Northwest Environmental Training Center (NWETC) Past Events

You’ve been to training on the basics, the fundamentals, the essentials, the step-by-step. You’ve been to refreshers and updates. It’s time to take the National Environmental Policy Act to the next level – Advanced NEPA. NEPA is often criticized for costing too much, taking too long, and accomplishing too little. If you have any role in the NEPA process, you have a stake in the answers discussed in this seminar. You are encouraged to bring your own questions for discussion and resolution. This is a seminar format with significant time reserved for discussion rather than lecture. Handout materials are substantial and based on statutes, regulations, and case law rather than on opinion or past practice. Expect a fast-paced day. During this seminar the questions that do not arise in the basic courses will be asked and answered – questions related to the categorical exclusion, the environmental assessment, the finding of no significant impact, and the environmental impact statem

This training course will present the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) practitioner with a set of practical skills for preparing either an Environmental Assessment (EA) / Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) or Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and includes all the required content, as well as practical skills for safely leaving out unnecessary content. NEPA lessons will come from various project examples. Major themes include: how to make the findings required by law; timing the NEPA process to the decision making process; eight good legal reasons not to prepare an EIS; scoping a reasonable range of alternatives; writing the “perfect” cumulative effects analysis; and administrative record. This course includes a substantial handout with graphic models, updated case lists that support the models, and sample documents. Each attendee may keep the handout to serve as a reference in the workplace.

This class is taught using real-world environmental data sets and is hands-on using instructor-led examples. It is applicable to anyone that conducts environmental monitoring or uses environmental data for research, management, or policy-making and is recommended for anyone needing to become proficient with R basics. Being proficient in R will help participants be competitive in their chosen fields. After completing this course attendees will be able to: Understand the uses of R for working with environmental data Installing R and R libraries Import and export data from a range of sources including Excel and Access Sorting, merging, and aggregating, subsetting, and converting data Query and display data and generate basic data summaries Create a variety of high quality data visualization graphics Perform common statistical tests including t-tests, ANOVA, and linear models Develop basic scripts to automate and document procedures and analyses

Attendees will learn collaborative negotiations skills that will allow them to look out for their own interests and preserve positive working relationships to use in the future. Participants will learn how to turn negotiations that contain conflict into a more positive dynamic of collaborative problem-solving. This workshop is distinguished by its focus on how participants can simultaneously advocate for their interests while consciously diagnosing and managing the conflict that surrounds their issue. Conflict gets in the way of collaborative negotiations, and adding these conflict management skills to any negotiator or facilitator’s tool kit can increase the chances of success. The principles covered are a combination of interest-based bargaining (win-win negotiations) with the skills mediators use for getting people to resolve disputes. It is built on the proven premise that negotiations and conflicts involve multiple dimensions of interests. Attendees will learn easily applied principles and a straightforward model to plan and engage in negotiations effectively, even when there is conflict.

In this 2-day course, attendees will learn and review both the technical and regulatory approaches to completing ecological risk assessments. Participants will come away with an understanding of the planning and preparation process for the completion of an ERA, including data development needs, selection of endpoints, and the development of lines of evidence. Understanding the topics covered will give attendees the ability to accurately assess the potential for ecological risk, which is paramount to the remedial decision-making process. In today’s environmental project planning, this can make the difference between the success or failure of a recommended action or approach. During the course, attendees will examine the development of ERAs in both aquatic and terrestrial settings, and will receive a broad overview of the ecological risk assessment (ERA) process as it is used in evaluating potential environmental risks and liabilities associated with hazardous waste sites. Emphasis will be placed on providing a hands-on understanding of ecological risk assessment using the basic ERA paradigm as outlined in USEPA’s Ecological Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund (ERAGS). Case studies and active engagement with the attendees will be used to reinforce the points presented in lecture.

In this one-day workshop, we will explore the topic of emerging contaminants related to soil and groundwater remediation. Over the past few years, several agencies and organizations have released strategies and recommendations related to emerging contaminants. In general, emerging contaminants are ones for which incomplete toxicity data exists or for which new data has been released. Emerging contaminants could also be from a new source or have a newly recognized exposure pathway or lower detection limit. This workshop will keep you up-to-date on the topic of emerging contaminants and will give you an understanding of how U.S. agencies such as EPA and DOE are working to develop approaches for dealing with emerging contaminants. We will review U.S. EPA’s recently released Groundwater Remedy Completion Strategy. We will also discuss the chemical and physical properties of emerging contaminants, how these compare to more traditional contaminants, and how these impact the ultimate f

You’ve been to training on the basics, the fundamentals, the essentials, the step-by-step. You’ve been to refreshers and updates. It’s time to take the National Environmental Policy Act to the next level – Advanced NEPA. NEPA is often criticized for costing too much, taking too long, and accomplishing too little. If you have any role in the NEPA process, you have a stake in the answers discussed in this seminar. You are encouraged to bring your own questions for discussion and resolution. This is a seminar format with significant time reserved for discussion rather than lecture. Handout materials are substantial and based on statutes, regulations, and case law rather than on opinion or past practice. Expect a fast-paced day. During this seminar the questions that do not arise in the basic courses will be asked and answered – questions related to the categorical exclusion, the environmental assessment, the finding of no significant impact, and the environmental impact statem

This 2 day course will provide attendees with a wide array of analytical techniques available to fingerprint a variety of contaminants and to address the basic questions involved in any environmental forensics study: 1. What is the contaminant(s)? 2. What is the source(s)? 3. When did the release occur? 4. Is the contaminant degrading? In addition, there will be a discussion of why certain techniques are more appropriate than others, the problems that may be encountered when interpreting results, and what to do if there are no unique answers to some of the above questions. Examples will be provided from a variety of environmental forensic investigations involving a range of contaminants and different issues that have been encountered. Attendees will learn the range of supporting methods used into order to prepare the strongest case possible when presenting findings. The final topic will center around site remediation and how some of the techniques used in topics discussed above

This two-day course includes an overview of key chemistry concepts associated with environmental contamination and provides a foundation for understanding contaminant fate and transport. The concepts discussed are essential for understanding soil and groundwater contamination along with the selection of appropriate remediation approaches. The course begins with a review of basic chemistry concepts that are built upon as more complex topics are introduced. The first day includes a fundamental chemistry overview, covering chemical structure, properties, and reactions for metals and organic chemicals. On the second day, characteristics of subsurface systems are discussed along with detailed descriptions of contaminant transport and degradation mechanisms. A key goal of the class is for participants to become comfortable with the terminology and parameters used in environment chemistry and contaminant transport literature and studies. Concepts are illustrated using examples and historical context. For some examples, participants will use calculators. Spreadsheet models are provided to those interested in using simplified contaminant transport models. Major uncertainties and limitations of modeling approaches will also be discussed.