Starlink, Tank Farm Logistics, and Networking Tips with Shannon Oelkers

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick!

On today’s episode, we talk with Shannon Oelkers, owner and principal consultant for Integrity Environmental about Starlink, Tank Farm Logistics, and Networking Tips.   Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
1:12  Nic & Laura discuss career next steps
6:26  Interview with Shannon Oelkers starts
7:17  Starlink
26:32  Tank farm logistics
45:25  Networking

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Shannon Oelkers at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-oelkers-b8524423

Guest Bio:
Shannon Oelkers is the owner and principal consultant for Integrity Environmental. Shannon previously worked at the State of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation in the Contaminated Sites and Terminal / Tank Farms division, focusing on industrial environmental compliance. Shannon holds a bachelor's degree in Biological Science and a master's degree in Community Development from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has more than a decade of experience inspecting and auditing bulk fuel tank farm operations. Shannon is also an MBA Instructor at Alaska Pacific University. Shannon is well-versed in the unique challenges of completing oil and gas related projects in Alaska.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Nic 
Favorite environmental enthusiast, Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talk about next steps in your career path. Shannon awkward returns to the show and we talked about Starlink tank farm logistics and networking tips. And finally, we all know Alaska is big. Well, let's put that in perspective. Alaska has more coastline than the rest of the United States combined. That also means there are over 3000 rivers and 3 million lakes that is wild if that music.

[NAEP Event News]

Nic
NAEP will be hosting the advanced NATO training virtually on Wednesday, October 25 from 8am to 4:30pm. central time, this workshop will benefit the professionals who work in related natural resource disciplines who work with federal land management, or real estate transactions or agency projects or permitting and transportation or other infrastructure projects with a NEPA review component, register today@www.naep.org. Let's get to our segment.

[Nic & Laura discuss next career steps]

Nic
so in here, we didn't put it this way. But you're starting out. You're now a your junior staff. You've started to get a handle on all the basics of the job. What are your next steps? Where do you go from getting it having the understanding now to applying that in different ways? That's a question for one. Oh, yeah.

Laura
Yeah, I mean, once you're established, you know what you're doing like, You got volunteers and stuff in the beginning right, but then we feel more picky. That was what you're good at. Your work and you've already been volunteering for things. What you know, kind of like you guys were just talking about communication. Always trying to, like know what you like and what is what you want to go where you want to go next. So you can when you get picky about what opportunities you're going for, or that you can create you know, maybe if you want to get into selling work and you're not doing that, you know, can you shadow in other groups can you sell go out and get more work for the company, but if you're not actively paying attention, what you want to do I mean, that's what happened to me. I lost my job. I had a great job, but I wasn't paying attention because like we're headed. So a lot of people can a good job can derail. They're not paying attention to their growth and personal hobbies. So taking all those opportunities and like, you know, building your expertise to an environmental field. You want to remain a generalist or do you want to become an expert like we have a mix of people on the podcast all the time, right. Like there's some people who they just keep pollinators in that that and they're very valuable because of it but generalists can be very valuable as well and they don't have to. One is not better than the other that you need to decide which is best for you.

Nic 
And I'm a generalist, I would say much more so than them as specialists. I mean, yes, I know a ton about NEPA. I can talk about that in my sleep, but I know a little bit about a lot. And that really helps from a sales perspective as well you can I can speak to many different things. So it's really important for me to have at least some general knowledge of other things.

Laura
Yeah, I think that's common you know, that's another thing to question do I want to advance into leadership and leave my field work fine doctor like people do not. Or do I want to be more of an expert in sales in the field or, you know, dark moving inseam publications instead of contracts?

Nic  
Yeah, and I think you know, I don't know if we talked about this in the show, but I kind of see every job as having like one of three things, you know, where we talk about, there's a an element of management and people management, there's an element of technical expertise. And there's an element of business development, right, or sales, whatever you want to call it. And each job has some part of that. Most of them have all three. Even as a junior staff. You're like, why don't really manage people and like, yeah, you do. You still have to get along with your coworkers. You still have to understand what you're what you're being asked to do. By your bosses. So there is some management of people there. And so even when it seems like you're not learning, you are actually in fact, learning from your bosses and your peers, how to manage people to get what you want to need for the job. And it's just like when I say like, try to pay attention to what you need and what you want, what you like, because that kind of helps you gravitate towards one of those three things. And again, you never lose all three. There's no job that's just technical, because even a technical person has to be able to talk to someone and explain it, you know, so it's never just one thing and it's a simplification. You know, obviously, certain jobs are more complicated than that. But I think it's a good kind of rule of thumb, especially when you're starting out and you're just trying to figure out what's next. Right? It's this kind of like thinking about those kinds of things. For someone who has a hard time answering like what do I like? Sometimes you can take in No, we talked about personality tests were about like, sometimes it just gives you a direction. I don't think I think all of those with a grain of salt because every person is different on every day. But it can kind of give you like a direction for me that was very helpful. It was like, Oh, you like to talk to people you like to come up with new ideas you like to think about how things can work together and fit together and solving puzzles, you know, you know, who are graded those things are people who do business development, too. You should try that. And that's what I did. And that's like, oh, wow, I actually really liked this, you know, and so, that actually helped me and, you know, may not be for everybody, but it's kind of like a I had a hard time answering the question like, What do I actually want to do? And that helps.

