Feature - Summer Interns Get Valuable Experience In Stream Restoration

Two summer interns with Stream Restoration, Inc. and BioMost, Inc. relate their experiences in watershed restoration in the August issue of The Catalyst published by the Slippery Rock Watershed Coalition reprinted below.

Hello everyone! My name is Bryan Page and I am one of the lowly interns Stream Restoration Inc. has hired for the summer. First and foremost I would like to thank everyone at SRI for this awesome internship and experience.

The activities I have been part of this summer have taken me everywhere and doing just about anything. I have been planting seeds, live stakes and saplings at many different locations, installing weirs, building miniature vertical flow ponds and fighting a cantankerous lawn mower, just to mention a few things.

Before I get into what I have been and will be doing around the office, I would like to give some of my history that has brought me to this internship.

I was born in Meadville, Pa in 1985 and remained there until I left for college. During my junior year, while pursuing my chemistry degree at Slippery Rock University, I discovered the Environmental Geo-science degree and the Geography, Geology and the Environment Department. After a brief, but exhilarating, talk with Dr. Patrick Burkhart, i was sold and switched my major from chemistry to environmental geoscience.

In the GGE department I was given opportunities that not many other college students have. I have traveled to the Finger Lakes in New York, Seneca Rocks in West Virginia, the coast of Rhode Island, camped on the shores of Lake Erie, made countless trips around Western PA and my personal favorite, I camped in the Badlands of South Dakota for 8 days where when the sun rose, there were bison in camp. Also, I have attended conferences in Denver, Colorado and Philadelphia.

Another great opportunity was to have the ability to do research with Dr. Burkhart. working with him proved to be the greatest opportunity I have at SRU. I ahve done two poster presentations at two different Northeastern Geological Society of America conferences and have been published in a peer reviewed field guide. I would also like to extend a thank you to Dr. Burkhart for his generosity, guidance and friendship throughout my last years in school.

This internship is the final step for me to receive my degree in Environmental Geoscience and I will also graduate with a degree in Environmental Chemistry.

This internship is another example of a great opportunity not many others get-- the people I work with are tremendous, I get to work both outdoors and inside (mostly outdoors) and I truly believe that Stream Restoration Inc. is doing good for the community and the environment.

One of the first jobs that I worked was one of the plantings where I would go to various sites and plant seeds, live stakes, or samplings which was interesting to me because I had never worked with a dibble bar (a tool for planting saplings). The dibble bar is fun to say and to use.

After doing a couple of plantings I was sent to build weirs. A weir is basically a dam in a stream that can measure the discharge of the stream. For me that means I get to do carpentry in the woods.

One of my favorite jobs so far was building a miniature Vertical Flow Pond (VFP) at a site in Luzerne County. when I was given the task of building the VFP, I decided that due to the amount of work and distance from my house that I could camp at the site. I spent two days outside working in the woods by myself and got paid!

That deal does not get much sweeter for myself. Except for my battles with SRI's lawn mower, the work I have done with them has exactly what I wished my years of scholastics would bring. I look forward to our next big project: building an aerator at Fox Run Phase II, which should prove to be the most arduous task yet.

My name is Doug Buehring and I am an intern at BioMost, Inc. this summer. I am currently a senior at Penn State University studying Environmental Systems Engineering and minoring in Meteorology.

I was born in Bethel Park Pa in 1987, where I have lived my entire life. In 2006 I graduated from Bethel Park Senior High School and sent to school at Penn State Main Campus that fall.

Originally I started in Meteorology since it was a topic that I have been interested in my entire life. I switched my major to Environmental Systems Engineering my sophomore year of college based on a recommendation from my advisor. I still enjoy Meteorology, so I decided to minor in the subject instead. When I'm not at school studying my life away, I enjoy sports and traveling.

Last summer, I studied abroad at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. After my course ended, my friend and I backpacked through Italy, Switzerland and Germany for 10 days. Last winter break, a couple of my friends and I decided to drive across the country from Tennessee, where my roommate lives, to Los Angeles and San Diego, California. I learned a great deal about different cultures and life in general from my travels.

This summer I wanted to have a first-hand experience dealing with the major that I am pursuing, which led me to obtain an internship position this summer with BioMost, Inc.

So far this summer at BioMost, Inc., I have been developing a market for the iron and manganese oxide that BioMost recovers in their passive treatment systems.

Currently, I have looked into the possibility of putting the oxides into building products (concrete, tile, bricks, etc.) and fertilizer. I ahve done some testing with them by adding the metals to the concrete as a colorant. The results were somewhat discouraging since it took a large amount of manganese to significantly change the color. I am currently in the process of determining if the manganese adds any strength to the concrete. Also, I added some manganese to the soil to determine how the plants respond to different levels of manganese.

In June, I attended a conference on Green Building Products and found out that when our products are mixed into building products, they can be used to obtain LEED (green building standards) points.

Another aspect of my internship is trying to see if any companies want to test our metals in thier pdoucts. With the oxides being a recovered materials, many companies that use recycled materials in thier products have expressed great interest.

Currently I have sent samples to five companies. They have yet to test the samples, but a couple of them have expressed long-term interest.

Hopefully, in the upcoming weeks, I will find more companies that are interested in the materials and maybe even get a commitment from one of them long-term.