This video is sponsored by milk chemistry. Check them out and click the link below for 25% off. One of humanity's most important discoveries is how to make the metals we crafted in Smith into our exact needs. Briefly, I've covered what was likely one of the first metals humanity learned to craft, native copper. Copper that already exists in its pure state and just needs to be cold worked. Overnative forms of metal are pretty rare in most places in the world. Most often metals are found combined with other elements in various mineral compounds, learning how to break these compounds down and extract just the metallic element, a process called smelting, was a skill that was slowly learned over thousands of years and would allow humanity to advance first into the Bronze Age and then into the Iron Age. However, the very first metal to be smelted was likely none of those, but lead. The oldest evidence of smelting dates to about 6500 BC of cast lead beads. So, before moving into copper and tin smelting, I first wanted to try to learn a bit about this metal and its history, try and source some of its raw ore, called Galina, and even try a very, very carefully controlled smelting of it. So, where do you find Galina, the ore of lead? Well, an easy way is to go to the city that's named after it, such as the city of Galina. Uhhh, the one in Illinois, in the Tri-State area. This area where Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa meet are best known for their historical lead deposits that helped shape their history. So first, I visited a few locations to see if I could locate any Galina around old dig sites and mines. Found a so-called badger hole where miners would sometimes dig up some of the lead and build a makeshift shelter over it. So I'm going to dig down and see if I can find any leftover lead. So far, I've just found some flint. Nice clay. Shark hole. Yeah, somebody lived here. I think that's a bust. All right, so we went up the Mississippi River here. Supposed to be a bunch of old mines and found one here. Got a half down there. I can't know. It's blocked off like most of them are. I don't know if we're going to be able to get much here. Let's see much in there. So there's a waste rock. And some glass. I think I just got to look in the area to see if there's any small deposits left, either in the cliff wall or in any of the rocks on the ground. So you can find just a small amount of lead. Might be a little difficult. There doesn't seem to be much lead left actually in this area. Got some handlers. This is what was first used to pick X at the stone. Dig in mine. See if I can loosen up. Maybe a chunk of lead somewhere in this. An issue I continuously run into when attempting to do this in the modern era is that areas that were once plentiful with useful resources have now been nearly completely cleared out. And once again was running into this here. No idea. No idea what I'm doing. Going side, Andy. I'm good. Some sort of black mineral. Seems to be deposited at mostly just this little spider.  Probably this shill or something. Yeah, something. That's cool. So next I visited with an expert in every state in the tri-state area to learn more about this mineral and see if they might have some I could source. My name is Victoria Cotay and I'm the Historic Site Coordinator here for the Dubuque County Historical Society. This is where our mine is. It is underground about 50 feet. Galena was named Galena as Latin for lead sulfite. So because of all of the lead here we got our name. Did you guys want to ring the bell you can? It's a hoot and a half. Don't forget to ring the bell. Subscribe, turn on notifications. It's 90 steps down. Within 1845 they did not have stairs. They would have dug a shaft from the surface of course into the mine about 50, 60 feet and at the top of that would be a windlass. The lower guy in and out he would hang onto a rope. There might be a knot at the bottom so he can hold on with his feet or bucket and he can put a foot in that. This is our lead mine portion. We do have mannequins. Fair warning. There's the Galena lead ore right there. When it's exposed that's how shiny and bright it is. Approximately four to five hundred million years old. So it's so old the dinosaur is walking on top so no dinosaur bones here. And then of course the white stuff. This is all new coming in. It's your calcium based deposits and if you want to touch a select type there's your chance. There's one right there. That's it. Do you want to okay? Then we'll let you do that. And we're also in the Driflus region about 30,000 years ago. The glaciers were cruising down. They came towards us and then went around us. And what that means though for mining is those ore deposits basically every day are getting closer and closer to the surface. So you could find ore the side of a hill, a cave, a couple of feet. You're not going to find huge veins like this. Like you would 50, 60 feet down but you are going to find deposits. Of course the first people are Native Americans. We humans love that sparkly shiny lead ore. What's the history of lead in this area? So because of the Driflus area and the glaciers not going over the Driflus are not crushing our land and having all of these beautiful hills. The lead was still available right on the surface and it was very prevalent in this area. So as Native Americans were able to settle here they were able to just grab a new surface mining. And then they used that lead for different purposes from arrowheads to trading with first settlers that came to using it for their body paint. And then as European settlers came in they started doing deep mining. We were originally founded in 1826 and then in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s hit our peak. Lead it was first kind of discovered around here early 1800s. Rock the Mesquaki who were the tribe in the area. Their settlement was actually over by the mines of Spain. One day in the fire they noticed this rock was melting. Once it was taken out you could make it into anything you wanted. Then when it cooled it was that shape until you put it back in the flame. The Mesquaki tribe they were mining lead here well before the Europeans came. Some of their mines were actually used by Julian de Buic and a select group of miners when they settled the area. They actually had a lead rush very similar to the gold rush in California. When lead was