Laura
Yeah, I mean, that's a good way to just try thing. You can start with it, like that, and then trying to indicate for you to do or just gotten, you know, check it out. Yeah, there's a really great book called The first 90 days. That is, is kind of a little bit more about your like your first 90 days as a new leadership position somewhere, but I think for anybody starting something new. There's a lot of good stuff in there.

Nic 
Yeah. Oh, cool. Well, there you go. So that seems like a lot of really good advice for going from one session to think about next steps. So let's wrap up here and get to our interview.

[Interview with Shannon Oelkers starts]

Laura 
Welcome back to EPR. Today we have Shannon Oelkers, Principal Consultant at Integrity, environmental and host of Tank Talk podcast back on the show. Welcome Shannon.

Shannon Oelkers 
Hey, nice to see both of you again.

Laura 
I know I think this is number three, right? So yeah. What's going on in Alaska since you were here. I think last July. I haven't heard a lot about wildfires or anything this year. It's been a little better.

Shannon Oelkers 
We did have a very wet summer so wildfires were not as big of a concern. As they were last year. Oh, good. And yeah, we've had a very busy summer we've been doing some really interesting projects. And I don't know things are changing in Alaska. We've got some technological advances that are literally transforming how we do things. Oh, tell me more.

Nic 
got excited. All right.

[Starlink]

Shannon Oelkers 
So internet connectivity for rural Alaska has been very limited until very recently. And there's a couple of different major, I guess. They're part of like the Department of there's some sort of federal equity initiative, but they are installing fiber optic cables to places they have never installed them before in rural Alaska, so that they can have internet connectivity at modern rates. And you know, 5g, but in addition to those cable projects, we also have Elon Musk's Starlink now serving Alaska, quite a few people that were underserved, or had no hope of a cable ever coming to them have just transitioned completely to Starlink and it is almost like a miracle. I mean, I went from being unable to check my email to watching a YouTube video on the shores of the Kotzebue sound or being able to post on LinkedIn from all these amazing Moeller which is one of the most remote locations on Earth. It's really far away from everything. So in addition to that some of these cables that have been installed, they still had some issues and were very, you know, expensive. And one of the things about Starlink is that it's very reasonably priced. I mean, I've literally had people paying, like for businesses, paying over $2,500 a month for a very poor internet connected, like capped at 15 gigs. Yikes. Okay

Nic 
for the money or nothing.

Shannon Oelkers 
And under Starlink it's unlimited, and it's for the businesses. I think it's 600 a month and privately it's 90 a month. I mean, just game changer. So one of the things that happened this spring and it actually caught two of my consultants they were in a place called Nome, Alaska, and they landed the airplane and got off the airplane and there's a big cable that goes up or Dalton Highway and then turns left at Prudhoe Bay goes through the key of Baker Barrow and goes through Kotzebue and goes down to know all along this outer shelf of Alaska and that's called the Quintilian cable for the company that installed it. Well, sea ice was much more active this year than it normally is. And so it severed the cable between Prudhoe Bay and yogic Oh wow. So yeah, big Kotzebue and know all had an immediate and total complete loss of internet and cellular service it oh my gosh. Oh, nothing. No ATMs were working. No cards can be taken at the stores. You couldn't get gas it was a huge deal. And they were there in the middle of it like they were trying to get money at the bank to buy food. There was no way to get the ATM to work or to operate and so it was very like it was the shocking but what was equally shocking was that happened on like a Tuesday and a week later, there was like, the Starlink is a little square antenna there was like little square blossoms on every single because I went a week later and they were like you're not gonna have any internet and I went and I was like, actually my phone's working great. And I've got good connectivity and it's because they purchased Starlink in its immediate setup. So as soon as it arrived in the mail, they popped it up. And there goes,

Laura 
Wow, that's really amazing. I've been following the Starlink for a while now. And this is the first time I've heard it in practical applications. So that's really cool.

