One of the more annoying aspects of consulting work is the feast-or-famine nature of the enterprise. So, I can have a period of a few weeks when I am having to scrounge for work to keep my time card full, followed by a couple of weeks in which I don't have time to breath.
I have to wonder how this is going to play out in the future. It's already a bit of a trouble when I get bogged down - Kaylia can't drive, and Fresno has truly horrendous public transportation, so me being busy at work results either in Kaylia having trouble getting around town or in me leaving work to provide transportation and returning to work later, often coming home rather late. With a child, things may be more chaotic, and it is going to be a challenge to keep things running. At the same time, I will need to keep things running as I am the only income for our family.
The flip side is that when things are slower and there isn't as much work, while I am available to take care of errands and chores without burying myself in work, I am less certain that I will be able to put together enough work to justify a full-time salary, which is necessary because, as noted, I am the only income in our family.
Yay, stress!
Now, clearly it is possible to manage this, as several people who I know (including two with whom I currently work) have done so while they were in my current position. Luckily, as noted, I work with them, so I can pick their brains and make sure that I am managing, as well.
Still, I would be lying if I were to say that there aren't times that I worry.
Showing posts with label The Business of Archaeology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Business of Archaeology. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Why Won't You Leave Me Alone?
A common task on my various projects is consultations with Native Americans likely to be concerned about the particular project area. Usually, this starts with me obtaining a list of concerned NAtive American individuals and organizations for a given geographic region from the California Native American Heritage Commission. Once I have the list in hand, I write up consultation letters describing the location and the project, and send them out to the groups an individuals listed by the NAHC. A few weeks later, I will make follow-up phone calls or, when possible, send out emails. Depending on circumstances, a second round of follow-ups is often necessary as well.
More often than not, I don't receive responses. However, when I do receive responses, they usually falls into one of five categories:
1) Important information regarding something that may or will be negatively impacted by the proposed work. When we get this information, we can signal to our client that this is likely to become an issue, and, if they are wise, they will be proactive in working with the Native community to address concerns. If they are unwise, they will proceed ahead only to get caught up in a public relations battle (and sometimes legal proceedings) down the road.
Responses in this category are unusual, however.
2) Statements that the respondent has no information regarding the project area (the most common response). This is usually accompanied by a request that the respondent be notified should anything be found during fieldwork.
3) Statements that the respondent has no knowledge about the area, but is concerned about the possibility that the proposed construction will impact previously unidentified archaeological sites or cultural properties. Usually, responses in this category are well-written and thoughtful, on rare occasion they are just kind of odd or even surreal.
4) Statements that the respondent knows nothing about the project area/that it is outside of their area of interest.
5) The respondent is irritated that we are contacting them and wants to know why we won't just leave them alone.
It's #5 that I want to talk about here.
Many of the individuals who we contact routinely respond that they are not interested in the various projects about which we try to consult. I have, on more than one occasion, been screamed at over the phone by a Native American who was sick of getting a constant stream of mail regarding projects in which they are uninterested, and each time they demand to know why we keep contacting them when we know that they don't want to hear from us.
The list of Native American contacts provided by the NAHC is a composed of a group of self-selecting individuals. They have to ask to be on the NAHC contact list. However, it's not entirely clear how they get removed, when they get removed. I have been told by some folks at the NAHC that it is as simple as requesting removal from the list. However, I have also been told by some of the people on the list that they have been trying for some time to be removed, but that the NAHC has failed to do so.
I take no sides, I don't presume to know the truth of the matter, this is simply what I have been told.
So, we are put into an odd situation where we are, usually, required to contact them, even if we know that they don't want to be contacted. As long as they are on the list, a regulator or a member of the public who is looking to litigate against a project can point to our failure to contact even one individual as evidence that we failed to make a good-faith effort to identify cultural resources. Similarly, a member of the Native American community who is not contacted can create a problem for our clients on the ground that they were not consulted as a stakeholder for a project. And while those who ask not to be contacted generally don't want to be stakeholders, if there is one thing that is true about humans in general, it's that they are an unpredictable lot who are prone to changing their minds.
At the same time, it is understandable that many of these individuals and organizations might want to no longer be contacted. One thing I have been told frequently is that those who signed up for the NAHC list had no idea just how many notifications they would receive in the course of a year. Moreover, when they do tell us anything, we put it in our report, and most of the time the resources that are known are avoided, so from their perspective, nothing happened. Some clients and government agencies are better than others in involving Native participation, meaning that while there are good outcomes, there are also many bad outcomes. So, on those occasions where it doesn't seem like nothing happened, there is a fair chance that it will seem like something has gone awry.
So, again, I get why being on the list may seem like a waste of time.
Nonetheless, as long as they are on the list, I am required to contact them. Which means that I can expect a future filled with unresponded-to letters, and the occasional episode of having someone scream at me that they don't want to be contacted, despite the fact that they remain on the list.
More often than not, I don't receive responses. However, when I do receive responses, they usually falls into one of five categories:
1) Important information regarding something that may or will be negatively impacted by the proposed work. When we get this information, we can signal to our client that this is likely to become an issue, and, if they are wise, they will be proactive in working with the Native community to address concerns. If they are unwise, they will proceed ahead only to get caught up in a public relations battle (and sometimes legal proceedings) down the road.
Responses in this category are unusual, however.
2) Statements that the respondent has no information regarding the project area (the most common response). This is usually accompanied by a request that the respondent be notified should anything be found during fieldwork.
3) Statements that the respondent has no knowledge about the area, but is concerned about the possibility that the proposed construction will impact previously unidentified archaeological sites or cultural properties. Usually, responses in this category are well-written and thoughtful, on rare occasion they are just kind of odd or even surreal.
4) Statements that the respondent knows nothing about the project area/that it is outside of their area of interest.
5) The respondent is irritated that we are contacting them and wants to know why we won't just leave them alone.
It's #5 that I want to talk about here.
Many of the individuals who we contact routinely respond that they are not interested in the various projects about which we try to consult. I have, on more than one occasion, been screamed at over the phone by a Native American who was sick of getting a constant stream of mail regarding projects in which they are uninterested, and each time they demand to know why we keep contacting them when we know that they don't want to hear from us.
The list of Native American contacts provided by the NAHC is a composed of a group of self-selecting individuals. They have to ask to be on the NAHC contact list. However, it's not entirely clear how they get removed, when they get removed. I have been told by some folks at the NAHC that it is as simple as requesting removal from the list. However, I have also been told by some of the people on the list that they have been trying for some time to be removed, but that the NAHC has failed to do so.
I take no sides, I don't presume to know the truth of the matter, this is simply what I have been told.
So, we are put into an odd situation where we are, usually, required to contact them, even if we know that they don't want to be contacted. As long as they are on the list, a regulator or a member of the public who is looking to litigate against a project can point to our failure to contact even one individual as evidence that we failed to make a good-faith effort to identify cultural resources. Similarly, a member of the Native American community who is not contacted can create a problem for our clients on the ground that they were not consulted as a stakeholder for a project. And while those who ask not to be contacted generally don't want to be stakeholders, if there is one thing that is true about humans in general, it's that they are an unpredictable lot who are prone to changing their minds.
At the same time, it is understandable that many of these individuals and organizations might want to no longer be contacted. One thing I have been told frequently is that those who signed up for the NAHC list had no idea just how many notifications they would receive in the course of a year. Moreover, when they do tell us anything, we put it in our report, and most of the time the resources that are known are avoided, so from their perspective, nothing happened. Some clients and government agencies are better than others in involving Native participation, meaning that while there are good outcomes, there are also many bad outcomes. So, on those occasions where it doesn't seem like nothing happened, there is a fair chance that it will seem like something has gone awry.
So, again, I get why being on the list may seem like a waste of time.
Nonetheless, as long as they are on the list, I am required to contact them. Which means that I can expect a future filled with unresponded-to letters, and the occasional episode of having someone scream at me that they don't want to be contacted, despite the fact that they remain on the list.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
I Hate Regulatory-ese
One of the big problems that I have in writing reports is the often confused language that one sees within the laws and regulations. For example, any archaeological site, historic building, or place of strong community importance is a "cultural resource." Under California's environmental law, any cultural resource that is eligible for listing on the California Register of Historic Resources is a "Historical Resource" which includes prehistoric sites. However, archaeologists have long (as in well pre-dating the origin of these laws) made a distinction between historic and prehistoric sites (historic sites were occupied by people who came from a culture that produced written records, prehistoric sites were left by people who did not leave written records). But the term "prehistoric resource" doesn't mean anything in a regulatory sense, while "historical resource" means an important site/building/whatever that might be prehistoric, but might also be historic, and it sounds alot like "cultural resource" which is a generic term that says nothing about the status of the resource regarding the California Register.