first discovered here you could actually just trip right over it. It was very much just on the ground and then it would go into deep veins as you went. There's actually a thing called a lead plant and apparently it would grow wherever there was a vein because the roots would go very deep into the earth. So that was a way of finding your next bit hit. So this is an example of a lead plant. I've been told that they grow where lead grows. As it would say if that's true there would be lead here. But over time most of the town's sources have been depleted through the years of mining in the 19th century. So you don't just walk around and trip over it? Not like the Native Americans did. This is a badger hut? Yes a badger hut, badger hole, whichever you'd prefer. The badger hole is actually very unique. You don't find this across the US. You really only find it really in Wisconsin and very small areas that border the state. To come in, stake their claim, kind of get it going so that way they could quickly gather up as much as they needed so they could go sell it and then head back home. Before this area was open for settlement so in the 1820s a lot of the miners across the river would come over here and they would mine illegally. The troops would be here in order to keep settlers from coming over. They'd kick them back across the river. So it's a quick grab and go. There were no real tents. You didn't build a cabin. You were just coming here quickly mining and then going back home across the river, usually to Illinois. You could find it near to the surface and that's how the Native Americans could do things like the trench mining if you will where they kind of dig a couple feet. They call them digs but they're bowl-shaped generally maybe a couple feet. Of course when we have explorers and traders come into this area like Julie and Dubuque who is a French-Canadian fur trader basically they do start trading. So people are coming from other parts of the United States. They'll come here and they'll start mining. Then of course word reaches Western Europe but when the Cornish, Welsh and English, when they got here they could mine 50, 60 feet down. The area around here is pretty soft rock. Yeah it's a lot of limestone. Very porous and the water can move very freely through it and does cause some erosion. What are some of the uses of lead? Originally they started as paint. They started as like pipes. They started as bullets. Today we still use it as forms of x-ray protection, gasoline additives. 90% of Civil War bullets were made from lead from this region. They used the lead and they shipped all over the country confederacy and union. In order to get it from this state to here you had to sell it if you didn't have some sort of shot down the area. So you would make it into these types of containers.  No one else could steal it unless they happened to have the same initials as you did. And this was how they would transport the lead to take it from their mines to the smelting or then to the market. It's very easy to work with. You can take this ore sample and you can put it over a hot fire. It melts at a fairly low temperature.  The sulfur that's in it will burn off which kills all the plant life around it and then you can clear away any slag. So like this kind of stuff would be considered slag. It's just dirt and grime. And then you're left with your pure molten lead. So lots of very easy uses. Areas that they process the lead around here that cause environmental damage? Yes. So we had massive amount of damage. We have old photographs of processing centers where they would smelt the lead down and within a 500 feet radius of these processing centers there would just be nothing vegetation wise. It was completely a blank slate. And even today there are a couple of places where it's hard pressed defying growth in those areas. Going to mine lead. Lead ore. You're okay. I mean your general health risks like your 50 feet underground and it could collapse on you. That's a health risk. If you're smelting it then you're dealing with the fumes. Not just the sulfur you know bringing off but if you're touching it a lot now you've got a problem. If you're using the finished product you know drinking out of the glass eating a tomato off of a plate with lead in it. This is a problem. But the minor themselves that's not there. That's not their problem. So what exactly makes lead so toxic? The negative health effects of lead have been at least known to some extent since 2000 BC but it's however continued to be used for large parts of history. Its use and health effects are theorized by some to be linked to the downfall of the Roman Empire. Royal cups containing lead in China are speculated to have been the cause of report visions and hallucinations through lead poisoning. It was added as a sweetener to wines in the 18th and 19th century. It was used in plumbing up until the 1980s in the U.S. and continued to be used in gasoline in the U.S. until 1990. The heaviest risks with lead are from long-term exposure with developing children being the most susceptible to health consequences. Lead's toxicity is caused by its chemical property of wanting to replace other metals and molecules in the human body which causes proteins in the body to change shape and no longer function as intended. This can cause disruptions of the digestive system, nervous system, respiratory system, reproductive system and more. As well as causing developmental disabilities in children. So let's be super careful when handling lead and take as many safety precautions as possible. So now to head home and attempt to smelt some metal. Thanks to a small sample I was able to collect at the Platteville Mine. First use some clay to form some crude molds of a cup and some sling bullets. Next up I'm going to try and smelt some of the Galena and make some actual lead. But I have a modern knowledge of the health effects of actually doing that so I'm going to take as many safety precautions as possible. Protecting both any exposed skin and most importantly, preventing myself from breathing any vapors. So I definitely wouldn't recommend doing this at home. But for something I would recommend at home you should check out today's sponsor Melt Chemistry. This allows you to do different chemistry experiments at home without any risk and even have a variety of different metal ones. You can make your own metals without potentially poisoning yourself. Which I consider a win-win. Melt Chemistry provides small-scale science experiments that you can do with your niece and nephews to both keep them entertained but also to help them learn a little more about the fundamentals of science and nature you'll need if you ever try to rebuild your own civilization from scratch. Check them out and click the link below for 25% off.  