Shannon Oelkers 
It is a fundamental change and it's giving internet accessibility at lower and lower price points. So communities can, yeah, families can access it. And what I'm finding is it's so for years and I mean, the entire tenure of me doing environmental permitting. So 20 years, all of our records have had to be manual backup. They have to be something you can print or Xerox and you go fill out in hand and keep on site. And we never had the ability to do online fillable forms for example, because they might not have the internet connectivity to fill it out and get it submitted and we actually select we do have fillable forms but we selected it for a company that would save your work while it's offline. And then when you return to online, it was send it and we did that because there was so much broken Wi Fi connectivity, that we didn't want them to lose the work that they were doing. Well now that's all changed and people are like oh, and they can I have had teams meetings with people in both port Mohler and St. Paul Island, which I never I mean, two years ago, I would have said was impossible, like video teams meetings. Oh, wow. He's very remote locations. And it's still not perfect because they are like on the outer edges of the satellite reach, but it's way better than what was available prior. And so we're able to do training videos. Now. I'm training videos I used to have to if we did them, I put them on a USB and I had to send them out in a little mail package. This USB of training and so it's really changing how we're able to do like how we serve our clients because we have technological resources that we've previously been unable to access. So for us, it's been like this big revolution and technology and what we can do and it's exciting.

Unknown Speaker 
Oh, that's

Laura 
really exciting. How do you think like the indigenous peoples are going to access that as well and because I know like when I just got back from Ghana, I was really surprised. It's not startling. But it there I was even surprised they had connectivity as much as they did. And you can see how much it's changing the culture pretty quickly.

Shannon Oelkers  
Well, all of the communities that I spoke about, with the exception of Port Mohler are indigenous communities primarily and so I mean, keep in mind, our indigenous communities are pretty big compared to other places. Like I think has 20,000 people, maybe not entirely sure, maybe 10,000 I don't know they a lot. And like Norman Kotzebue have like 4000 or 8000 people in them, but they're predominantly Native Alaskan populations. And so, they've been utilizing internet for a long time, but it was kind of the best internet access would be at your school district building or at a native corporation headquarters where they could afford those $2,500 A month bills. Sure. And even with that kind of access, they would still have trouble doing something like teams or zoom, because it was just too much data all at once.

Nic 
Like to plan for that right? You

Speaker 5 
can't just like show up and be like, here we are. You gotta get on a schedule and do all these things that

Speaker 4 
well and a lot of times we would land and like people who were supposed to be notified had not because we sent an email, but they didn't get the email, you know, there's just a lot of like connectivity issues with intermittent and like some of the things we deal with like when you go to a gas station and you run your card to get fuel because it's an unintended gas station, right like there's not someone there filling up your vehicle for you. If that credit card machine can't talk via Ethernet link or modem or whatever, to the bank and get authorization. Not only does it not let you buy fuel, but often if that internet connectivity breaks in the middle of it, it can actually cause a 24 hour delay before that meant the credit card machine will accept anything again. Oh, wow. So a lot of our communities would experience a 24 hour loss of revenue because they would be unable to sell fuel unless that was unclogged. And it would take a while for internet connectivity to be restored and then to clear it. And we our firm has spent a lot of time with the manufacturers of those units trying to make sure that they work better. And when we first saw the starlings show up Starlink was not an Ethernet connection, and so some of the older systems wouldn't work with it. But the more modern systems like 10 years and newer, no problem at all. So a lot of a lot of our card lock stations or unattended fueling stations. They have their own Starlink connection just for that credit card machine and it's been working vastly better than what was there before. That's really fascinating.