Under federal law and regulation, the term "historical resource" means a cultural resource that dates to after European contact with the Americas. It doesn't mean anything regarding the eligibility for a cultural resource to the National Register of Historic Places (the federal equivalent of the California Register of Historic Resources). So, if you are writing a report for a federal agency, you can describe a site as a "historical resource" without worrying about triggering any alarms regarding register eligibility. If you are writing a report that will be reviewed by both a state and a federal agency (which is pretty common), then you simply have to avoid using the term altogether in order ot not be making claims about the eligibility of a resource for either register.
The problem is made more annoying when you consider that we often have to talk about historic-era resources, historic-era sites, cultural layers, and cultural deposits when we are discussing archaeological sites. So the terms "historic" and "cultural" are in very heavy use, and it takes frequent checking and care to ensure that we are not mis-stating things and using a regulatory term like "historical resource" (a site, whether prehistoric or historic, that IS eligible for the California Register) when discussing a "historic site" (which is a site with historic-era, but not prehistoric, materials that may or may not be eligible for the California Register). the presence of the words "cultural" and "historic/historical" become meaningless until you see what word immediately follows it, and there is a high likelihood that it will be a word that gives the sentence in which is appears a substantially different meaning, while looking very similar.
It gets rather confusing. Adding to the mess is that all of us have our own ways of keeping the different terms straight, but that each consultant and each regulator does so in subtly different ways, so the review process often contains far too much confusion regarding what, precisely, is meant by any given sentence, and a level of scrutiny is sometimes applied to each word choice that veers away from bordering on the silly and sails through loopy harbor out into the open waters of the sea of absurdity.
And yet you have to engage in this level of scrutiny in order to present accurate information that does not incorrectly make claims as to the legal status of a particular site.
The language seems to be a classic case of decision by committee, where the wording was eventually agreed upon in order to not piss anyone off, and everyone was at that point too tired to actually give much thought as to whether the regulatory language might not cause further confusion.
Argh.
Under federal law and regulation, the term "historical resource" means a cultural resource that dates to after European contact with the Americas. It doesn't mean anything regarding the eligibility for a cultural resource to the National Register of Historic Places (the federal equivalent of the California Register of Historic Resources). So, if you are writing a report for a federal agency, you can describe a site as a "historical resource" without worrying about triggering any alarms regarding register eligibility. If you are writing a report that will be reviewed by both a state and a federal agency (which is pretty common), then you simply have to avoid using the term altogether in order ot not be making claims about the eligibility of a resource for either register.
The problem is made more annoying when you consider that we often have to talk about historic-era resources, historic-era sites, cultural layers, and cultural deposits when we are discussing archaeological sites. So the terms "historic" and "cultural" are in very heavy use, and it takes frequent checking and care to ensure that we are not mis-stating things and using a regulatory term like "historical resource" (a site, whether prehistoric or historic, that IS eligible for the California Register) when discussing a "historic site" (which is a site with historic-era, but not prehistoric, materials that may or may not be eligible for the California Register). the presence of the words "cultural" and "historic/historical" become meaningless until you see what word immediately follows it, and there is a high likelihood that it will be a word that gives the sentence in which is appears a substantially different meaning, while looking very similar.
It gets rather confusing. Adding to the mess is that all of us have our own ways of keeping the different terms straight, but that each consultant and each regulator does so in subtly different ways, so the review process often contains far too much confusion regarding what, precisely, is meant by any given sentence, and a level of scrutiny is sometimes applied to each word choice that veers away from bordering on the silly and sails through loopy harbor out into the open waters of the sea of absurdity.
And yet you have to engage in this level of scrutiny in order to present accurate information that does not incorrectly make claims as to the legal status of a particular site.
The language seems to be a classic case of decision by committee, where the wording was eventually agreed upon in order to not piss anyone off, and everyone was at that point too tired to actually give much thought as to whether the regulatory language might not cause further confusion.
Argh.
Monday, January 30, 2012
On The Eventual Loss of Field Work
I have come to realize recently that my days in the field are likely numbered.
This isn't a shock, or even a gloomy outlook. quite the contrary, in fact. The next step in my career will likely be one of project management, which means more time dealing with management-level stuff rather than the day-to-day issues of field work and logistics. Now, this step is likely years off, and it is one that I could probably stall even longer if I wished to, but that comes to the fact that my partner and I are talking about having children, and I wish to spend more times with my nephews and nieces while they are still young enough to appreciate their eccentric uncle, which means a more stable weekly schedule, which, in turn, means less field work. So, even though the next step may be a few years off, I have no desire to hold it off any longer than necessary, and may even be looking for ways to make it happen sooner.
So, the loss of fieldwork is still a ways off, and I am not gloomy over the eventual loss of field work as a regular part of my life. But, I will admit, I will be a little sad to see it go.
This was not always the case, however. Back in early 2007, I had worked for companies that had large local clients, and therefore field work consisted of going out for the day, and coming back home at night. I rarely had to stay overnight anywhere, and then never for more than a four-night stint. I then went to work for a company based in Santa Cruz (the town in which I had wished, and still do wish now that I have left it, to settle). This company had very little local work, and so we spent at least 30% of our time away from home (the rest of that time was spent writing reports, preparing for field work, doing lab work, and handling our few local projects). And so I was thrust into the much more common world of the field archaeologist - travel and hotels.
I didn't like it. I have long been a creature of habit, and I had developed a life for myself where I had my daily and weekly routines in which I reveled. I liked my weekly gaming group, my nightly walks, and the three to four nights a week that I walked down to the local coffee shop to either write or read (in fact, most of the blog entries on this site dating to before December 2008 were written in the Coffee Cat in Scotts Valley, CA). I did not like having my habits interrupted, and being sent out for field work felt like an interruption. I disliked being sent away, and the entire time I was out, I longed for my return home.
But then some things happened.
The first is that I began to realize that fieldwork, even at its most miserable, tended to provide fodder for great stories that I could tell later. When my friends in the tech industry would talk about difficult situations at work, I could always contribute a story about nearly being stampeded by cattle, or driving on a road that appeared to be in danger of collapsing into a canyon, or having to learn how to stop a pack of dogs using nothing but chutzpah. I found that I rather enjoyed being the "guy who has the best stories", never having to embellish the stories.
I also began to get a bit into the spirit of adventure that was inherent in the work. Archaeology is an infinitely more sedate field than movies would lead one to believe, but there is always the possibility that some strange thing will happen (as evidence by many of the stories on this blog), and even if it doesn't, you spend time going to enough different types of places that nobody else has quite the same breadth of experience as you do. There are stretches of boredom, and even longer stretches of basic routine work, but these are punctuated by weird occurrences, funny events, and exciting discoveries. I am not risking life and limb on a regular basis (provided that I follow my safety plan), but I still get to see and do some exciting things.
Later, my partner Kaylia and I moved in together. I very much liked this, but co-existing with someone else meant everything was shared (space, money, time, etc.), which was a bit difficult for me as I had lived as a single man into my 30s, never having cohabitated. In truth, Kaylia was encouraging of me maintaining my own hobbies, habits, etc., but it took me time to understand this, and so I found that fieldwork allowed me time and space of my own in which I could think, work out my own issues, and sometimes just engage in my own hobbies or habits without having to worry about upsetting someone else. I would look forward to returning home at the end of the job, but I nonetheless enjoyed my time away as well.
And so, while I preferred being at home to being on the road, I did develop a bit of a taste for traveling to fieldwork. In fact, when I hadn't gone out recently enough, I would sometimes begin to get a little stir crazy, waiting for the next expedition out of the office.
At the same time, when I was out of the office, I usually counted the days until I returned home, as I did prefer home to the field, even when fieldwork was at its best. What's more, even some of the events that provided me with great stories could become more grief than they were in any way worth - spending seven months of 2009 in Taft with a hostile and imbecilic client who expected me to work 16-hour days and who was sufficiently dim to not look up our contract to see what the actual amount allocated to our work actually was (hence she constantly claimed that I had gone "well over budget" when I wasn't even 25% of the way through our budget) was enough to make me seriously consider going back into the tech industry.
And so, I find myself pondering a future in which my fieldwork will eventually start to become more limited, eventually vanishing. It's not a bad future at all, the pay will eventually go up, my time at home will allow my relationship with Kaylia to improve (and it's already pretty good), if we have children, then I will no doubt want to spend more time with them.
At the same time, there is a bit of melancholy in knowing that my wild and wacky adventuring days will eventually be over. Still, it will be better if they are over when I still enjoy them than for them to continue into a future where I start to go a bit nuts, like some of the older field techs that I have worked with.