Then for extra precaution I'll also wear respirator rated for lead vapors and cover all exposed skin and be sure to discard or wash everything afterwards. For safety reasons and to contain any potential lead contaminants I'm going to do this in a barbecue grill so everything will be contained and I can just toss it when I'm done. Hopefully reducing any potential lead exposure to as small as possible. Lead is pretty easy to smelt because of its lower melting point likely to be done just on a hot fire. Supposedly when in need of lead shots or bullets cobwebs will just place a chunk of galena into a burning stump and the lead would form at the base of it. The actual reaction happening when lead is smelted is two steps. First the lead sulfide is heated and the sulfur is released as a gas while the lead oxidizes into lead oxide. Then burning it with charcoal causes it to reduce into just lead metal. So to smelt it I just combine the lead with a few layers of charcoal to help reduce it as it melts. Alright so everything's cooled off and filled now so it should hopefully be relatively safe. Here's the contents of the crucible and it looks like a lot of it did not react. It's actually still in the galena form so it probably needed a bit longer to actually get most of it. But the crucible cracked so anything that did form likely spilled out and can probably be found in the barbecue. So we dig around and find a few pieces of lead in here. So looks like we did make some lead. Melting lead requires a lower temperature than to smelt it which then has a lower risk of lead vapors. So I melted a larger quantity of lead with the small sample I smelted and cast it into my molds. Here. So I was able to cast a really rough cup out of the lead in a few shots. I'm not too impressed with it. I want to see if I can get it a little better by cold working it. And cold working lead is pretty easy. It's very soft and it's a kneeling temperature. It's actually just room temperature. So you don't have to heat it up again to soften it. Also means you can't work hard on it. It's as hard as it's going to get. And now that it's solid it's pretty safe to handle and touch without getting any poisoning. However if you consume anything and you lead dust that comes off of it that's not going to be good. That's potentially going to poison you. Succeeded in smelting a little bit of lead and then casting lead to make this really crappy cup that is also poisonous. Possibly one of my worst casts should really redo it. I would but I don't really have any desire to expose myself to any more potential toxins. I tried cold working it that did not help at all. Lead is one of the first models we learned how to smelt because that's such a low melting point you can just do it over regular fire. From there we kind of went on and learned how to make hotter fires to smelt new materials such as copper and tin. But lead overall isn't the most useful of metals. It's not very hard. Can't really make a cutting edge. And later we would learn it's very poisonous. So it doesn't really have many practical uses of this stage except for being a heavy object. So we made some sling bullets and Annalise has made a sling for the next episode. She's going to try these out and see how much more it maximizes her distance with a nice dense metal. In the future it'll be useful for things like radiation shielding, batteries, and a variety of other things. But right now it's mostly just a toxic compound that with today's knowledge you shouldn't really use and a lot of stuff. They didn't really stop people from doing that back in the day but a little bit smarter now. So next up now that I know how to smelt a easier metal to move on to something that requires a hotter temperature which requires charcoal and some sort of external air source either from a bellows or a blowpipe. So I'm going to do that next to try and smelt copper in tin and get into the bronze age. Soft lead was also used as a writing instrument by Romans which means my cup and bullets can also double as pencils. It's again about chemistry for sponsoring this video. Check them out and click the link below for 25% off. If you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics. Also if you've enjoyed these series consider supporting us on Patreon. We are largely a fan-funded channel and depend on the support of our viewers in order to keep our series going. Thanks for watching!


C&O and McPon visited the fifth fleet area for Thanksgiving to celebrate with sailors. During the visit, they stopped on USS Boxer where C&O re-enlisted eight sailors and spoke about deployment cycles, sexual assault, budget, and manning. C&O and McPon also stopped on USS Gettysburg where C&O re-enlisted 15 sailors and spent one on one time at a Thanksgiving meal. They ended their Thanksgiving trip on USS Harry S. Truman. At an all hands call, McPon congratulated more than 350 Truman sailors who were selected for advancement. Then they had a Thanksgiving meal with the crew. They also visited with fifth fleet sailors and marines at U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and Naval Support Activity Bahrain. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Xander Gamble.


So one of these scholars, when Abu Bakr and Razi went to one of the great sheikh and masters of his time, Abu Ishaq, and he asked him, he said, how do we heal the hearts? Is it a medicine for the heart? He said, yes, there is the medicine of the heart. He said, the first thing in the medicine of the heart is reading Quran with reflections. One thing about Quran, it humbles you. It puts you in your place. You open the Quran, you read Al-Fatiha and you want to start. What is the first word? Alif, lamb, mean. What does that mean? I don't know. Only Allah knows. So go with the Quran in humility. The first thing you don't know, Allah has given only a little bit of knowledge to us. We only have a little bit of knowledge. So the first thing, it humbles us when you go towards the Quran.