Nic 
I have like a totally random question, because this was actually like somehow reminding me of a project in Fairbanks, Alaska. And I called the newspaper up there to get an ad published and they were like, Yeah, that sounds great. But we can't take your payment until the internet thaws out. And I thought that they were kidding but now I'm thinking maybe actually

Shannon Oelkers 
this is pretty good. I think they probably had an interruption in service for some reason. I don't I don't know the physical temperature affected the cable but they may have had a cable break or how to go down. Another thing that I've noticed is a lot of cell phone service and you know, things that go on Wi Fi, a lot of communities only, and I'm not entirely sure because I'm not a telecommunication specialist. But for example, when we do spill response, one of the things we can do in really small communities is if everybody's on a cell phone at once, it'll shut it down and everyone gets busy signals and there's only so many open lines that you are allowed as a community. So like, we just did a spill drill in St. Paul. And we were trying to use cell phones to communicate and we It turns out that the city only has like I think 15 or 20 active lines. And so we everything was BB BB anything, no calls to anyone we ended up going to radios from the city. And that worked but it took us a good hour and a half to figure out that cell phones were just not going to work. And then the dispatcher said, you know next time we can let our telecommunications group No, and they can open up 20 or 30 lines, because it costs them money to have more lines and so they neck it down. And I said you're in a real spill. It's good to know. I was like but this is what we needed to know because in a real spill, they're not really going to have that right away. That's going to come later, but it is like a step now that we've got internally to make sure that there's enough communication lines open that we can still make phone calls off Island, you know. So it's just things that you never really think about. I have a feeling in the lower 48 that that's just not even on anyone's radar. Like a critical communication junction.

Laura 
Yeah, we take all that stuff for granted.

Nic 
100% I never even considered that that could happen. What do you mean you only use so many cell phones at once?

Shannon Oelkers  
Right? It just seems ridiculous when you say it out loud. But that's like the reality for a lot of communities, not just one or two. But hundreds of communities.

Nic 
So okay, so your natural disaster like you know, any kind of spill or any kind of anything like that. You're there's no, you don't get to call ahead and be like, hey, there's gonna be a spill four hours from now. So if you could just open up the lines, we'd appreciate that. Sir. Does that mean when you say you have to plan for communications, you're like, Well, we're gonna just go in with radios because we know right away it's not the work isn't that's that's what you do.

Shannon Oelkers 
Okay, yeah. So what we plan for is one that we start with radios so we're not delete you know, with still response. It's critical to get things as quickly as possible if you can turn a valve off and shut off something that's spilling that's going to do weigh more than some of the later actions that you do if you can't get that Valve turned off. So same thing with initial communication if you're trying to get a boat on the water and for it to toe boom. You need to have radio communications with that person because if they get out on the water and you can't reach them on cell phone, it's very difficult to establish that communication connection. And so what we plan for is radios initially, but then we also make sure that in our spill plans that we write, we know who to call to improve local communications, and some of our partners like we partner with different spill response organizations, we're on the planning and drilling, like we write the permits, and we help with the drills. But the actual spill responders who also help with drills, they actually have their own portable Starlink command center things that they can pop up at a site and start having improved communication, but bring it with them in a backpack. It's mobile, you know.

Speaker 4 
But yeah, that's how we plan ahead and that's why we do drills because when they you know, in during the normal course of events, if you're walking around St. Paul Island, you can generally pick your phone up and call because only so many people are using the phones at any given time but during a spill drill, of course that matches up the system and then you have breakdown and communications. So that's why we drill it just to sort of see where the problems are and then we can incorporate that into our lessons learned.

Nic 
I learned something new today. I that is quite incredible. Yeah. Wow. So we mentioned this at the top, you know, you have a new podcast called tank talk, which is a fabulous name. Just putting that out there as someone who loves

Shannon Oelkers 
tanks. You know, I mean, I was still available, but I know you

Nic 
would have thought someone would be talking about like, you know the Abrams tank or whatever fishing tanks. Yeah. There's so many different ways to think talk, you know, that's the way to expand your audience. There you go. You have

Laura 
militant groups, I don't know.

Nic  
So, how long have you been doing it? And what are the kinds of themes for the show?

Shannon Oelkers 
Do you remember King of the Hill when he says I like propane and propane appliances and appliances. Now we started it, I think, April or May of this year, and I had a couple of goals with the podcast is one from being on your podcast, I can see how helpful it was in getting knowledge to different audiences especially like people who are new to industries right like I can see through your podcast how available you are making information about career paths and mentoring and opportunities and I was like, our industry can use this but nobody, of course was doing it. So you know, I thought well, it's bugging me, I better do something. It is also a marketing arm for our company. Because when you are distributing the information and you're good at it, it's a good way to show people that you're an expert. So we originally started it. My goal was to sort of go down our frequently asked questions list and do a little mini lesson on all of these frequently asked questions. Why is record keeping important? What happens if I don't keep my records? What is an internal floating roof you know, like things that people just are not as familiar with? No wonder once you're in the bulk fuels industry and somebody says Do we have internal floating roofs and are doing the inspections if you don't know the answer to that you start sweating then you are on cast that explains all of those things.