This isn't a shock, or even a gloomy outlook. quite the contrary, in fact. The next step in my career will likely be one of project management, which means more time dealing with management-level stuff rather than the day-to-day issues of field work and logistics. Now, this step is likely years off, and it is one that I could probably stall even longer if I wished to, but that comes to the fact that my partner and I are talking about having children, and I wish to spend more times with my nephews and nieces while they are still young enough to appreciate their eccentric uncle, which means a more stable weekly schedule, which, in turn, means less field work. So, even though the next step may be a few years off, I have no desire to hold it off any longer than necessary, and may even be looking for ways to make it happen sooner.
So, the loss of fieldwork is still a ways off, and I am not gloomy over the eventual loss of field work as a regular part of my life. But, I will admit, I will be a little sad to see it go.
This was not always the case, however. Back in early 2007, I had worked for companies that had large local clients, and therefore field work consisted of going out for the day, and coming back home at night. I rarely had to stay overnight anywhere, and then never for more than a four-night stint. I then went to work for a company based in Santa Cruz (the town in which I had wished, and still do wish now that I have left it, to settle). This company had very little local work, and so we spent at least 30% of our time away from home (the rest of that time was spent writing reports, preparing for field work, doing lab work, and handling our few local projects). And so I was thrust into the much more common world of the field archaeologist - travel and hotels.
I didn't like it. I have long been a creature of habit, and I had developed a life for myself where I had my daily and weekly routines in which I reveled. I liked my weekly gaming group, my nightly walks, and the three to four nights a week that I walked down to the local coffee shop to either write or read (in fact, most of the blog entries on this site dating to before December 2008 were written in the Coffee Cat in Scotts Valley, CA). I did not like having my habits interrupted, and being sent out for field work felt like an interruption. I disliked being sent away, and the entire time I was out, I longed for my return home.
But then some things happened.
The first is that I began to realize that fieldwork, even at its most miserable, tended to provide fodder for great stories that I could tell later. When my friends in the tech industry would talk about difficult situations at work, I could always contribute a story about nearly being stampeded by cattle, or driving on a road that appeared to be in danger of collapsing into a canyon, or having to learn how to stop a pack of dogs using nothing but chutzpah. I found that I rather enjoyed being the "guy who has the best stories", never having to embellish the stories.
I also began to get a bit into the spirit of adventure that was inherent in the work. Archaeology is an infinitely more sedate field than movies would lead one to believe, but there is always the possibility that some strange thing will happen (as evidence by many of the stories on this blog), and even if it doesn't, you spend time going to enough different types of places that nobody else has quite the same breadth of experience as you do. There are stretches of boredom, and even longer stretches of basic routine work, but these are punctuated by weird occurrences, funny events, and exciting discoveries. I am not risking life and limb on a regular basis (provided that I follow my safety plan), but I still get to see and do some exciting things.
Later, my partner Kaylia and I moved in together. I very much liked this, but co-existing with someone else meant everything was shared (space, money, time, etc.), which was a bit difficult for me as I had lived as a single man into my 30s, never having cohabitated. In truth, Kaylia was encouraging of me maintaining my own hobbies, habits, etc., but it took me time to understand this, and so I found that fieldwork allowed me time and space of my own in which I could think, work out my own issues, and sometimes just engage in my own hobbies or habits without having to worry about upsetting someone else. I would look forward to returning home at the end of the job, but I nonetheless enjoyed my time away as well.
And so, while I preferred being at home to being on the road, I did develop a bit of a taste for traveling to fieldwork. In fact, when I hadn't gone out recently enough, I would sometimes begin to get a little stir crazy, waiting for the next expedition out of the office.
At the same time, when I was out of the office, I usually counted the days until I returned home, as I did prefer home to the field, even when fieldwork was at its best. What's more, even some of the events that provided me with great stories could become more grief than they were in any way worth - spending seven months of 2009 in Taft with a hostile and imbecilic client who expected me to work 16-hour days and who was sufficiently dim to not look up our contract to see what the actual amount allocated to our work actually was (hence she constantly claimed that I had gone "well over budget" when I wasn't even 25% of the way through our budget) was enough to make me seriously consider going back into the tech industry.
And so, I find myself pondering a future in which my fieldwork will eventually start to become more limited, eventually vanishing. It's not a bad future at all, the pay will eventually go up, my time at home will allow my relationship with Kaylia to improve (and it's already pretty good), if we have children, then I will no doubt want to spend more time with them.
At the same time, there is a bit of melancholy in knowing that my wild and wacky adventuring days will eventually be over. Still, it will be better if they are over when I still enjoy them than for them to continue into a future where I start to go a bit nuts, like some of the older field techs that I have worked with.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Back to the Frozen Wastes
So, I'm sitting in my office, waiting for my crew.
As the frequent readers know, I have been routinely getting sent up into the mountains to do boundary testing on sites near a linear project. This project should have been done no later than the fall, when there was no snow on the ground and the ground itself wasn't frozen. Now, it's difficult to get to the sites due to snow and ice covered roads, and the ground is frozen making digging difficult and screening soils very difficult - to the point of being occasionally impossible. As a result, each time we have gone up, there has been at least one site that we have been unable to reach, and we have one left. I had figured that it would wait until Spring, as there is no practical reason to go after it now - it will cost more than is necessary to get to it and to dig into it.
However, my client is a large corporation, and the archaeologist that works for my client is under pressure to get things done even when impractical. And so, on Monday, I received instructions to go back into the mountains to try to reach the last site, even though impractical. It is very cold up there right now, so I am decked out in my cold weather clothes, and there is a fair chance that we won't be able to get to the site at all, so this trip might be a waste anyway.
So, here I am, up earlier than normal, very tired, very grumpy, and possibly not even going to be able to get to the site to which we are headed.
Joy!
As the frequent readers know, I have been routinely getting sent up into the mountains to do boundary testing on sites near a linear project. This project should have been done no later than the fall, when there was no snow on the ground and the ground itself wasn't frozen. Now, it's difficult to get to the sites due to snow and ice covered roads, and the ground is frozen making digging difficult and screening soils very difficult - to the point of being occasionally impossible. As a result, each time we have gone up, there has been at least one site that we have been unable to reach, and we have one left. I had figured that it would wait until Spring, as there is no practical reason to go after it now - it will cost more than is necessary to get to it and to dig into it.
However, my client is a large corporation, and the archaeologist that works for my client is under pressure to get things done even when impractical. And so, on Monday, I received instructions to go back into the mountains to try to reach the last site, even though impractical. It is very cold up there right now, so I am decked out in my cold weather clothes, and there is a fair chance that we won't be able to get to the site at all, so this trip might be a waste anyway.
So, here I am, up earlier than normal, very tired, very grumpy, and possibly not even going to be able to get to the site to which we are headed.
Joy!
Friday, December 16, 2011
Mountains, Cold, Regulations, and Fieldwork
So, in the last week, I have been out in the field, in an isolated location, twice,been to a mini-con in Oakland, and just generally been everywhere except next to a computer. Hence my lack of posts.
Still, I am back now, at least for a little while, and the last week's work has got me thinking about some of the strange timelines that being a consultant rather than an academic forces on one.
See, we are contracted to do the archaeological work for a large utility company. They have facilities, including some underground utilities, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, at altitudes between 7,000 and 8,000 feet. Changes to these utilities may damage near-by archaeological sites, so we have been tasked with determining the boundaries of the sites in order to figure out whether or not the work on the utilities will impact the sites. Normally, this would be a pleasant, even fun, task.
However, it is December. While much of the world thinks of California as a giant beach that is warm year-round, this is only slightly true of small parts of Southern California (and even there, it gets cool enough in December and January that you're more likely to wear a sweater than a bikini). In the Sierra Nevada, it's fucking cold. Okay, not Wisconsin-level cold, but we haven't even gotten hit by the full force of winter yet and tempuratures are dropping to 25 degrees below freezing at night. The Sierra Nevada has glaciers for fuck's sake! There are 497 glaciers in the Sierra Nevada. Yeah, next time you think of California as nothing more than a giant beach filled with silicon-injected bimbos and meatheads lifting weights on the sand, look up how many glaciers your state has, and if it's less than 400 I don't want to hear you even try to describe my state.
This is a road in California. Note the lack of beach.
But I digress.
The point I was getting at is that it is cold in the Sierra Nevadas in December. Cold enough that the ground is frozen. Cold enough that we broke shovels attempting to excavate sites. Cold enough that we routinely mistook chunks of ice in the screen for pieces of quartz (a common stone used to make tools in the area). Could enough that we would scoop the dirt that we had just broken up and taken out of a unit into a bucket, only to have it freeze to the bucket minutes later, requiring us to use the shovel to get it out of the bucket and into the screen.
Years back, a friend of mine told me that his grandmother had died in Maine in January, but that they waited until March to bury her. I didn't comprehend why one would do such a thing at the time. I get it now.