All right. So I'm Sam Crote. Like, like Greg said, I work for Stealth Energy Group in Williston. And I don't know if you can hear Harold or me without the microphone. This might be kind of awkward. But we're going to talk to you today about slope reclamation, steep slopes and risk management with that. All right. So first off, what is the importance of slope, steep slope reclamation. So we have, here we have two different examples and this will be both from Energy Transfer, a company that does move transport, grass and crude oil and produce water. So this is in Pennsylvania. And on the left we have one scenario and on the right is a different picture for a different scenario. And this is really just like a worst case, like a catastrophic example, but this is what can happen if we don't take into consideration our steep slopes. So you can see this is just what a slip is, a slip or a slide, like a landslide is what we're going to be talking about today. You can see where the soil has sloughed off and it actually exposed the pipe in one of these situations and then it lit on fire and caused a huge forest fire. So literally everything you could think of went wrong. So in this situation, the revolution and the other one was the rover. They had two different scenarios by the same company within the same year. They were fined up to $30 million in their fines and then the reclamation and reinstallation of the construction was upwards of that as well. So I just wanted you to keep that in the back of your mind. This doesn't happen often in North Dakota, but, you know, little mini accidents of this can can happen and could be catastrophic to everybody. Yeah, in this instance here, you can see the right away. It comes down makes it 90 goes out. That's energy transfers like the participation that we had was the yellow line marker that you can see right here. And then a group of yellow vests and the white hard adds that happened to be the client I was working for that I'm there in line. So, in many of these instances, there are multiple operators that run 15 right away. So as the lines are installed over extended time periods, the potential risk to several operators is significant. Once again, I'll go first. Since I've got the microphone. I'm Harold Rhodes. I've worked in civil construction for several years, worked in the woods working steep slopes. And most recently focused on reclamation. And I'm Sam and I've been working with Harold on a lot of these projects. A lot of the examples we're going to talk about today actually take place in Ohio and West Virginia. But we'll kind of walk you through how we can make these connections back to North Dakota and how they're applicable here. So mass wasting is kind of our first term that we're going to throw out there today and it's really kind of just what it sounds like and the main explanation of a slip. So you have a large mass of soil that is like wasting down the hill. So it's just sliding down the hill and you can see at the bottom of this photo up here that there's like a big pile of sludge at the bottom. So it's just soil moving downward of a slope by gravity. They can happen in slumps slips debris flows down the hill. It's often lubricated by a rainfall that can happen from seismic activity. We can have springs that are underground naturally occurring that could be feeding it and causing it to slip off. Intense rainfall is another one that we saw in Ohio and West Virginia. They get very violent rains and very often, and especially on a fresh wider way this could happen. Yeah, so when we look at this, once again, this is one of our client right of ways to the right. To the right that's our dirt side of the trench for those that are familiar with kind of a pipeline terminology. On the left here that was the actual trench line. What we found that what we found was that that a vast majority of our slips were directly related to the hydraulic conductivity related to the disturbance of the installation of the pipeline. Specifically, what we found was the location of those trench breakers and ensuring that we had adequate drainage after adjacent to those transpiration. So as we come down the hill here, each one of these slips where we started seeing water actually coming out of the ground was directly adjacent to those trench breakers. So how do we describe slopes and what is slope so slope is just rise over run that's how I think of it that's how we were taught from it so we can see we have the run over the rise or under the rise. So a lot of the slopes that we're dealing with in these scenarios are probably very steep to extreme so greater than 35% slopes and just for a reference to the construction world we have a two to one slope would be 50 and then like a three to one and four to one or like less steep. So we're dealing with like the three to two to one slopes in these situations. One of those things to that they commonly occur as far as what we're looking at that potentially could be a risk or something that we want to be aware of some environmental standpoint is this right here. Every instance, at the bottom of these swells dips valley straws would have been common is that and that is surface water that surface water is a almost universal trigger for various reporting obligations, if it were in fact. This was you. Yep. This is me. Okay, so some people we look at that from a, from a operator producer perspective. One of the things we're looking at potentially risk is risk to system integrity. So this right here the right here that comes up with our main line that the slope started to fail just upgrade, putting that out set here, and then about that it's looking here back in this location, also under tension to where it was actually pulling same thing with this one here this was adjacent to well bad, and that the drainage was pulling right here along the baseline and actually saturating the soil is right above that wetland and then once again water is an automatic trigger. So it's from a reporting actions that way. So when we think about the risks of slope stabilization, the EPA actually has a list of environmental risk that they put together. And the main ones that come to mind are most of the ones from the EPA but risk to public safety risk to the environment and risk to system integrity. So, we also look at the cultural risk so is there. This kind of goes with the public safety cultural social so if we go back to the most extreme case that we looked at if we have a slip that's causing a fire and taking out people's livelihoods that are loggers and they live in the woods so that's a very large risk to them. When we talk about economic risk, is it going to cost us a lot of money, yes it's going to cost a lot of money to fix it's going to cost those landowners and homeowners a lot of money to relocate. And then for a legal risk as well that the EPA poses is this going to get us into a legal battle as the operator likely yes it's going to be a long road ahead of you. And like Harold said water is going to be a trigger to report this so immediately then you're into the legal battle. So application here in North Dakota we kind of mentioned already. And a lot of your minds probably went to the bad land setting anything in the park on the Forest Service land. Those are the types of landscapes that we're going to find this most often. There are pads that aren't in the bad land setting that are just up on hill slopes that are going to have very steep slopes I know there's some compressor stations and power stations that sit up on a hill, and their slopes are really hard to stabilize. So, new construction so pads and pipelines that run across hilly landscapes, creeks and stream crossings like Harold was saying the water at the bottom of that slope. There's going to be impacts to that to like if you have to cross the stream during pipeline construction. Reclamation, of course, and remediation and response I think it's important to a spill