Parisi FSCD Internship 2016 1

Summer at Freehold Soil

Renee M. Parisi
Stockton University

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2
Abstract

This report will cover my personal experience interning for the Freehold Soil
Conservation District between May24th-August18th. Topics that will be discussed include
detailed descriptions of my day to day tasks, the tools and information I used to complete these
tasks, and what I was able to take away from my experience.
Keywords: Basin, GIS, GPS, Riprap, Outlet Control Structure
Summer at Freehold Soil

Introduction to Regulation
My internship experience was with the Freehold Soil Conservation District located in
Freehold NJ. This particular district regulates all of Middlesex and Monmouth County. The Soil
Conservation Districts are located throughout every county, and their job being of course to
conserve soil by regulating building plans of anything causing a disturbance of more than 5,000
square feet of soil. Any building, pool, addition, tennis court, park, etc., all needs to be regulated
to keep soil from being removed from the site during and after construction. The districts receive
engineering blue prints and soil erosion and sediment control plans for every site in their
jurisdiction. The plans are then reviewed to make sure they have calculated the appropriate
practices and then get certified for building. Many plans have to be adjusted and sent back
because of errors with handling storm water and runoff along with not following the big book of
rules and regulations. On my first day I met with my supervisor, Paul Califano, and was handed a
thick binder to read. This large color coated binder consisted of all the laws and rules for every
type of regulation. Of course, I was told I didnt have to read the whole thing, but that I should
familiarize myself with the sections titles and the vocabulary. It became quickly apparent that
this binder was a sort of life line or guidebook to every single plan that came through the door.
Even though I personally would not be in charge of certifying plans, I did learn how to
preview them for my boss and take down notes of anything that didnt look right by using this
binder. Of course reviewing and certifying plans is not the only job for the Soil Districts and this
binder was not the only tool. A large part of the job is actually keeping up to date on these files.
In the office there are two large rooms of file cabinets that contain plans. The smaller room is
designated active plans which contains all the files of plans that are currently under construction,
which is mostly 2016-2004. However, they do still have plans from as far back as 1976 that are
still active and going. In the larger room there are cabinets called the archive, which consist of
every final project in the past 8 years. Projects must be kept for eight years after being final in
case anything goes wrong or an engineer needs information. Besides keeping these thousands of
files organized by hard copy, they of course have computer databases as well to organize and
update these files. The Freehold district actually made their own GIS program and their own
program called Tree in Microsoft Access. These two programs I learned to navigate over time,
but I started with the GIS program.
The FSCDGIS system was created by and for the Freehold District alone. While this
system isnt ArcGIS itself it is a program made to be similar. This program holds aerial
photographs from 1995-2002 of Middlesex and Monmouth county. The program holds