So, yes, if you're willing to be frustrated and actually have tools break under stress, you can excavate in the Sierra Nevadas in the winter. It would, however, be better to wait until Spring, when the soils can be easily dug and screened, and when you don't have to bundle up like Ralphie's little brother in A Christmas Story in order to work.
But this isn't possible.
See, our client needs to actually begin working on the utilities in the Spring. Because of the delays and details involved in getting a cultural resources report written and accepted, that means we have to do the work now. We would have been able to start the work earlier, when the ground was not yet frozen, but the Forest Service, who is responsible for the land in question, has it's own consultation duties that must be carried out before they can issue us the permits to do the work. The timing is bad, but it's really nobody's fault, it's just the way these things go.
So, there we are, bundled up and looking more like a cross between the Michelin Man and WWII-era Russian sniper than archaeologists, digging in the frozen earth, trying very hard to maintain feeling in our extremities.
But we got the job done, on-time and on-budget, dammit!
Quick note: all of the photos in this post were taken by me in the general vicinity of our project area, but none of them are of sites or client facilities in the project area.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Regulated Madness
As anyone who regularly reads this blog knows (and contrary to what I suspected before I placed traffic trackers, there's actually quite a few of you), I spend alot of time looking into regulations and case law to try to figure out how to apply historic preservation laws to specific projects. Right now I am particularly confounded, though.
See, I have a project in the southern San Joaquin Valley. This project involves historic-era archaeological sites that are related to the early use of the oil fields. Now, back in the late 90s, the Department of Energy sold Naval Petroleum Reserve 1 (which is about two miles north of my project area) to a private company, and in the process had to go through the environmental revue process. During this process, rumor holds that they developed a good set of criteria for determining whether or not a historic-era oil field site was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and therefore would gain some (admittedly minor) level of protection, and that the State Office of Historic Preservation agreed to these criteria in a programmatic agreement.
Now, the project that I have is not on the old Naval Petroleum Reserve grounds, and therefore these criteria would not be directly applicable to my project, but they can provide guidance on how to apply the regulations in similar environments within the vicinity of the Petroleum Reserve grounds. It is, essentially, a matter of hunting down precedent.
Which makes my current task as necessary as it is frustrating.
You see, the studies and documents that I need to find were produced in the late 90s, as federal agencies were beginning to gain a strong online presence, but before the early 2000s shuffling of various federal responsibilities under Bush. In other words, it came into being during that magical internet time when all web sites had blue balls to illustrate bullet points (mind out of the gutter!), Geocities and Angelfire were where it was at, and federal agencies were sure that they needed to do something with this internet thingy, even though they weren't sure what, exactly. So, I can find the Record of Decision in the Federal Register that describes the project and the documents, I can find the public comments to the documents, and I can find agency comments for the documents from the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Energy...but I can not find the document itself. I can't even find PDF copies of one of the several documents to which the document I need would have been an appendix or attachment!
Now, this wouldn't be bad if I could get a hard copy of the document. But here's the problem - if I make a formal request to OHP or DOE, my project will be due before I actually hear about the possibility of receiving the document. I could conceivably call one of my contacts at an agency that works with the documents, but I have already found that most of them are out of the office for extended periods of time on their own projects. And the people I know at private companies who could get me a copy are currently so buried under their own work that they rarely respond to emails or phone calls anyway.
So, I continue trying to find it by some other sneaky way. Oh joy!
See, I have a project in the southern San Joaquin Valley. This project involves historic-era archaeological sites that are related to the early use of the oil fields. Now, back in the late 90s, the Department of Energy sold Naval Petroleum Reserve 1 (which is about two miles north of my project area) to a private company, and in the process had to go through the environmental revue process. During this process, rumor holds that they developed a good set of criteria for determining whether or not a historic-era oil field site was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and therefore would gain some (admittedly minor) level of protection, and that the State Office of Historic Preservation agreed to these criteria in a programmatic agreement.
Now, the project that I have is not on the old Naval Petroleum Reserve grounds, and therefore these criteria would not be directly applicable to my project, but they can provide guidance on how to apply the regulations in similar environments within the vicinity of the Petroleum Reserve grounds. It is, essentially, a matter of hunting down precedent.
Which makes my current task as necessary as it is frustrating.
You see, the studies and documents that I need to find were produced in the late 90s, as federal agencies were beginning to gain a strong online presence, but before the early 2000s shuffling of various federal responsibilities under Bush. In other words, it came into being during that magical internet time when all web sites had blue balls to illustrate bullet points (mind out of the gutter!), Geocities and Angelfire were where it was at, and federal agencies were sure that they needed to do something with this internet thingy, even though they weren't sure what, exactly. So, I can find the Record of Decision in the Federal Register that describes the project and the documents, I can find the public comments to the documents, and I can find agency comments for the documents from the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Energy...but I can not find the document itself. I can't even find PDF copies of one of the several documents to which the document I need would have been an appendix or attachment!
Now, this wouldn't be bad if I could get a hard copy of the document. But here's the problem - if I make a formal request to OHP or DOE, my project will be due before I actually hear about the possibility of receiving the document. I could conceivably call one of my contacts at an agency that works with the documents, but I have already found that most of them are out of the office for extended periods of time on their own projects. And the people I know at private companies who could get me a copy are currently so buried under their own work that they rarely respond to emails or phone calls anyway.
So, I continue trying to find it by some other sneaky way. Oh joy!
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Getting Crew
I am currently in the process of trying to assemble a crew. This is not always an easy task. Good field technicians are a precious commodity, and tend to be snatched up by companies as soon as they are available, which means that you have to either have eerily good timing to have a crew of entirely good technicians, or else you have to keep tabs on the good technicians that you know so that you know as soon as they are available and can get them in your snares.
One of the problems with getting good field technicians is that many really good field technicians are older, more experienced, and preparing to go over the edge. Most of these folks don't have steady jobs, but travel from project-to-project. They may have a permanent address, but they rarely see their homes, have tenuous family connections and friendships, and, while in the field, drugs and especially alcohol take up a large part of their non-work hours. As a result, while they are often very good at their jobs, they are also prone to sliding into severe alcoholism* and depression, and this can lead to obvious problems in the field. I have watched many a middle-aged field technician go, in the space of a year, from being a fantastic worker with an excellent skill set to becoming a depressed, permanently drunk or hung-over, unreliable liability. It is extremely sad to watch, and it is rare that they get themselves back upright after slipping over. It should be said that there are some older technicians who manage to remain solid professional workers, and they are usually a pleasure to work with (I learn a good deal just from listening to them talk), but as time goes on, I know fewer and fewer of these folks.
Younger technicians tend to be less likely to slip into depression, and they are better able to physically take the late-nights drinking and still be able to work in the morning. Moreover, they haven't grown frustrated or disillusioned and tend to view the work as an adventure, improving morale. However, they also lack the experience and knowledge of their older counterparts, and often have not had to do some of the more onerous tasks of field archaeology (digging in a poison oak thicket, walking through tick-infested grasses, wading through stagnant water and hoping that you don't get leaches on you), and are often less ready to do the work that needs to be done.
So, the trick is to find someone who is young, but smart enough to learn and willing to do what it takes to get the job done, or else an older technician who has managed to keep their sanity and is not so far in the bottle that they have become unreliable. It's a tough trick, though my current employer has many people fitting both descriptions in its orbit. The problem (and I suppose that this falls into the category of "the types of problems you'd like to have") is that we are really damn busy, and as such having the field technicians available is a bit of a problem - the good ones have largely been assigned, and now I am trying to find other good ones who, by some miracle, haven't been picked up by another company yet.
Still, I have some good leads, and things look promising.
*Drinking is a very large part of the culture of field archaeology. For most field archaeologists, opening a six-pack or heading to the bar as soon as you get back from the day's work is a huge part of the field experience. Supervisors, such as myself, may drink, but we usually have more work to do when returning from the field, and as such either forgo drinking or get a later start and stop earlier than the field technicians. We also tend to have stable jobs and (relatively) stable home lives, which require both our money and our energy, and as a result tend to have less impetus to drink heavily. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but seeing a hung-over supervisor int he morning is unusual, while seeing hung-over field technicians is not uncommon.
One of the problems with getting good field technicians is that many really good field technicians are older, more experienced, and preparing to go over the edge. Most of these folks don't have steady jobs, but travel from project-to-project. They may have a permanent address, but they rarely see their homes, have tenuous family connections and friendships, and, while in the field, drugs and especially alcohol take up a large part of their non-work hours. As a result, while they are often very good at their jobs, they are also prone to sliding into severe alcoholism* and depression, and this can lead to obvious problems in the field. I have watched many a middle-aged field technician go, in the space of a year, from being a fantastic worker with an excellent skill set to becoming a depressed, permanently drunk or hung-over, unreliable liability. It is extremely sad to watch, and it is rare that they get themselves back upright after slipping over. It should be said that there are some older technicians who manage to remain solid professional workers, and they are usually a pleasure to work with (I learn a good deal just from listening to them talk), but as time goes on, I know fewer and fewer of these folks.
