is influenced by the tide. The night before Matt had looked up the tide information on his i-Phone and determined that the tide would be up by the time we wanted to depart for Napakiak. Well the app was wrong. Matt's boat was high and dry. He and another health officer (Leif) stayed behind while we drove over to the boat harbor to take another boat. We were hopefull that Matt would be able to free his boat from the clutches of low tide, but had to have a backup plan in case that didn't work out. Luckilly Brian, another Environmental Health Officer (EHO, pronounced E-who?) had a boat himself and was willing to take us down river.
We waited about 15 minutes for the other boat to arrive, and then decided that we had better get the program started and just go with Brian in the smaller boat. It was still early in the day and we would have plenty of time to do the two village inspections.
Karl and Laurie were a couple hours ahead of us, so had put their boat in the water and were at Kirsten's by the time we got there. Sam slept in the truck on the way down, so now wasn't sleepy when we wanted to call it a night. He finally fell asleep between our feet and then didn't want to get up in the morning!
Karl and Doug headed off fishing and us girls loaded up the kids and headed off for a hike. Doug and Karl took our truck, Karl and Laurie's truck had their camper all set-up on it, so Kirsten came to the rescue for transportation! Kirsten, Laurie and 3 kids hopped in Kevin's truck while I took 3 more kids in Kirsten's SUV. It was a lot of effort to get all 6 kids confined in the vehicles and ready to go!
Laurie - Carmen - Kirsten. Kirsten's friend, Carmen and her step-daughter, Maleah joined us on the hike. Carmen is 6 months pregnant and did great on the 3 mile hike.
We hiked to a stream where the silver salmon were coming in. They were so beautiful to watch.
It was a great lunch stop, PB&J for the kids and turkey/lettuce/hummus for the adults. The turkey & hummus sandwiches were wonderful, I will be picking up some of the hummus on my next trip to Costco! The kids had all done very well on the hike. The trail was quite steep in a few places, some areas of mud and slight flowing water. A beautiful hike.
Lake and Sam had the best of both worlds....they got to go on the trip and didn't have to walk it. Laurie and I got a good work out with the extra weight!
Sam had a great time. He was chatting, singing & yelling (too close to my ears) the whole time.
Kaelan and Zach decided that they were too warm and removed their shirts, they flexed their muscles for the camera!
Upon returning to the cars, we loaded everyone up and drove a short distance to the parking lot for the beach. The weather was fantastic, a rare day in Seward. Sunny and warm......a great day for the beach. We were predicting which kid was going to melt down first as they had all already been on the go for quite a while. Amazingly, they all did really well and had a good time playing together.
The mom's enjoyed watching.....and we enjoyed a bottle of wine.
Sam was so busy at work. Lots of dirt and rocks to move!
The kids were soaked and so dirty by the time we were leaving. Sam wore a clean diaper and sweatshirt while Zach only wore my sweatshirt on the ride back to Kirsten's. These kids are going to need a bath!
Everyone disappeared and I went to find them. Kirsten had turned on the sauna heat in the downstairs bathroom. She was in the sauna, which has a shower in it, in her bathing suit with 6 little naked and very happy kids. She soaped them all up and showered them off, then passed them to Laurie and I for further processing. It was great, Zach and Sam thought the steamy sauna/shower room was the greatest thing ever! It is pretty neat!
Time to feed the crew and then get them a movie.....
Time for the mom's to relax! Lots of talking and planning about a "girls only" trip next spring, now we just need to decide where to go!
