In both a progressive and unique move, the West Virginia DEP joined the state’s call-before-you dig, or “One Call” center to help screen for improper excavations at about 100 of the state’s environmental covenant sites. The process requires a daily review of excavation tickets at or near these site which, in turn, allows DEP to alert excavators prior to contact with the area controlled by the covenant: engineered controls are protected, excavators avoid impact with hazardous substances, and residuals are not improperly disposed.
While powerful, the process can be time consuming – requiring a manual process of geocoding and comparing to environmental site locations. Furthermore, as usage of covenants increase within West Virginia, the review burden on DEP will also increase. Recently, as part of an informal collaboration, Terradex brought its One Call screening tool to help West Virginia DEP streamline the process. Once every hour, the Terradex process reads each ticket, generates a dynamic Google Earth map that, in turn, feeds into West Virginia’s existing map of environmental sites, allowing for a quick identification of excavation conflicts. Because excavation tickets come in with varied location precision, the Terradex process also records the “geocoding precision,” allowing for a quick gauge of location accuracy (they’re usually pretty good). The Google Map below shows a sample excavation ticket (the shovel placemark) near a site with multiple environmental covenants on parcels. The sample shows how the excavation can be readily viewed against the hazard (the exclamation point) described in the environmental covenant. Clicking on the shovel shows the excavation details, and clicking on the covenant accesses the covenant.