Younger technicians tend to be less likely to slip into depression, and they are better able to physically take the late-nights drinking and still be able to work in the morning. Moreover, they haven't grown frustrated or disillusioned and tend to view the work as an adventure, improving morale. However, they also lack the experience and knowledge of their older counterparts, and often have not had to do some of the more onerous tasks of field archaeology (digging in a poison oak thicket, walking through tick-infested grasses, wading through stagnant water and hoping that you don't get leaches on you), and are often less ready to do the work that needs to be done.
So, the trick is to find someone who is young, but smart enough to learn and willing to do what it takes to get the job done, or else an older technician who has managed to keep their sanity and is not so far in the bottle that they have become unreliable. It's a tough trick, though my current employer has many people fitting both descriptions in its orbit. The problem (and I suppose that this falls into the category of "the types of problems you'd like to have") is that we are really damn busy, and as such having the field technicians available is a bit of a problem - the good ones have largely been assigned, and now I am trying to find other good ones who, by some miracle, haven't been picked up by another company yet.
Still, I have some good leads, and things look promising.
*Drinking is a very large part of the culture of field archaeology. For most field archaeologists, opening a six-pack or heading to the bar as soon as you get back from the day's work is a huge part of the field experience. Supervisors, such as myself, may drink, but we usually have more work to do when returning from the field, and as such either forgo drinking or get a later start and stop earlier than the field technicians. We also tend to have stable jobs and (relatively) stable home lives, which require both our money and our energy, and as a result tend to have less impetus to drink heavily. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but seeing a hung-over supervisor int he morning is unusual, while seeing hung-over field technicians is not uncommon.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Waiting for Notice
It's been an odd few weeks. I spent most of last week writing reports, the week before that writing bids and proposals for potential jobs, and this most recent Friday we got approval to start work on several field projects.
Sort of.
See, you can get your contracts approved, but some clients want you to clear with them before you hit the field. They do so for various reasons, some of them good and sensible, some of them betraying control freak behavior. Regardless of whether they have a good reason or not, it means that you have to wait to hear from your client sometimes before you hit the field. When your client is able to respond quickly to requests, this is not a problem. When your client is him/herself buried under other work, this can result in you waiting. And so I was sitting about twiddling my thumbs waiting to find out if I could start doing field logistics until today, when I was finally given notice to proceed on the preliminary part of a project. Hopefully, come tomorrow, I will have a notice to proceed on the field portion and will be able to start next week.
On the up side, one of the higher-ups at my company pulled me aside today and informed me that I should let them know when I needed to be home to take care of personal matters, and then explained everything that they have set up to help me out should that be necessary. This was...unexpected. My current employer has a reputation for fair treatment of employees, but this was beyond that. One of the reasons that I left my last job was because the travel demands of work interfered with my family life, with medical treatment that I needed, and with me just keeping any sort of normal sane personal schedule. To be essentially ordered to maintain a good personal life was a delightful shock. It makes me feel that, troubles with Fresno aside, I made a good choice in coming to this employer.
Sort of.
See, you can get your contracts approved, but some clients want you to clear with them before you hit the field. They do so for various reasons, some of them good and sensible, some of them betraying control freak behavior. Regardless of whether they have a good reason or not, it means that you have to wait to hear from your client sometimes before you hit the field. When your client is able to respond quickly to requests, this is not a problem. When your client is him/herself buried under other work, this can result in you waiting. And so I was sitting about twiddling my thumbs waiting to find out if I could start doing field logistics until today, when I was finally given notice to proceed on the preliminary part of a project. Hopefully, come tomorrow, I will have a notice to proceed on the field portion and will be able to start next week.
On the up side, one of the higher-ups at my company pulled me aside today and informed me that I should let them know when I needed to be home to take care of personal matters, and then explained everything that they have set up to help me out should that be necessary. This was...unexpected. My current employer has a reputation for fair treatment of employees, but this was beyond that. One of the reasons that I left my last job was because the travel demands of work interfered with my family life, with medical treatment that I needed, and with me just keeping any sort of normal sane personal schedule. To be essentially ordered to maintain a good personal life was a delightful shock. It makes me feel that, troubles with Fresno aside, I made a good choice in coming to this employer.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Low Ball
I am headed out into the field today (I should be in the field by the time this post drops) to record a site. The site is known, and a site record had been previously produced. However, the older record was of very low quality, providing little actual information aside from "there's a site in this general area...oh, and we think it's a prehistoric site."
This sort of thing is pretty common. There are many companies that produce solid work - good reports, good site records, and field and lab work that you can be pretty sure will be accepted by the agencies to which you have to submit the work in order to get your permits or money. My current and immediately previous employers were known for being these sorts of companies.
Then you get the low-ballers. The companies that will cut corners, produce a shoddy report and site records, and have dubious methodology. These ones get by by producing the "work" that they produce for a very, very low price. The work of these companies is usually a product of greed and laziness, but not outright corruption - though there are a few that veer into the latter category. If you happen to be submitting it to an agency that doesn't look to closely (or doesn't care) and if you are doing so in an environment where there is little reason to think that any public groups or private individuals will be scrutinizing it, then you can get away with this - and that's how these companies stay in business.
However, if you have a project that is likely to be scrutinized or where the agency reviewers aren't asleep at the wheel, there's a good chance that these low bid companies won't fly. Case in point - I am leaving today to go out int he field and re-do some work done by someone else. They issued a report that lacked the necessary background information, only vaguely described the study methods, and the site record that they produced along with the report gives no real information. The company that initially hired them paid about 2/3 what my company charges for the same services, which is why we didn't get the original contract. However, the report was rejected by the agency because it didn't provide any of the important information that the agency needs to comply with the relevant regulations. So, after some bickering with the first company, the client dropped them and hired us. Now, rather than pay our original cost, they have paid 1 and 2/3 of our original cost, and look bad to the agency from which they need to get permits.
So, the lesson is, if you are ever in a position where you have to hire an archaeologist, biologist, geologist, clean air/water person, etc. etc., don't just look at the price tag, look at their qualifications. It may save you some money in the end to not go with the cheapest one up front.
This sort of thing is pretty common. There are many companies that produce solid work - good reports, good site records, and field and lab work that you can be pretty sure will be accepted by the agencies to which you have to submit the work in order to get your permits or money. My current and immediately previous employers were known for being these sorts of companies.
Then you get the low-ballers. The companies that will cut corners, produce a shoddy report and site records, and have dubious methodology. These ones get by by producing the "work" that they produce for a very, very low price. The work of these companies is usually a product of greed and laziness, but not outright corruption - though there are a few that veer into the latter category. If you happen to be submitting it to an agency that doesn't look to closely (or doesn't care) and if you are doing so in an environment where there is little reason to think that any public groups or private individuals will be scrutinizing it, then you can get away with this - and that's how these companies stay in business.
However, if you have a project that is likely to be scrutinized or where the agency reviewers aren't asleep at the wheel, there's a good chance that these low bid companies won't fly. Case in point - I am leaving today to go out int he field and re-do some work done by someone else. They issued a report that lacked the necessary background information, only vaguely described the study methods, and the site record that they produced along with the report gives no real information. The company that initially hired them paid about 2/3 what my company charges for the same services, which is why we didn't get the original contract. However, the report was rejected by the agency because it didn't provide any of the important information that the agency needs to comply with the relevant regulations. So, after some bickering with the first company, the client dropped them and hired us. Now, rather than pay our original cost, they have paid 1 and 2/3 of our original cost, and look bad to the agency from which they need to get permits.
So, the lesson is, if you are ever in a position where you have to hire an archaeologist, biologist, geologist, clean air/water person, etc. etc., don't just look at the price tag, look at their qualifications. It may save you some money in the end to not go with the cheapest one up front.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Apparently Yes, I can HAZWOPER
So, as noted in the previous entry, I have had to attend a class to get a certification that allows me to work with hazardous waste.
I passed.
Yes, that's right, I am now authorized to work with hazardous waste. Do not be alarmed. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
Unlike the previous week, most of what we went over this last, and thankfully final, weekend was at least somewhat applicable to my job, and therefore much more worthwhile. Which isn't to say that it was any fun, because it wasn't. Still, it's over, and a few amusing things did happen over the course of the weekend.
The safety personnel from Hazard Safety Services Incorporated continued to show that they considered this class to be a joke, disrupting with smart-ass comments and continuously providing stupid answers to the instructor's questions, which means that I will walk off of any site that these guys are responsible for - if your safety people don't take their training seriously, then the shit will hit the fan on one of their sites eventually, and it is best not to be present for that. On the up-side, the instructor did make one of their number, the guy who I had taken to referring to as "Princess Diana", do laps around the classroom while wearing a full class-A hazmat suit, and pressing down on the twit's shoulders. He later threatened to duct-tape and taze the kid.