response, if it's a spill to water or if it's close to water. Some digging halls that we do, there's going to be a lot of reconstruction that goes into that. Another thing that I think is really interesting in this specific photograph which obviously this is North Dakota is some of the variation in the actual plant communities. It's kind of a critical kind of first indication of potentially what could be a suitable or ideal plant community for futures, reclamation or ultimately respiration. All right, so how do we characterize triggers or how do we find out if the slip or how the slip happened or the triggers that made it happen. Steve slopes is the first one I mean let's not overlook the obvious I mean last night we talked about simple over fancy and not overthinking it like are you going to have a difficult time walking up this slope like without assistance or are you going to tumble all the way down if you try to attempt. Yeah, we've both done that a lot. And here, especially in the bad land setting like a coal seam outcrop you see the coal seams right by so if you try to pile a whole soil profile on top of a very weak coal seam, I mean just think about what you what happened in your head it's going to slip off. Calluvial soils I mean the slips are exactly what that says it's just caused by gravity you see rock outcrop on the bottom. And maybe it revenge itself and you haven't expected it in a while you could make the assumption that this has fallen down in the past seats and natural drainage kind of goes together. So that's one of what we experienced out east was natural drainage channels there's springs in North Dakota everywhere they come out of nowhere, and it just, you know, it makes a week for foundation for these soils. Back to that what what we really found interesting after, you know, looking at some of these issues that help cover our Western West Virginia is that a lot of these potential risks or triggers would have been evident during that initial survey and storm water planning inspection. And that was one of our other, you know, big takeaways is that we did identify this initially. So, as far as the potential risk considerations as Sam said earlier, what we're looking at is our landowners. Our landowners are one of the primary or initial stakeholders that we engage when we start looking at what is the initial or interim recommendation going to look like. And that goes as far as the various plant species that they would like to see. Oftentimes, if it's in an area that they could pay or farm or want to maintain that will dictate a specific grass or plant community. But when we get in some of these areas to where there's physically not going to be any access. The industry almost always uses that same species on those speech slots. And that's that I think that's one of the primary issues from the industry perspective to where there needs to be kind of a change that plant species groups need to be specific. Same thing with environmental. When we look at that, all of those potential risks are typically captured within that initial desktop survey from erosion potentials to surface waters, receptors. And also we're looking at system integrity how to maintain it where some of the corrosion control or our CP stations stuff like that, ensuring that those critical infrastructure management pieces are located in areas that we can reach and access is absolutely critical. And then that goes into the system operation of maintenance. They're expecting or we assume that that asset is going to be in operation for years for decades. So ensuring that that all of these critical access points are in fact accessible is really key. All right, so precipitation is our best friend right and worst enemy. So the maps on the left side there are really anything that you wouldn't expect to see. They're just showing the 30 year average rainfall on the top is June and on the bottom is September. So like we would expect there's going to be more rainfall in North Dakota in June and less in September. And you can see it's not uniform across the state. So far goes a lot different than Wilson. So you just need to take these into consideration when you're making your remediation plans, but reclamation excuse me. But when we think about slips 70% of our slips happen when the soil is completely saturated so when it's in a saturated high precipitation those heavy violent rainfalls that's when most of them happen. And with that if you're looking to reclaim a stream crossing where you have a steep slope that you need to do some construction first and then do some biological after you need to plan around the rain events so planting the like some shrubs or some doing some brush bundles that you know it might not work best when you're expecting a rain right away. But sometimes it will if you need to establish vegetation. So incorporating best practices and site specific scenarios. So I think it's very important to look at the excavator in the bottom corner. It's cute. It's like where's wallow. So I think it's important to think about all the things that we're going to walk you through the remainder of the presentation before you even start so the reclamation starts before you start work. So like Harold mentioned in the pre construction survey. A lot of these things are going to happen first. While you're doing construction you need to think about it like tell the operators to look for springs look for water look for difference in soil profile. Did you see a coal seam or something we didn't pick up. Reclamation of course that includes the seeding portion of things if it is to be seated picking the right seed mixes operations and restoration kind of go hand in hand so you're going to have to do maintenance you're going to have to do inspections. You're probably going to have to go back and do some more construction on some of them and kind of spot fix, but it's important to talk or think of these steps all the way through the process. Yeah, that's exactly right. Successful restoration begins with effective pre destruction that that's the only way there is no alternative if we don't plan for hopefully responding sites. Then there's there really is no other way that we're not aware of that. I absolutely agree with that. You start up now. So when when Sam mentioned best practices best practices, kind of within you know how we view this is those existing best practices, you know the little details that we see in every set of drawings. You know how do we install these things how do we install a lot of where they located where these various things are applicable. Inspection frequency how do we maintain all of that falls within kind of a conventional industry standard best practices. The potential best practices is where Sam comes in. So the way I like to think about it is the best practices that we have right now are silk fence waddles straw matting the things that you see everywhere hay bales all that good stuff. But the way that we're thinking about it and trying to propose it to everybody is that there are potential best practices that someday may be our new best practices. So it's not that we're trying to hate on so fence and waddles they do their job, but they're temporary right they're supposed to be taken out they're not permanent. So that's where the waddles are going to turn into brush bundles so bundles of sticks or straw or just vegetation biomass that you see and you make your own natural waddle, and you put it there. So Tom DeSutter has always told me in reclamation rough and loose. And when I look at what I'm out and doing a reclamation is what does it look like 100 yards over there let's let's make it look like that. So there's rocks everywhere like let's put rocks everywhere. Like that's what it was before we got here. So thinking about it that way like soil nails would become live stakes like using really long branches as anchors. Like we can think about how they did it 100 400 years ago and kind