HowTo – Interviewing candidates for categorical sites

Priority: medium
Updating: mature

Change log:

When	Who	Comment
2021 08 13	Sp17	First version partial.
2021 08 28	Sp17	First full draft version to provide to Frank Rossi.
2021 09 08	Sp17	Minor additions. Added a description of how to involve another Cornellian via Zoom from Ithaca to onsite meeting area, possibly in field. The person in Ithaca will not have the advantage of drinking in the field but the video will help. They should also have the site QGIS maps present.
2021 09 29	Sp17	First reviewable version. Ready for pilot testing.
2021 10 01	Sp17	Reformatted for export in DOCX.
2022 03 17	Sp17	Added more complete notes about how to get well completion reports from NYS DEC via a Freedom of Information request.
2022 10 13	Sp17	Updated the description of how we interact with DEC for site approval and how we forecast to the owner how we will interact with them over the full course of the project. This is a synopsis covered in fuller detail in other HowTos. Bumped from 85 to 90%.
2023 06 05	Sp17	Updating and copy-editing for DEC review.
2023 06 21	Sp17	Convert to Markdown.
2023 09 28	Sp17	Closed to 100%, no other updates.

Cross references:

1. Objectives

Interact with owner and observe the site enough to determine if it is physically viable to monitor at the site.
Interact with owner enough for them to be comfortable with our presence, with monitor well installation (if needed) and with Cornell periodic visits for sample collection.
Begin site characterization.

This HowTo is intended to standardize the interactions with landowners before an agreement has been reached between owner and Cornell to proceed. This is initially generic and will need to have some specialized deviations for some of the eight categories.

Cornell = staff member of Cornell BEE Soil and Water Lab.

2. Before any contact

The site will have been nominated based on map overlaying, reconnaissance (“windshield surveying”), their company website, and recommendations by others. We will have identified a person in authority.

Whenever possible, obtain an introduction from an acquaintance in common whom they trust.

3. Preliminary screening interaction

This is intended to fit into a 15 minute phone call. It may require an earlier scheduling contact via email or a voice call to identify a person and set a time.

Objectives:

Build their confidence in our intentions and us.
Determine their potential interest.
Verify most important aspects of site suitability: pesticide use and shallow groundwater presence. (There are some special cases of deliberately lesser vulnerability.)
Determine if they have working wells.

The interaction, by voice phone:

how we identified them, including if we were referred by anyone they know
describe project
- DEC Bureau of Pest Management and our group at Cornell are setting up a monitoring network for pesticides in groundwater in upstate New York. This is a research project about vulnerability of groundwater upstate when pesticides are used responsibly. There have been contaminated wells on Long Island, but we expect much less impact upstate.
- This will include cooperating land owners in several pesticide using categories.
- The cooperator will be anonymous to DEC and to the public. All interactions will be with Cornell. Cornell’s contract with DEC deliberately allows privacy for cooperators.
- The cooperator receives the results for wells on their site and all cooperators will receive the blended/anonymized version across all cooperating sites. DEC will use the latter.
- If queried:
  - We prefer to sample from existing wells, but can install temporary ones and remove them later. Ideally the property’s drinking water well will qualify.
  - We have a history of this work back to around 2000 focusing on sampling from rural household wells; data are on web at https://soilandwaterlab.cornell.edu/overview-2/ ; current 5-year project will focus mostly on closeness to known pesticide uses.
Objective 1: Do they use any pesticides regularly?
- We prefer sites that are average or above in usage for the category. This is usually not determinable because a candidate will not know much quantitatively about their peers’ pesticide use.
Objective 2: Is their groundwater shallow enough to measure?
- Briefly describe what maps and well logs for their vicinity indicate.
If they do not decline and are not ruled out on pesticide use or groundwater depth terms, set up an appointment to visit and interview them.
- This visit will include more than one Cornell person, thus have everyone’s schedule handy.

4. Before the agreed visit

Organize geographic data about the site in QGIS. Have it easily usable on a laptop while onsite. This includes at least: digital aerial photo, SSURGO county soil map, USGS topo quad, NYS surficial geology, DEC principal aquifers. Get well completion reports for vicinity:

Look around the candidate site in QGIS and make a note of which “waterwells” are nearby and representative of the site. The wells have numbers called DEC_Well_N on the QGIS layer.
Fill in a form on a NYS DEC Freedom of Information website to request the “water well completion reports” by number, grouped by county. We batch them up to ask one time for as many as possible. We ask that they not disclose to the DEC Pesticides people which ones we are requesting.

https://openfoil.ny.gov/#/newfoilrequest

Mention geologist Beth Guidetti (beth.guidetti@dec.ny.gov) in each request to speed processing. She fulfills via email or there is a weblink mailed for downloading.
These arrive after initial discussion with a site but we usually have them by the time of the first visit. They are helpful to have on the visit to browse while we walk outside to sense the direction of groundwater flow.

Print leave-behind material such as maps, short version of project scope of work, contact info for our visitor(s) and their superiors.

Bring any applicable Cornell pest management recommendation books for their categories.

5. During the early visit(s)

Interviewer is at least one senior Cornell project person, possibly accompanied by a junior one to take notes and learn interviewing. The person making the phone contact will be one of the visitors. Continuity of people between Cornell and the candidate is very important.

The first visit may simply be a short icebreaker, to establish rapport and confirm interest. We take our time, but we are sensitive to taking up their time. We should not be in a hurry.

The first or later visits will begin to link pesticide use on the site with potential wells to sample, via insight into groundwater flow directions discovered by advance mapping, “windshield surveying”, and walking around the site.

Review proposed visit agenda. Anything particularly important to them?

Eventual objective 1: Pesticide use: Review their pesticide use history and plans: which products, what times of year, on what crops and fields or in which greenhouses. Go back a few years and think about what is next. (Retrieve product labels afterward.)

Make sure that we know the active ingredients of all significant products.
Follow-up afterward: Make sure that there are some active ingredients that the DEC lab can test for.
This aspect may need to be delayed, since it requires a greater degree of trust.

Possibly: Take special note of the property’s pesticide storage and mixing areas. This is to ensure that there are no concentrated sources that a well might pick up.

Objective 2: Groundwater flow and monitoring opportunities

Get a sense of the parts of the property where different pesticides are used. Sketch on paper map (aerial photo) brought to the session. Note any tile drains and their outlets.

Are there any soil strata that impede downward flow? Drainage tiles are an indicator of this, unless there is a very shallow general water table. True principal aquifer areas (note that official aquifer maps are not good at site level) tend not to have impeding strata. Also use nearby well completion reports.

How deep is the groundwater?

What are the groundwater flow directions? Seepage faces? Look for nearby streams and topography in advance. Wetlands tend to be groundwater discharge areas.

Do they have their own well logs or other info about the strata?

We will bring driller reports filed with DEC for year >=2000 wells that have anything useful about strata on the site.

Where are existing onsite wells that might be sampled over time? Is there provision to run them to waste to get fresh groundwater into them (“purging”), and to then take a sample? Safe access to the well for a Cornellian?

A household well of the owner or a well used for drinking water for employees.