Unfortunately, when Princess Diana quieted down, one of his buddies picked up and began rambling about zombies and 2012 end-of-the-world nonsense. So, the irritation continued to flow.
On Saturday, I walked through a group of fellow students who were having an in-depth conversation about their time in prison. One of these guys later interrupted the class to inform everyone that the reason why Harold Camping's Rapture prediction was wrong was because "if Camping was telling the truth, it would make Jesus a liar, and that can't be man, because..." and then he began trying to preach at us until the instructor, who you may remember looks like a hybrid of a professional wrestler/Hell's Angel/hipster/driver's ed. instructor gave him a glare that made the guy shut up. Later that same day, the same guy also, appropo of nothing, decided to shout out that non-dairy creamer is flammable. He later tried to disrupt the class again to talk about contracting Valley Fever while in Prison.
I wonder what it's like to be in prison and have Tourette's.
All the while, there was an umkempt, greasy fellow who looked for all the world like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. On the first day, the previous week, he had tried to impress me with his interest in "morally ambiguous" characters in literature, but quickly showed that he was far more interested in the cartoonish violence doled out by such characters when they appear in Conan-derived fantasy novels. This week he decided that we were buddies, and spent the weekend trying to regale me with stories to show how cool he was, but all of which were plainly bullshit - my favorite was a story about a buddy of his who "is in the Marines, a special anti-terrorist taskforce, who had a gun pulled on Osama Bin Laden, was only ten feet away, but his commanding officer ordered him to let Bin Laden go!"* He then spent some time pestering me to try to get me to hire him as an "archaeologist's assistant." This was when he wasn't rambling on about movies, comic books, or other entertainment that I didn't care about, and about which he would continue to ramble at me even after I had informed him in no uncertain terms that I didn't care. He also took to cracking fart jokes at every opportunity. I began to spend my breaks pretending to answer email on my phone or else hidden away just to avoid this guy.
Through all of this, the instructor continued to be an imposing and amusing figure. In addition to his tormenting the HSSI morons, he also informed us of how to dispose of a body if working in the oil fields, discussed the bomb shelter that he owns in Montana, and just generally made himself a weird, amusing character who I would swear was made up by a hack writer if I hadn't seen him. He also had a dimple on the back of his head, which might be where his keepers plug him in at night.
Oh, and in case you feel safer knowing that people working with hazardous waste have this training - they spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out the boiling point of a flammable solid. Oh, and one of them, I believe it was the would-be preacher, began to tell the instructor about how, if a federal official "disrespected" him, he'd attack the federal official, and seemed genuinely surprised when he was told that this would get him arrested.
Yeah, real brain trusts here.
Oh, and I was put in charge of a field exercise because I was the only person in the class who both had supervisory experience and did not have anger control problems.
Sleep tight America, your hazardous materials are in safe hands.
And it wasn't just the class that was strange. While walking out onto the lawn during a break, a fellow in an orange safety shirt ran by, ran out onto the lawn, dropped onto all fours, and then began moving in a manner that can only be described as dry-humping the air. At my hotel, some random guy walked up to me and wanted to ask my opinion of St. Louis, Missouri politics and the current weather problems there, which would have made sense if A) I had ever met this guy, and B) I knew anything about the subject or said/did something to imply that I did...as neither of these is the case, it was just odd.
At any rate, I am now certified, and don't have to go back for a couple years. If I keep my certification up, then I only have to go back for 8 hours.
*Now, don't get me wrong. As weird as the notion of Bin Laden being let go sounds, historically, equally strange things have happened. So, if 20 years down the road evidence comes out that this sort of thing occurred, I'd be surprised, but not overly shocked. I just really doubt that this guy's ever-so-bestest friend from high school was the one who had him.
I passed.
Yes, that's right, I am now authorized to work with hazardous waste. Do not be alarmed. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
Unlike the previous week, most of what we went over this last, and thankfully final, weekend was at least somewhat applicable to my job, and therefore much more worthwhile. Which isn't to say that it was any fun, because it wasn't. Still, it's over, and a few amusing things did happen over the course of the weekend.
The safety personnel from Hazard Safety Services Incorporated continued to show that they considered this class to be a joke, disrupting with smart-ass comments and continuously providing stupid answers to the instructor's questions, which means that I will walk off of any site that these guys are responsible for - if your safety people don't take their training seriously, then the shit will hit the fan on one of their sites eventually, and it is best not to be present for that. On the up-side, the instructor did make one of their number, the guy who I had taken to referring to as "Princess Diana", do laps around the classroom while wearing a full class-A hazmat suit, and pressing down on the twit's shoulders. He later threatened to duct-tape and taze the kid.
Class A Hazmat Suit
Unfortunately, when Princess Diana quieted down, one of his buddies picked up and began rambling about zombies and 2012 end-of-the-world nonsense. So, the irritation continued to flow.
On Saturday, I walked through a group of fellow students who were having an in-depth conversation about their time in prison. One of these guys later interrupted the class to inform everyone that the reason why Harold Camping's Rapture prediction was wrong was because "if Camping was telling the truth, it would make Jesus a liar, and that can't be man, because..." and then he began trying to preach at us until the instructor, who you may remember looks like a hybrid of a professional wrestler/Hell's Angel/hipster/driver's ed. instructor gave him a glare that made the guy shut up. Later that same day, the same guy also, appropo of nothing, decided to shout out that non-dairy creamer is flammable. He later tried to disrupt the class again to talk about contracting Valley Fever while in Prison.
I wonder what it's like to be in prison and have Tourette's.
All the while, there was an umkempt, greasy fellow who looked for all the world like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. On the first day, the previous week, he had tried to impress me with his interest in "morally ambiguous" characters in literature, but quickly showed that he was far more interested in the cartoonish violence doled out by such characters when they appear in Conan-derived fantasy novels. This week he decided that we were buddies, and spent the weekend trying to regale me with stories to show how cool he was, but all of which were plainly bullshit - my favorite was a story about a buddy of his who "is in the Marines, a special anti-terrorist taskforce, who had a gun pulled on Osama Bin Laden, was only ten feet away, but his commanding officer ordered him to let Bin Laden go!"* He then spent some time pestering me to try to get me to hire him as an "archaeologist's assistant." This was when he wasn't rambling on about movies, comic books, or other entertainment that I didn't care about, and about which he would continue to ramble at me even after I had informed him in no uncertain terms that I didn't care. He also took to cracking fart jokes at every opportunity. I began to spend my breaks pretending to answer email on my phone or else hidden away just to avoid this guy.
Through all of this, the instructor continued to be an imposing and amusing figure. In addition to his tormenting the HSSI morons, he also informed us of how to dispose of a body if working in the oil fields, discussed the bomb shelter that he owns in Montana, and just generally made himself a weird, amusing character who I would swear was made up by a hack writer if I hadn't seen him. He also had a dimple on the back of his head, which might be where his keepers plug him in at night.
Oh, and in case you feel safer knowing that people working with hazardous waste have this training - they spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out the boiling point of a flammable solid. Oh, and one of them, I believe it was the would-be preacher, began to tell the instructor about how, if a federal official "disrespected" him, he'd attack the federal official, and seemed genuinely surprised when he was told that this would get him arrested.
Yeah, real brain trusts here.
Oh, and I was put in charge of a field exercise because I was the only person in the class who both had supervisory experience and did not have anger control problems.
Sleep tight America, your hazardous materials are in safe hands.
And it wasn't just the class that was strange. While walking out onto the lawn during a break, a fellow in an orange safety shirt ran by, ran out onto the lawn, dropped onto all fours, and then began moving in a manner that can only be described as dry-humping the air. At my hotel, some random guy walked up to me and wanted to ask my opinion of St. Louis, Missouri politics and the current weather problems there, which would have made sense if A) I had ever met this guy, and B) I knew anything about the subject or said/did something to imply that I did...as neither of these is the case, it was just odd.
At any rate, I am now certified, and don't have to go back for a couple years. If I keep my certification up, then I only have to go back for 8 hours.
*Now, don't get me wrong. As weird as the notion of Bin Laden being let go sounds, historically, equally strange things have happened. So, if 20 years down the road evidence comes out that this sort of thing occurred, I'd be surprised, but not overly shocked. I just really doubt that this guy's ever-so-bestest friend from high school was the one who had him.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
How the System Works
A friend of mine recently forwarded me a newspaper article about a land developer that was doing work on lands held by the Bureau of Land Management, and the BLM had bowed to political pressure and this developer had been "allowed" to hire their own company to do the environmental impact report. She was livid that the BLM was making an exception for this company and allowing it to hire the people who would determine whether or not the company's activities would have negative environmental impacts.
