>> Charlotte Sharon: My name is Charlotte Sharon, and I'm an Environmental Scientist
at a small environmental consulting firm.
So, the majority of what I do is involving the water quality monitoring that we do
for developers, primarily in Montgomery County, so they have certain requirements they have
to follow during construction and after construction.
My day is pretty much different every day I come to work, which I really enjoy that.
[Background Noise]This is the flow meter this is flow rod.
When we get down there, I will hook them up, and the flow rod goes into the stream,
and the flow meter gives you the velocity of the water as it's coming through.
Prior to construction on these sites, we install ground water wells,
and we have to go out check the level every month.
We have two [inaudible] flow readings which in certain streams on the site which sort
of helps us gauge how much water is coming through the streams which can increase
which can increase when there is an increase in impervious surface and that sort of thing.
We do storm sampling, so during rain events, we will gather water samples at various BMPs
which are best management practices, and during construction those are like sediment traps.
You know, as they are grading the land, there's a lot of dirt being moved around basically,
and during rain events, that can be washed into waterways, so they put these sediment basins
on there that are supposed to capture the majority of the run off and sediment
and let the sediment sort of filter out before the water is discharge into the stream.
So, we have to capture the amount of water coming in and what's going out,
and then we sample that for sediment, and in post construction, we also sample for pollutants
and nutrients, so heavy metals and things like that.