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information on quads, watershed, soil type, and much more. Through the road finder tool you
type in the address and road in the town of choice and the road is highlighted on the map. You
can then zoom in and plot a point on the center of the lot you are looking for and record the
coordinates. This is called mapping and routing. When new files come in the location is found in
GIS and a point in plotted in that location. Basins are also plotted and this keeps track of all
active projects in the system. These projects are color coordinated to indicate their stage of
progress or if they are a problem site. On my first day, I did a lot of mapping and routing,
sometimes it is very difficult to find sites because the FSDGIS uses old photos and information.
A lot of times, streets havent even been built yet, when this happens google earth becomes quite
handy. The first step to finding a location is of course to open up the actual plan and try to find a
cross street, along with recognizing hints about the project. Hints can include a shed, a porch, an
unusual shape of a wall, and of course if it is one or two stories, or a demolition project. All of
these can be found on the plan. Once you have an idea of what you should be looking at, cross
streets can sometimes be helpful in bringing you near the ideal location. When cross streets cant
be located you can use google earth to locate the site and then try to find a location or street that
GIS has as well. Once you find that familiar point on both screens, you can back track on GIS
following google earth as a guide to get your point to where the site should be.
The GIS program was not only helpful for plotting points, of course as mentioned earlier
it holds more information than just that. Although the GIS program and the Tree program are not
actually linked, they are manually supposed to be. However, sometimes the system fails and
when adding new programs like the watershed program, the information in Tree doesnt match
the information in GIS. This is where I started to spend a lot of time in the Tree/Watershed
program. When you first open the Tree program it brings you to a basic form where you search
the application number and information gets filled in about it. This information includes things
such as the last inspection date, the file status, the block ant lot, the address, the responsible
party, and so on. In the past five years, a new form has been added onto this basic Tree data
sheet. By clicking the watershed button that is linked to the basic sheet, a new watershed form
opens up. This large form includes an enormous amount of important information needed. This
watershed program was requested by the NJDEP, to keep track of all the basins in the counties.
Some of the information on the sheet includes number of basins, discharge point, type of basin,
quad, county, major watershed, sub watershed, coordinates, engineering coordinates, GPS status,
responsible party, engineering company, measurements and so on. Since this new sheet of
information has only been implemented in the past five to ten years, it was my job to use the list
of every known site with a basin before that time, find the plan, and fill all the missing sheets in.
While very tedious, the couple of weeks I spent doing this really helped me find my way around
the files and learn the systems in and out. A lot of times files were not where they should have
been and some had even been accidentally thrown away. The archive room had a system which
was being redone at the time, but was only halfway redone, so everything was kind of in the
wrong place and there were files everywhere.
Once I had finished collecting and inputting all of the missing watershed data, it was time
to start fact checking the coordinates. This meant that I had to go out and drive to sites with
basins and take the GPS coordinates of the basin. I also had to take pictures of the inlets, the
outlets, and the discharge points. Once back at the office, I would then fact check with the
information on the watershed form, my coordinates and pictures against the engineers
coordinates and plans. This part of the project would take years so I only did it in my spare time
but I still got a significant chunk of it done.

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Inspections
The other half of my job at Freehold Soil was going out with someone and conducting
inspections. Every person in the office has a handful of towns they are in charge of and each of
them must go out and perform inspections of the job site every six months. Some projects take
years and others are done before we even get around to inspecting them. During inspections my
favorite person to ride along with was Ben or as I call him, Steven Tyler, because he looks like he
walked straight out of Aerosmith. Bens area consisted of Long Branch, Rumson, Sandy Hook,
Sea Bright, Monmouth beach, Wall, Deal, and a few others. Obviously shore house construction
is a lot different and more unique than other places in New Jersey. I guess what I liked most
about it is that the people building had A lot of money so mainly we were inspecting mansions on
the water, which is a lot more exciting then inspecting a warehouse. I will be completely honest I
had no idea that money like that existed in New Jersey. I inspected houses with 11 floors and
elevators and a guest house bigger than my actual home. We are talking driveways with brick
from original Chicago, Glass imported from Germany, like crazy custom homes it was insane.
Now of course people with money like to think that they can just do what they want regardless of
the rules and regulations, sometimes it was difficult dealing with them. Even regular contractors
were hard to deal with at times and thats simply because they are just bad contractors. Most
people follow the rules and wont fight us, but others swear under their breath when they see our
vehicle pull up. When we conduct inspections we typically look for certain things such as labeled
concrete wash out stations, tracking pads at all truck entrances, silt fences, stabilized slopes and
basins, things like that. It really isnt hard to follow the rules, but its amazing how some people
really cant do it. One example is a temple that was being built in Wall, the concrete wash outs
were not labeled and the trucks were washing their concrete out anywhere they wanted. They
also had no silt fence so dirt and construction garbage was all over the residential road and when
it rained mud was everywhere. When we consulted the contractor in his trailer, we also
discovered he was not checking his storm water plans regularly and was not running tests to
make sure his pipes were big enough and there was no overflow or flooding. Another issue we
encountered was at a coast guard site at the end of Sandy Hook, who didnt have tracking pads. I
think the biggest issue I saw was with a Costco in Monroe who was actually getting sued by the
NJDEP because they destroyed a basin. This Costco had a warehouse and parking lot and a
stabilized basin until they decided to expand the warehouse. Whoever calculated the storm water
run-off calculations did not do their job correctly because the basin was being eroded at an
alarming rate. So much in fact that it was undercutting beneath the parking lot. Despite rip rap
aprons and hay bales it was all being washed away. We had told them to plug the basin in the
meantime but they didnt listen and colloidal water was leaking into a stream that went two
towns over. While it was explained to me we didnt regulate colloidal water, we could still issue
a tip on it to DEP. As we handed out fine after fine and stop work orders, the contractor pointed
fingers at the engineer the engineer pointed fingers at Costco who pointed finger at the contractor
and it just went round and round. I was told our job was to regulate, it didnt matter whose fault
it was it just needed to get fixed, everyone kept pointing fingers, and now everyone goes to court.
Of course, not every site was such a big deal, most of them just had to fix a silt fence or hydro
seed a slope. Some sites did have issues such as people living in homes without getting a
Certificate of Occupancy, and a lot of times, projects being built and even finished without
giving us a 48 hour notice that they were starting.