You can only imagine her reaction when I informed her that the BLM was not bowing to political pressure, that project proponents (that is, the people or organizations wanting to do a land development project) typically hire their own consultants to to the environmental impact statements (in fact, that's a primary reason why companies such as mine exist), and that this was not a case of a large company getting something special because of political ties, but rather was simply the normal mechanics of how a land development project proceeds.
This does, admittedly, sound pretty bad. Even when nothing nefarious is going on (and after many years experience in this field, I have learned that things are usually on the up and up), the fact that the people performing the environmental analysis for a project were hired by the people who want the project to go through does look pretty...well, strange. There are three things that one should know about this, however.
The first is that those of us who do the environmental work are consultants to, and not employees of, the proponents. This may seem like a fine distinction, but it is actually quite important. We are expected to understand the relevant laws and regulations, and to explain to our clients how they have to behave to keep in compliance with them. If the regulations say that "activity X must be proceeded by precaution Y" then we explain this to our clients. Our environmental review documents are just as much prescriptive ("in order to avoid impacts, the project proponent must take these precautions...") as descriptive (simply describing the environmental impacts of a project). Now, that's not to say that there isn't room for corruption in the system, there certainly is (and I know of a few archaeologists who I suspect are on the take, based on some of the results that they have put into reports), but it does mean that we don't have the same pressures on us that a direct employee of the company would. So, yes, there is room for corruption, and the fact that a project proponent is paying for the environmental review does look rather off, but it should be understood that the purpose of the environmental review process is to document potential problems, relevant regulations, and define the terms under which problems will be avoided or mitigated, not simply to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the potential for a project to have environmental impacts.
The second thing is that these reviews are not done in a vacuum. As part of the review process, stakeholders must be identified - community groups, Native American organizations, individuals whose homes or property might be impacted by the project, historic societies, recreation groups that make use of an area, etc. The outreach to these groups can be done poorly, and often has been, but it is something that is part of the environmental review process. When you hear about how a project was halted because of environmental concerns, it's usually because one of these stakeholders (or somebody who should have been identified as a stakeholder) has terminated consultation and is seeking legal action. Identified stakeholders are given the ability to review documents, to ask questions, and to provide comments that can (and often do) result in further review or mitigation work being done. In other words, just because a large company hires the consultant to do the environmental review doesn't mean that the documents stay between the consultant and their client, they are reviewed by stakeholders, and often put out for broad public review, in order to allow for comments to be received regarding the level of effort, and anything that might have been missed (or excluded) by the consultant who prepared the document.
The third thing that should be kept in mind is that this review process is not unsupervised. All documents must be received and reviewed by the government agency that is providing the permits/money/donkey rides/whatever that the project proponent needs. Normally the documents are reviewed by a specialist at the agency (so, an archaeologist who works at the agency will review all archaeology materials, a biologist all biology reports, etc.), and the agency must sign off on the report before it is finalized. In some cases, the agency may hire a consultant of their own to help with this oversight, which often results in a rival company overseeing the work of the other - having been on both sides of this, I can tell you from experience that it does lead to a heightened sense of responsibility on the part of the proponent's contractor. Consultants who have a tendency towards corruption tend to draw the attention of the federal agencies, and there have been cases of people being pushed out because of this (probably not as many cases as there should be, but still), so most consultants feel a stronger need to keep on the good side of the federal regulators than to keep on the good side of any one client.
Now, there has been talk of ways of reforming this system, such as the proponent paying a fee to the agency and the government agency hiring the consultant who does the review, to remove the appearance of subservience to the proponent. These sorts of solutions all have problems of their own, but I appreciate the notion behind them. Regardless, the system, as it exists, is not simply a matter of "proponent hires consultant to say what proponent wishes" - the system is more complicated. Not to say that there isn't room for vast improvement, but it's not the horrific mess that many people seem to feel.
You can only imagine her reaction when I informed her that the BLM was not bowing to political pressure, that project proponents (that is, the people or organizations wanting to do a land development project) typically hire their own consultants to to the environmental impact statements (in fact, that's a primary reason why companies such as mine exist), and that this was not a case of a large company getting something special because of political ties, but rather was simply the normal mechanics of how a land development project proceeds.
This does, admittedly, sound pretty bad. Even when nothing nefarious is going on (and after many years experience in this field, I have learned that things are usually on the up and up), the fact that the people performing the environmental analysis for a project were hired by the people who want the project to go through does look pretty...well, strange. There are three things that one should know about this, however.
The first is that those of us who do the environmental work are consultants to, and not employees of, the proponents. This may seem like a fine distinction, but it is actually quite important. We are expected to understand the relevant laws and regulations, and to explain to our clients how they have to behave to keep in compliance with them. If the regulations say that "activity X must be proceeded by precaution Y" then we explain this to our clients. Our environmental review documents are just as much prescriptive ("in order to avoid impacts, the project proponent must take these precautions...") as descriptive (simply describing the environmental impacts of a project). Now, that's not to say that there isn't room for corruption in the system, there certainly is (and I know of a few archaeologists who I suspect are on the take, based on some of the results that they have put into reports), but it does mean that we don't have the same pressures on us that a direct employee of the company would. So, yes, there is room for corruption, and the fact that a project proponent is paying for the environmental review does look rather off, but it should be understood that the purpose of the environmental review process is to document potential problems, relevant regulations, and define the terms under which problems will be avoided or mitigated, not simply to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the potential for a project to have environmental impacts.
The second thing is that these reviews are not done in a vacuum. As part of the review process, stakeholders must be identified - community groups, Native American organizations, individuals whose homes or property might be impacted by the project, historic societies, recreation groups that make use of an area, etc. The outreach to these groups can be done poorly, and often has been, but it is something that is part of the environmental review process. When you hear about how a project was halted because of environmental concerns, it's usually because one of these stakeholders (or somebody who should have been identified as a stakeholder) has terminated consultation and is seeking legal action. Identified stakeholders are given the ability to review documents, to ask questions, and to provide comments that can (and often do) result in further review or mitigation work being done. In other words, just because a large company hires the consultant to do the environmental review doesn't mean that the documents stay between the consultant and their client, they are reviewed by stakeholders, and often put out for broad public review, in order to allow for comments to be received regarding the level of effort, and anything that might have been missed (or excluded) by the consultant who prepared the document.
The third thing that should be kept in mind is that this review process is not unsupervised. All documents must be received and reviewed by the government agency that is providing the permits/money/donkey rides/whatever that the project proponent needs. Normally the documents are reviewed by a specialist at the agency (so, an archaeologist who works at the agency will review all archaeology materials, a biologist all biology reports, etc.), and the agency must sign off on the report before it is finalized. In some cases, the agency may hire a consultant of their own to help with this oversight, which often results in a rival company overseeing the work of the other - having been on both sides of this, I can tell you from experience that it does lead to a heightened sense of responsibility on the part of the proponent's contractor. Consultants who have a tendency towards corruption tend to draw the attention of the federal agencies, and there have been cases of people being pushed out because of this (probably not as many cases as there should be, but still), so most consultants feel a stronger need to keep on the good side of the federal regulators than to keep on the good side of any one client.
Now, there has been talk of ways of reforming this system, such as the proponent paying a fee to the agency and the government agency hiring the consultant who does the review, to remove the appearance of subservience to the proponent. These sorts of solutions all have problems of their own, but I appreciate the notion behind them. Regardless, the system, as it exists, is not simply a matter of "proponent hires consultant to say what proponent wishes" - the system is more complicated. Not to say that there isn't room for vast improvement, but it's not the horrific mess that many people seem to feel.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Work and Life
I am back in the field again, this time walking transmission lines in the San Joaquin Valley, looking for archaeological sites, hence my non-posting this week. Not that I suspect many people notice, but I can have my delusions...
It's part of the weird ebb and flow of doing any sort of environmental consulting work. One week you are scratching around, looking for anything to alleviate the boredom, and the next week you feel as if you have been asked to do the work equivalent of taking a sip of water from a fire hose. Still, I'd rather have this than long-term unemployment, so there you go.
It does make one's life hard to plan, though. While I typically have an idea of what's going on a few weeks in advance, but it's not uncommon for me to be notified on a Monday that I will be required to be somewhere for several weeks starting Tuesday (though this is less common at my current job). It makes it difficult to maintain a life outside of work.
Luckily, my current project is close to home, so I get to be in my own bed every night. Even when I am not, though, I have had to learn to find ways to maintain some of my normal habits when away - I take walks at night, go to coffee shops to read, listen to podcasts as I prepare for bed, etc.
It's funny, when I tell people that I do fieldwork, they often assume that I use it as a vacation of sorts - time away from home and out on my own. The truth of the matter is, though, that I have learned that it is easier ot enjoy the work if my evenings are as close to normal as possible.