of make it look like that. So this goes back directly to one of the project reviews earlier, we started looking at an asset like some of the issues we were facing in Ohio and West Virginia. And what ultimately caught the attention of folks down south is that our slope stabilization and main that's a separate pair of costs. In many cases exceeded the cost to install. And at that point we had everybody's. So what we done in Ohio is that we went through and looked at all these reached out to multiple engineers in that area that had existing historical and kind of a geographic background understanding of the specific areas. So we went through and created our new typical best practice details, details that were sufficiently detailed that we could then provide our operators are construction teams are construction groups and vendors with this is how we're going to address or approach some of these various activities. Right here is one of those details, as we approach some of these areas that we run into this condition will one of the six different details alternatives be applicable. We even went to the extent where we're discussing proper how to determine our product or how to actually the importance of moisture were using a line. So we can actually calculate and ensure that we're getting proper suspicion compassion. And that was that more than anything was critical to ensuring that the work was being done completely. We had a great design. We had outstanding crews, but they simply weren't familiar with some of those critical details didn't cost anyone to do it like didn't take any more time to do it right. And they were really accepting and for each kind of you know this is what we're looking for this is how we want to do it. So the way that we're kind of proposing our that potential investment practices are on a geo technical level and a biological level so first we have the geo solutions and we have gabion cages, which are just, I'm sure you're all familiar with them they're kind of just like gated cages with rocks in them. Soil nails are just like concrete anchors that can be concrete they can be steel they can be whatever you want to drive into the soil as an anchor geo webbing is listed up here and I think this is similar to the talk last night of the con mods she may have mentioned, but you would fill these in with soil and they'd make like little little pockets for things to grow and hold soil, and geotech fabrics which looks like on the very left side. And we use synthetic fabric in some of our designs as well. What one of the things I think it's interesting, I don't know if everybody here. One of the things that I think it's really fascinating is this geotech solution is trying to come from an engineering standpoint, duplicate what that biological solution or history would be. And I think that's really what, what we would hope you start working towards is that that basically is a synthetic work system. A synthetic drainage system trying to mitigate that. Whereas, you know, an effective plant community getting things developed and in place does exactly what you're saying what the effects. So now we have the biotech case example so. The goal is we figured that, like what Harold just said the geotech fabric like let's get away from that and try to do a phyto or biological approach to one of these projects. So, our goal right is to get a really good root system as the anchors into the soil to stabilize it. And at the same time we had some water drainage issues so to say in a healthy way get rid of that water it was just going to be uptick by the plants. So what we did is we did a very intensive vegetation survey on a bunch of right of ways and we found a bunch of shrubs forbs and grasses and just compiled everything that we had and then we went to a bunch of nurseries that were local, and it was always to get the source that we needed but we found button bush elderberry, we had some snowberry, no not snowberry, snow gray dogwood, and a suite of other shrubs that we wanted to plant. So we sourced hundreds, probably thousands of these bushes that are four foot seedlings, and we hooked out there and we started planting them in the slips, like wherever you found a crack that it was sliding off right there, the the scar we would just shove a bunch of plants in there. So a little anecdote for everyone. Apparently if you're carrying four foot seedlings of very inconspicuous plants through the backwoods of West Virginia, it's maybe from the pond or a little questionable.  Yeah, who notified him that the SWAT team was on their way to check out a group of people who are planting illegal marijuana plants in the middle of the woods in West Virginia. So not 15 seconds later, my phone rings and Harold said, don't be alarmed. The SWAT team is on their way. Okay. All right, why he tells me and not 10 seconds later I look up and there's a helicopter just flying over us. So if you ever think you're not being watched, you're being watched. But yeah, after that we planted all the bushes that we sourced from someone else and we're like, hey, why can't we do this ourselves. So we went ahead and we built a greenhouse. And what we did was we took a bunch of transects, we went out and we clipped clippings off the trees and shrubs and forbs and we brought them back to the greenhouse and we wanted to see at the scale that we had and the skills and resources that we had what transplants would survive. If we had everything we needed we could get them all to survive but which ones right now would make it. So we narrowed it down to some species that would work and we decided like these are the ones that we could transplant. I wanted to make a connection back to the talk last night for those that were here. I think there was a dwarf burning bush was maybe the species that was recommended by one of the nurseries but we decided to go against it because it was an invasive species. But we kind of looking back after the talk last night and we talked about it too. It was like, if we're trying to get a very good root system and we want as many plants as we can out there, don't we want something somewhat invasive. So they're like what's worse like having an invasive species that's already present there, but, or having a slip that could lead to something catastrophic like in Ohio it can be very catastrophic North Dakota maybe not as bad. That's just something to think about like maybe you know weeds aren't that bad was the thing last night so I'm not saying go plant invasive species but just think about it like what's what's worse and is this something that we could manage the species for a while. So in this example we you know we haven't completed or gotten rid of all the slips out there with this product but another really good point that we made that leads back to like the landowners is that they were all very happy with the species that we picked because they were food plots for all the deer and all the turkey that they hunt out there. So that was something that really you know this is you know like two birds three birds four birds four birds with one stone like we can knock off a lot of those risks with this method. Yeah, and that was exactly it so the landowner, you know our land department went through the kind of identification of what plants were going to plant that came early early on in the project, and the landowner is already kind of time for you know what's going to be coming and having this conversation trying to characterize what we would like to try was a critical component of that and and characterizing it in such a way to hunt on this land. We're going to have food for a while like you're right away to cover the turkeys, you know, and that's a legitimate, you know statement. This right here was a conversation that we built a greenhouse in front of corporate offices for a natural gas and instrument company raised the eyebrows. So, but the purpose of it was, was kind of understood you know within