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Impact
During my internship experience I learned that I am a hard worker who doesnt
mind getting her hands dirty. Often times I would finish my work and have to wait for people to
find more work for me to do or even create work for me. I even spent time helping the
secretaries. I learned that I am good for more than just one place in the office, and I am more
than willing and equally as happy, to help someone else. I dont mind odd jobs or tedious or semi
dirty jobs, I like to keep busy and I like to feel productive. During my time at Freehold Soil I
progressed in almost every field but I feel as though I grew the most in the regulation side of the
job. When I started my internship I had no idea how to conduct inspections and I had never held
and looked at an actual blueprint before. Learning how to read blue prints can be challenging at
first but I feel fairly confident now that I know what I am doing and I am able to figure out a
decent amount of information. And of course knowing how to go out and conduct inspections,
knowing what to look for and how to deal with people about the matter is an important skill that
I didnt have before. Some of the insights I gained toward environmental science is that it isnt as
big and scary as school sometimes makes it sound. I mean of course you can be a real hard core
scientist and do amazing ground breaking research but that is probably not what I am going to be
doing with my life. Everyone I worked with was very nice and eager to help me if I needed it.
A lot of times I ended up helping others and the whole office was impressed with the knowledge
I had coming in which made me feel really prepared. I shared my actual office with two people
that work for DEP and got two completely different insights. One of them was an angry drunk
who couldnt wait to retire and told me to stay away from DEP, the other was a Stockton
graduate who graduated when I was a freshman. He told me that he loved his job but he also
wasnt like the rest of the Monkeys down in Trenton. He actually rarely worked in Trenton and
mostly worked from home or wherever else which I thought was really neat. He told me a bit
about his job and where he started and places to apply and which jobs I should stay away from.
Most of the people in my office seemed to agree on the impression that the DEP pays more and
gives better benefits but most people there hate their jobs and dont seem to do anything besides
office work. I also got the impression that old people dont like their jobs and they would just
like to retire already, but everyone else seems to be fine with the place they are in. As far as I am
concerned, I know environmental science is the right field for me. This internship made me
aware of being more cautious of jobs offered with the DEP and also helped me decide what kind
of work I would be okay with. I wasnt thinking too much into regulatory work at first, but after
my internship I realized that my job at Freehold Soil was pretty much the perfect fit. I spent
enough time doing paper work in the office and using GIS and the computer and enough time in
the field to not feel cooped up. I think the only difference I would make is that I wish they had a
little more work for me and that I wouldnt mind really what I was regulating, as long as the
process is similar. I really did enjoy using GIS and looking at blueprints though so it would be
cool to be able to do that in a future career. To prepare myself for regulatory work I certainly
took the right internship and the right classes. I really do feel confident that I will have enough
knowledge to find what I am looking for in a career. I think one thing I should do is familiarize
myself with organizations and of course regulatory laws and rules to put myself ahead.

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Evaluation
Looking back at this past summer I can honestly say that even though I had to
wake up at 5:30 every day and didnt get home until 4:30, I still loved going to work every day.
This internship met my personal expectations, I did the busy work that I expected to do as an
intern, but then I also was not slaving all my time away. The people I worked with really wanted
me to get involved and get hands on experience. They constantly asked me what I wanted to
learn and if I felt like I was getting enough experience. They really wanted to work for me and
give me the tools I needed. I didnt expect to be trusted with as much as I was or to be able to
have the opportunity to do as much as I was. I would definitely recommend this internship to
anyone who is even slightly interested. I gained a lot of knowledge and the people in the work
place were awesome to work with and a great help to me.

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