20 Years and Counting!

I am extremely happy and proud to announce that BGES, INC. is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month!  Since our first project (a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment in Anchorage) in 2002, BGES has tripled the size of its staff.  We have expanded our service offerings to include many additional environmental activities, and it has been exciting every step of the way!  In 2015, BGES conducted its first project outside of the state of Alaska, in Hawaii.  In 2018, we opened a satellite office in Seattle.  None of our success would have been possible without the support of our clients, vendors, and friends.  Thank you so much for the past 20 years of memories; we look forward to making new ones over the next 20 years.

Day at the Beach

BGES got to spend a couple days at the beach last summer, collecting clam and sediment samples. The samples were then analyzed for various compounds to evaluate the safety of clam digging for the local community. Unfortunately, toxic compounds tend to accumulate in clams, making them unsafe for consumption, as was the case in this situation. The clams will be resampled periodically and hopefully the community can harvest them again in the future.

BGES Remains Open during Coronavirus Pandemic

BGES has received written confirmation from the Anchorage Mayor’s Office that we are considered a “Critical Business”, and also from the Governor’s Office in the State of Alaska that we are an “Essential Business” and we are to remain open at this time. The safety of our personnel and clients is of the utmost importance to us; thus, we have established virtual private networks for all of our personnel such that they can work primarily from home. When working in the field, we are also practicing social distancing per the CDC guidelines.

Blast from the past - project spotlight

BGES assisted the Municipality of Anchorage with a Historic Preservation Plan that was published in 2013. The plan was designed to highlight the historic character of the four original neighborhoods in Anchorage (Government Hill, Downtown, South Addition, and Fairview). For this project, BGES conducted a survey of historical buildings in the Fairview neighborhood (where our office is located) and identified 519 buildings that were eligible (based on age) for the National Register of Historic Places! Of those, 46 were found to be individually significant, and 191 were found to be significant within a historic district. To learn more, read the full report.

PFAS: an environmental crisis

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been around since the 1940s, but have not been studied much until recently. It is now known that these substances do not break down, but rather they accumulate in the environment and in our bodies. Although PFAS are not manufactured in the US anymore, they are still manufactured in other countries. Across Alaska, PFAS have been identified in the soil and groundwater at many military sites and airports as a result of using products such as aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) to put out fires. In communities that rely on groundwater for drinking water, this contamination can have serious consequences - some PFAS compounds are known to be carcinogens.

In 2019, BGES collected soil samples for PFAS analysis, which requires a different protocol than typical soil sampling. Many sampling supplies that we typically use can contain trace amounts of PFAS (like notebooks, ice packs, waterproof clothing, or even hand cream), and some supplies can interfere with the detectable amounts of PFAS through adsorption (such as glass sample containers). Since most states have very low cleanup criteria for PFAS, those trace amounts can make a significant difference on the analytical results via cross-contamination. BGES is pleased to add PFAS sampling to our scope of services, and we are available to answer your questions about this emerging dilemma.

President of BGES interviewed by Alaska Business Magazine

This article (https://digital.akbizmag.com/issue/august-2019/assessing-environments/) by Brad Joyal of Alaska Business Magazine describes some of the important work that environmental scientists are doing throughout Alaska.

excerpt from the article “Assessing Environments”:

“One thing that comes up all the time in Alaska soils is arsenic. It’s naturally occurring and it exceeds the DEC cleanup criteria. The DEC becomes concerned with arsenic if it’s from what appears to be a potential man-made source.”

–Bob Braunstein
President, BGES

Robert Braunstein now a Certified Professional Geologist in Washington State

Robert Braunstein, the principal of BGES, has long been a Certified Professional Geologist in the State of Alaska, and recently acquired the same title in the State of Washington. This means that BGES is better able to provide our full suite of environmental consulting services to clients in Washington. We are excited that we can now offer our high quality services to a broader geographical range! If you are in need of environmental consulting services for projects in the Pacific Northwest, we would love to hear from you!