time, the guys kind of understood, you know why we're doing it how we were trying to do it it's going to save money. We're not going to have any guys have to climb down in critical steep slope, but another kind of anecdotal story about that as well. We had an opportunity to speak to the landowner where the office and one of the professor station was located. Historically, before he sold it. It was a great one. And he was ecstatic that after we planted or built the greenhouse and explain to him what we're trying to do. They're having lunches and potlucks and sharing information that really really wasn't there. And then positive on this one here, what we're looking at is the top just like I spoke earlier about, you know, developing a proctor trying to explain how that proctor is a critical component when we're looking at action and various soils, but also the methods and how we can develop methods that can be deployed or utilized that are very, very effective and easily to can be easily completed by, by our vendors and contractor base that we all already have. So, you know, as far as how do we incorporate alignment of soils, all of that, you know, it really went seamless. And that was our focus we, we provided some of these potential or alternative best practices as a function. So when we look at the function, this is what we need to do and then reached out to them. How do we do that? You know, what equipment would be best to do that? How do we approach that? How do we kind of realize what we're trying to do there? And actually made our contractors part of the solution in terms of extraordinary help. Yeah, then the other two photos here we just have on the right, all the tree branches that were harvest during the reclamation phase. And I feel like our most pipeline right of ways here that would kind of just be something you would shrug off and be like, Oh, we could burn it or, you know, maybe we'll just leave it in a pile. Here we actually made those brush bundles and you can make those brush bundles out of those are live steaks or something. So we did that. And then the bottom photo is just a little look into my life of installing shrubs for months. But that's the slopes that you're dealing with and you can kind of see where it's slipping off there. So that's the target of like the top of the scarf where we wanted to introduce those roots. Yeah, the problem this one is that the slip had had stabilized itself. So one of the questions we had is, can we go into some of these areas that have historically had issues and prevent or mitigate things working. So this was in an ideal location. There was a potential threat to surface water or anything like that. We were able to be really effective here. Going back to Sam mentioned on the brush bundles from an operator or construction standpoint, I'm already spending that money. You know, when we purchase bottles, when we purchase silk and when we go through the installation of all of that cost is already built into the project. We aren't doing something extra. We aren't doing something more. We aren't adding costs. We're just trying to approach that problem with the resources and budgets we already have to do it a slightly different way. So here we're looking at post construction. So one of the issues that we've had, and I'll pitch this right off the back, just get rid of it every time I look at it, is that thing right there. That is a temporary control structure. Everybody's familiar with the cell fats. What I have a problem with is that our right of ways have already achieved 70% of education. So temporary structures at P, they're temporary. So one of the other primary risk triggers for some of our failures was that these temporary structures become semi permanent and they're never ruined.  What will happen is debris, leaf litter and debris piles up against our cell fences. It'll create a plug and all of a sudden this silk fence becomes a new trench bracket. And then what that does is that actually start to cool up water pretty soon.  That did not mean to be there to begin with. Then what happens, the rest of the slope is up there and it sheets the next time I run. And somehow it finds that little hole from that pile of leaves that got plugged up against the silk fence that didn't need to be there. And then I have a slow failure. So some of these things from maintenance and operation standpoint, when those control temporary control features are no longer needed, they do need to be low. So and they may be changed, they may be relocated, or they may be no longer necessary. And it's critical that we're out there inspecting and when they're no longer needed, we pull them out. And I think just to touch on the bio side of things, those can be more permanent, right? Because they're natural, they look natural, they're part of the landscape and those are things that we can leave in place. So those are positive alternatives to those. Yeah, that's like with the brush bundles as an alternative to waddles is those brush bundles will naturally decay and break down. So two to three years down the road, a lot of those control features, the potential negative as far as how water is going to hit them or inhibiting water flow, they've already begun to decay. So it's the ideal solution from kind of that inner erosion control question. So with re vegetation, this starts during that reclamation phase. So I think plant communities, plant diversity, we hear that all the time. That's a huge thing. 70%. So we always hear 70% vegetation and then that's when that's when we're good. So how do we get there is is the problem. And that's where everything that we've showed today is just, you know, it's not a formula or an equation for a one size fits all. Just a few more things to get everyone to think about. And that I think last night's talk was really good about that too, like everything's not going to work, but at least you're making efforts, and then you can go back and adjust the next time. So methods up there drilling broadcasting, hydro mulch, sod and transplant. So broadcasting is really what's going to be happening the most on these steep slopes, you're not going to be able to get equipment like you could on a flat slope in some of these areas. So broadcasting and a combination of hydro mulch, we've done that on a lot of them and had a really good success. So sod and transplants, transplants is what we considered with those seedlings. We also did plugs like small, this grass plugs, and had good success with that as well. Yeah, and we did we looked through all of those so if it was a potential soil handling candidate, we looked at green states. When we look at it, you know, potentially changing up the, the seed varieties that are going to be in specific areas and we went down to sunny to shade, you know, and from a discussion standpoint, you know, is there a better suited plant species for one side of these trials than the other. And in those areas where there potentially could be changes, several changes within that kind of ideal or optimal species that kind of hydro mulch was kind of the ideal situation. Another thing in it would apply to not to go right away as well. When we look at it from kind of a historical or what that pre existing plant community was, and kind of the microbiotic community that would have been present in a wooded plant community versus what we're trying to grow in a grass community. And that hydro mulching allowed us to kind of try and mitigate or correct that as well. This is starting to get more just towards a summary. One of the things that we realized right at the get go that that right away inspections are a critical aspect of cost effective, a environmentally reliable redway maintenance program. So when in this location, what we done is is located a camera and actually flew all these right ways with a low level over life with a high definition camera with one of our right away inspectors. So as we flew through some of these