Speaker 4 
So that's how it started. And then we started interviewing industry peers, and that's been really fun. We've gotten some really cool interviews, one of the ones we just published. It's I think she is literally the smartest person I've ever spoken to. It's a skeleton Emily roar from the John Z Kammen Corporation and she designs and installs vapor capture units for refineries and bulk fuel farms to reduce vapor emissions. And she explained this very complex technology in like this very straightforward, understandable style and that's when I realized how smart she was because it is not easy to make things simple, especially very complex things. And she went I mean, deep dive, it's an 84 minute interview. It's crazy. And so one it's really interesting to it's very informative for like lots of different kinds of people. But three I get to meet these really cool people and I have a feeling you have the same experience right and wow, I just got to spend an hour and a half with some of them, like this really interesting person and you get to know them better. So that part about the podcast I really enjoy.

Nic  
Yeah, exactly. And it's like it's totally right. I mean, I would say did for us, it's it's very similar. It's just it's so much fun to you know, meet folks and create relationships. And you know, when we go to Alaska, we're gonna say, hey, Shannon, what's up how you doing? Ready? Takes Right, exactly. On it's got let's go play, you know, and you know, that's part of it. But yeah, just you know, the genuine joy of meeting people. is super fun. So that's great to hear. But yeah, it's always kind of a little bit of a challenge to you know, it's not it's not easy work. And I think that's one of the things that most people are like, Oh, you just turn on a microphone and that's it. And it's, it's so not that so.

Speaker 4 
There's a lot of editing. I actually have a full time marketing director for a company and she does a lot of the tracking down people and setting up the time and doing the editing on the back end. And we utilize programs to do things like show notes and stuff like that. But yeah, I think the biggest challenge though, is there's so many there's so much chatter, but I can get you on any podcast of the world. And so when I send a connection request to like, we would like to interview somebody, if I don't have a very specific personal connection with someone at the company, it gets ignored or thrown out as spam. And so I think that's the hardest part for me is that there's some places I would love to interview, but I just don't have that personal connection yet. To get through the spam filters. Oh,

Laura 
Shannon, I feel your pain. person I wasted a good three years it's not an easier

Nic  
so true. Yeah, so hey, how are you? What's up? How you gonna come on our show?

Shannon Oelkers 
Oh, yeah. And then you got to be careful because maybe it's too soon in the relationship and then they think you're weird. Sorry, maybe later.

Nic 
songs were like, like, I would love to get a bit alive and nothing interesting to say and like we just spent an hour talking about the most interesting thing in the world. All you have to do is to do that again. And be like, Well, no, and some people just won't do it. They won't do it. And that's totally fine. Totally understand, but I'm just like, dang it. You'd be so interesting. Yeah.

Shannon Oelkers 
Yeah. We've had a lot of success putting out we have preset questions for them to respond to but ours is very much like we want, we go through the information we want to give to our listeners. And so that does make it a little easier. You guys have more like a, like a free flow conversation,

Laura 
though. That freaks out some of our guests to like, where's the questions? We're like, Nick, there's not really it's not SEC questions.

Shannon Oelkers 
Like I have some interesting stories. Maybe these will be interesting, and you'll want to hear but yeah, for our podcast, it's very much prescriptive. Like explain your technology, explain why it works and why it's necessary. How did you get into this career field about a page from you guys? If we have you know, yeah, we've got to have some career information. I might as well throw that in and it gets people talking a lot sooner to you.

Laura 
Yeah. Yeah, getting those people is hard work. It was easier than beginning because it was like, oh, it's the Nicholas friend hour. And then you know, now we're like, Okay, we've rolled through most of our friends start to get it. And those people I will say, once I get past those, it's also like, the people who don't know you are less likely to hold on to that commitment as well. So you know, you're like, oh, okay, I've have someone and then they're gone. And you're like, oh shoot, I gotta go back to people I knew. So go ahead and shout out Shannon for coming back for her third time. So let's talk about some of those projects that you have been working on. So when you told me about is the Bonanza tank farm stabilization. That sounds pretty interesting.

