Last day of diggin'
Shortly after this the 20 year old CASE excavator blew a valve so the guys had to go get the other one. It slowed things down a little bit, but we managed to finish the excavation and even put a good dent in the backfilling before the end of the day Friday.
The only thing to do after this was drive the 3 hours home.
And the hole grows.
This picture was take from about the same angle as the picture from Day 1. Part deux except now I am looking down on the excavation instead of up at it. There was a nice yellowish silty layer that can be seen on the right side of the excavation wall. The impacted soil is that grayish stuff on the left.
Lots and lots of fill was used when this property was built up in the early 1920's. Loads of shalely fill (right side about silt), large concrete blocks and junk...it all made for some very unpredictable hydrogeology and really helped the petroluem move all around and get the soil and water good and dirty.
Workin' day 1 part 2. Soil removal.
**now that Im back home I can write something about this. The job was to remove the upper 12 feet of 'clean' soil cover to get to the petroleum impacte soil. Which it self was about 12 feet thick.
The excavation depth was about 15 feet deep at this location measured from the ground surface at the monitoring well in the foreground.