areas, you can see here, this is kind of our general right away, you can see the map coming with their access in some of these areas, some of our temporary control measures. In this case, you can see very dirt so it's applicable or appropriate. And then some of the erosion control that not a big fan. But this was the exact, or an ideal way to inspect these rivals. So that was one of the things that we changed that annually we would go through and just take that low level slow flight through these areas and just see if anything condition wise, potentially have changed. The establishing of authority. What we're looking at is kind of empowering our operations through to be able to raise concerns or questions. If something is impossible to do something is wrong. If something is extraordinarily difficult to do, we need to, we need to improve it to see how we can actually, you know, kind of do what we need to do, but we have to be able to do it in a reliable effective and safe manner. You can take that one away. So this, this kind of leads into the comment there, kind of creating that culture of environmental stewardship, huge and extraordinarily helpful and, and developing that relationship with our landowners. It's, it's, well, it's just priceless, you just, you just can't emphasize the same thing with our community and landowners engaging them, whether that be simply asking questions, is there any concerns anything that they would do different. If there's anything that potentially they would have noticed this last one, collaborating with academic NGOs regulatory agencies and other industry departments. There is an extraordinary amount of expertise knowledge and skills available that that I believe are working. I'm seeing that question in various forms. See how much trouble I have to speak. So as awkward as my questions may have been has been extraordinarily helpful, kind of developing some of these digital methods before. I think just to touch on that, we, we did learn a lot from our landowners and we're out there I think that was after the first couple projects we were like hey, first step let's just go talk to the landowner and we walked out there with them. They showed us where the slips were because they're out there every single day, and they're like hey this one happens then and this one always happens or this one's new, like why. There's bedrock outcrops here, and there's an old bridge that this carriage used to cross paths like 300 years ago, things that we never would have maybe seen with our eye because we're thinking about different things so use your resources and in any sort of construction practices don't be afraid to reach out to landowners and talk to them get to know them and get to know their land because they know the best.  You know, those are those are the kind of critical information and comments. And they're going to freely share that every, every time you speak with them, you know they're going to drop those pearls of wisdom. And we just have some links I think this will be posted so some resources for everyone and Harold and I are happy to be your resources as well. So that improving steep steep slow pipeline construction that was a collaboration between the nature Conservancy and several different pipeline companies as they were looking at kind of the existing best product best practices and what potentially could be potentially best practices I found it extraordinarily helpful in in kind of engaging that kind of function conversation with a lot of our contractors and operators. Another thing when I was young back in the 80s I worked on steep slopes but it was in a completely different industry. It was for a small company and twist wash we can call it Lloyd block. And in some cases we draw the closures up and down ridiculously steep slopes and other cases we walked up and down. A lot of the information that we have here, and some of the technical resources. This is a century of extraordinarily helpful and applicable information related to the logging industry that is directly to how steep slopes and some of the more service information is absolutely the best. And I think sometimes, sometimes we may operate in a little bit of a bubble, and we don't try to find those similarities than other industries. Questions. Questions. Yeah, question. We're not going to worry about a basic thing worse if you thought about something that actually works like. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Take that up with your local forest service route. I want to say thank you to me to have this anecdotal and stuff like this that we don't think that's one big thing to this conference that's really kind of the last part that we had on this. Oh, sorry, another question. Yeah. No. I have a good comment we've talked about that too, and like with the pre construction, this needs to start then, and with the routing, like, exactly get that data first and then make your route, and then do an inspection so you're, you know, double tapping it. Absolutely. I'm pre existing or current right away center in place. Right now we have that that information is publicly available from us gs recent landsat nine to some of the other wide are related. That literally isn't your thing. I can't act that I don't understand that. I know what's there and I can get that that's absolutely right. That information is there, having or utilizing that or trying to incorporate it. Absolutely extraordinary. That's just one of those things that we can simply take the ground in and realize that you're absolutely right.


I think it's always been a bigger rivalry. It goes from years and years back when I played and before I played. It goes back to Coach Brew and Coach Howard and all the battles that they had. The main thing about it is the schools are real similar in size. Academically, both do well, usually in the top 10 of the state. So we competed everything and we feel like football is right there at the top. Big pride game and our guys are taking a little extra pride in this week.  Really hopped up and I mean, they're going to have a good team. We got a good team and I remember a semi-state. There were four rows deep out of the stands with fans. I mean, it's just unreal and you know, we go back and forth always and but we don't want to do that this year. We want to beat them and that's what we're going to do Friday. Well offensively, we have to do a little better job staying on our blocks. Offensively, we have to be able to establish the run game, which I don't think we did well last week. Defensively, I think we played better last week, but we'll have to play better to contain a Kent Phelps and some of those guys, Darren Morris and they got a really good football team and what to play well in all phases of the game. I'm just proud of these guys that come out and work, you know, really hot out here the past couple of weeks and they come out and work hard and prepare and I think there's a little extra focus this week. So I'm real proud of our guys.  Like we got beat last year, week two and you know, like probably helped us more and it hurt us last year, but we don't want to do that. We want to go 10-0 this year and then win the last five too. So we need everybody out to come out and support us. Friday night, 7.30, Hillard Howard Field be here, baby. Popwell versus Pantsville.


The MTT antibacterial assay is a quick and efficient way to measure the antibacterial activity of natural compounds. However, it can be difficult to accurately measure the results due to the presence of background color and bacterial cells. To overcome these issues, a silica gel column chromatography method was developed which combines with the MTT assay to remove the background color and bacterial cells prior to the formation measurement stage. This method is particularly useful when testing phytochemical extracts that have an interfering color. This article was authored by Don Shasher when Leon Su, Marie Wong, and others.