It's part of the weird ebb and flow of doing any sort of environmental consulting work. One week you are scratching around, looking for anything to alleviate the boredom, and the next week you feel as if you have been asked to do the work equivalent of taking a sip of water from a fire hose. Still, I'd rather have this than long-term unemployment, so there you go.
It does make one's life hard to plan, though. While I typically have an idea of what's going on a few weeks in advance, but it's not uncommon for me to be notified on a Monday that I will be required to be somewhere for several weeks starting Tuesday (though this is less common at my current job). It makes it difficult to maintain a life outside of work.
Luckily, my current project is close to home, so I get to be in my own bed every night. Even when I am not, though, I have had to learn to find ways to maintain some of my normal habits when away - I take walks at night, go to coffee shops to read, listen to podcasts as I prepare for bed, etc.
It's funny, when I tell people that I do fieldwork, they often assume that I use it as a vacation of sorts - time away from home and out on my own. The truth of the matter is, though, that I have learned that it is easier ot enjoy the work if my evenings are as close to normal as possible.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Approval Lists and Petty Tyrants
Many counties have lists of approved archaeologists. These lists dictate who is, and often who is not, allowed to perform basic compliance work on projects permitted or funded by the county, and often by cities within the county. Most of the time, being placed on the lists is a simple matter, you simply send in proof of your credentials, and your name is added. Sometimes, however, there's a kink in the system.
Several years back, I worked for a large company out of their Santa Barbara office. As San Luis Obispo County was one of our neighboring counties, it made good sense to be on their approved list. So, I contacted the county, found out what they needed, sent it in, and voila! a few weeks later, my company and my name appeared on the list. At this time, individual archaeologists were listed and shown as qualified.
A couple of years later, I moved to Santa Cruz and went to work for a different company. As there were some good business opportunities in San Luis Obispo County at that point in time, I wanted to make sure that the county approved list reflected where I was. So, I sent an email to the county employee who kept the list explaining that I had changed employers, and requesting that my listing on the approved list be changed to reflect this. I received an email in response telling me what documentation I had to turn in in order to be listed. Thinking that the fellow had simply misunderstood my request - the county had already been provided with all of the documentation he was requesting when last I applied - I wrote back explaining that I was already on the list, and I was simply seeking to have me listing modified. I again received an email telling me that I needed to turn in proof of my credentials in order to be listed.
A bit non-plussed, I called the county offices to speak with the fellow. I explained that, based on his emails, it looked as if he thought I was asking to be newly-listed, which I was not, and that I had already turned in the requested documents. I was simply asking that my contact information be changed to reflect my current employer.
The response? I was told that the county had kept poor records of what they received in the past, and therefore he didn't have my past credentials on file, and therefore if I wanted to have my contact information changed, I'd have to send them all again. Through all of this, it was never mentioned that I might be removed from the list, so as far as I could tell, the county still considered my qualified, they just didn't want to change my contact information to reflect reality.
Deciding that putting up with this nonsense wasn't worth my time, I just gathered up and sent the documentation in. I looked up the approved list a few weeks later, and found that I was not listed under my current employer, but was still listed under my previous employer.
I contacted the fellow at the county offices again and asked what was up. His response? He didn't like my employer. He claimed that they had screwed up a big project several years back, and he was considering whether or not he wanted me to be on the list at all now that I worked for "the enemy". When I went and looked up the project in question, it was not my company that performed it, but another one altogether. I contacted him to point this out, and was told that he didn't like my company anyway, so I shouldn't hold my breath on being listed.
This entire time I was still listed with my old contact information. And, again, it was individuals who were listed, not companies at that time. So, regardless of my employer, I was qualified and there was no legitimate reason to keep me off of the list*.
This was a classic "petty tyrant" as far as I could tell. The guy seemed to have very little power, and so he enjoyed exercising what little power he did have, however arbitrarily or poorly. I have run into these guys in plenty of other places - they are common in municipal and county governments, but also in most large businesses (where they can find a niche and use it to push people around - and in my experience, because they tend to be sycophantic towards a few well-placed higher-ups, they are often hard or even impossible to fire), when I worked on a military base I saw several of them there as well, and they seem to breed at universities.
After several emails, with varying degrees of "you can't push me around" attitude coming from me, and a bit of "you know, we could take legal action" coming from my employer, the fellow finally agreed to change my contact information on the list. I figured it was done. However, about a year later, a possible project came up in San Luis Obispo County, and so I checked to make sure that we were listed. I was still listed under my previous employer, but not under my new employer.
The dick hadn't actually made the changes that he had agreed - in writing I will add - to make!
I contacted the county, and discovered that this guy had been let go, much to the joy of the other county employees. It seems that I had nailed the "petty tyrant" thing, and that he had been trying to throw his weight around with everybody, until someone with actual power had enough of it and pushed him out. I explained what I needed to the new fellow in charge of the list, who was sympathetic and quickly had me placed on the list (within a week, very fast as these things go).
*The people who tended to be listed were project managers, who weild a fair amoutn of power concerning how work is done. So, even if everyone else at a company is bad at their job, a good project manager can still do things well.
Several years back, I worked for a large company out of their Santa Barbara office. As San Luis Obispo County was one of our neighboring counties, it made good sense to be on their approved list. So, I contacted the county, found out what they needed, sent it in, and voila! a few weeks later, my company and my name appeared on the list. At this time, individual archaeologists were listed and shown as qualified.
A couple of years later, I moved to Santa Cruz and went to work for a different company. As there were some good business opportunities in San Luis Obispo County at that point in time, I wanted to make sure that the county approved list reflected where I was. So, I sent an email to the county employee who kept the list explaining that I had changed employers, and requesting that my listing on the approved list be changed to reflect this. I received an email in response telling me what documentation I had to turn in in order to be listed. Thinking that the fellow had simply misunderstood my request - the county had already been provided with all of the documentation he was requesting when last I applied - I wrote back explaining that I was already on the list, and I was simply seeking to have me listing modified. I again received an email telling me that I needed to turn in proof of my credentials in order to be listed.
A bit non-plussed, I called the county offices to speak with the fellow. I explained that, based on his emails, it looked as if he thought I was asking to be newly-listed, which I was not, and that I had already turned in the requested documents. I was simply asking that my contact information be changed to reflect my current employer.
The response? I was told that the county had kept poor records of what they received in the past, and therefore he didn't have my past credentials on file, and therefore if I wanted to have my contact information changed, I'd have to send them all again. Through all of this, it was never mentioned that I might be removed from the list, so as far as I could tell, the county still considered my qualified, they just didn't want to change my contact information to reflect reality.
Deciding that putting up with this nonsense wasn't worth my time, I just gathered up and sent the documentation in. I looked up the approved list a few weeks later, and found that I was not listed under my current employer, but was still listed under my previous employer.
I contacted the fellow at the county offices again and asked what was up. His response? He didn't like my employer. He claimed that they had screwed up a big project several years back, and he was considering whether or not he wanted me to be on the list at all now that I worked for "the enemy". When I went and looked up the project in question, it was not my company that performed it, but another one altogether. I contacted him to point this out, and was told that he didn't like my company anyway, so I shouldn't hold my breath on being listed.
This entire time I was still listed with my old contact information. And, again, it was individuals who were listed, not companies at that time. So, regardless of my employer, I was qualified and there was no legitimate reason to keep me off of the list*.
This was a classic "petty tyrant" as far as I could tell. The guy seemed to have very little power, and so he enjoyed exercising what little power he did have, however arbitrarily or poorly. I have run into these guys in plenty of other places - they are common in municipal and county governments, but also in most large businesses (where they can find a niche and use it to push people around - and in my experience, because they tend to be sycophantic towards a few well-placed higher-ups, they are often hard or even impossible to fire), when I worked on a military base I saw several of them there as well, and they seem to breed at universities.
After several emails, with varying degrees of "you can't push me around" attitude coming from me, and a bit of "you know, we could take legal action" coming from my employer, the fellow finally agreed to change my contact information on the list. I figured it was done. However, about a year later, a possible project came up in San Luis Obispo County, and so I checked to make sure that we were listed. I was still listed under my previous employer, but not under my new employer.
The dick hadn't actually made the changes that he had agreed - in writing I will add - to make!
I contacted the county, and discovered that this guy had been let go, much to the joy of the other county employees. It seems that I had nailed the "petty tyrant" thing, and that he had been trying to throw his weight around with everybody, until someone with actual power had enough of it and pushed him out. I explained what I needed to the new fellow in charge of the list, who was sympathetic and quickly had me placed on the list (within a week, very fast as these things go).
*The people who tended to be listed were project managers, who weild a fair amoutn of power concerning how work is done. So, even if everyone else at a company is bad at their job, a good project manager can still do things well.
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