About 30 students from Dr. Paul Imhoff’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Hydrogeology class were introduced to water level and water quality monitoring instruments and drilling equipment on March 21, 2019 at the DGS building. This is the seventh year that students in this class got a firsthand view of a small part of DGS research operations. Dr. Imhoff finds “This tour has been very, very helpful for students in the past, since actually get to see and touch some field equipment related to groundwater systems.”

Senior Research Technician and licensed driller Steve McCreary explained how the drill rig and drilling tools work and are used in both DGS research and the outside engineering consulting world for structural design, natural resource exploration, and environmental contamination studies. Tools and samples of earth materials collected by the DGS drill rig were available to the group for hands-on examination.

Hydrogeologist Scott Andres demonstrated a variety of tools and instruments used to collect information on groundwater levels and quality and explained that the data are used in many applications in government and industry. Students had opportunity to use an electric tape to measure a groundwater level in a DGS well. They also used a multi-sensor water quality meter to measure the amount of salt in several samples where they learned how just a small amount of salt will make water unusable for drinking and some industrial processes as well as being toxic to aquatic life. Salt contamination of water supplies is a critical issue for Delaware, being a low-lying coastal state in close proximity to salty water.