Shannon Oelkers 
It is. It's one of the most interesting projects we've been a part of, really, it really is just from a scientific perspective. It is really interesting. So the Bonanza tank farm is located in Nome, Alaska, and it is a privately owned business by a native corporation but it stores bulk fuel and it sells heating oil and gasoline products. Sometimes jede not always. And they have nine very large tanks and they are built on a gravel pad. But underneath that gravel pad is a permafrost ones and Nome, as you may remember, had heavy mining, gold mining and its history so most of Nome has a discontinuous permafrost lens because mining interrupt Okay, all places, but at this particular location, it's a native permafrost lens and it has been undisturbed other than having to take farm on top of it. However, it's near the port of Nome. So it's very close to the ocean, there's a river in between it and the ocean. And then there's other tank farms that are on the south side of the road. And some of the other industrial areas in this region. Their permafrost lands is melting and it's causing settlement of pipelines and tanks and buildings, at Bonanza, there's settlement of certain things and they've had to work really hard and spend a lot of money to stop settlement of things like pipelines, right. But their big concern was, are the tanks selling and so we got brought in originally to do tank inspections and look at the tank settlement features and then we got invited to stay for the capital improvement project. And this is where things get really interesting because there's a whole bunch of different engineers that are working to do stabilization of that lens by doing something called passive and active cooling. And so there's an invention up in Alaska called a thermo siphon, this guy named Edie yarmuk invented it was him. But these thermo siphons are basically like little refrigeration tubes that you can drill directionally into things and it'll refrigerate and they use them for building foundations all over the Arctic. But what they're trying to do with this is they're trying to drill them underneath the tanks to stabilize that permafrost lands before it begins melting because and I learned this with permafrost, if it's stable, it's stable, but once it starts warming, it's like a snowball rolling down the hill is it gets warm and then it gets warmer and warmer and warmer and at some point, you cannot cool it enough to return it to stability. So they did tons of geotechnical work, some really advanced like temperature probe sampling, and I just got to be front row seat to this. I didn't get to do any of it. But the interesting thing and the end the part that we played was, they were trying to figure out how to stabilize the permafrost without moving the tanks unnecessarily because moving tanks is risky. There's a lot of regulations that impact tanks, like if they're out of service for more than a year you have to do certain things to them to bring them back into service. And so our firm was brought in to help navigate the regulations. But then we also got Bretton because the tanks themselves if they're left in place, they don't have any insulation except for the fuel.
____________________
Shannon Oelkers 
So our firm was brought in to help navigate the regulations. But then we also got brought in because the tanks themselves if they're left in place, they don't have any insulation except for the fuel. And so they're wanting to try to put some kind of insulating layer underneath the tank or within a second bottom and looking at different art factors. And it's still developing, they have not settled on a final plan yet. But the whole idea that we're trying to stabilize this tank farm for the next 20 to 50 years and utilizing all this really cool technology and information and geotechnical work, it's just I don't know for me it's been a really fun project and I'm stretching and learning a lot of new things. Yeah, right.

Laura 
Okay. So let me ask you some dumb questions because I'm not a tax person. These Okay, so you mentioned out of commission tanks, but some of them are still in use, right? They're all

Speaker 1 
in Utah used to do this project. They were looking at different ways of doing the project and one was to take all the tanks off the top, install a big heavy insulating layer so you have less active cooling so imagine if you will, you've got like an air conditioner and a house but you could also insulate the house to make it not need as much air conditioning right. So we're looking at different ways of insulating this tank farm because the fuel although it's fuel, and it's probably cold ambient air temperature, it's warm compared to the Iceland's underlying and so they were trying to figure out if they needed to take the tanks out of service and move them lay down insulation and then move them back. But that project was so big the tanks were going to be out of service a long time and so they switched to seeing if they could do it with the tanks or meaning in place but adding insulation to the tank itself, and then doing directional drilling underneath the tanks. It's just fascinating and really interesting and I don't know how it's going to end up but they're doing test runs of all these different pieces right now and we're seeing how they turn out Yeah, yeah, it's part of how our coastal regions especially our Arctic coastal regions are having to deal with increasing air temperatures and increased warm seasons and all these different temperature changes are affecting things like permafrost lenses, and we talked about this, I think in our very first one, but there's a lot of coastal impacts in this is very much right on the coast. And yeah, it's changing our infrastructure and part of the reason that this permafrost lens is still intact is this is a I'm gonna use air quotes here a new facility was built in 1994, which by take from standards is almost brand new. And so they have it hasn't been there a long time so that the heatsink effect has not been there for a long time. It hasn't been there since like the 30s for example,

Laura 
is really fascinating. It just seems like though that it's a you know you said 250 years, but with climate change happening and all that is not a permanent solution. Well,

Shannon Oelkers 
I think what we're seeing is so a lot of Alaska's infrastructure was installed between the end of World War Two and the trans Alaska pipeline being completed. So 1950 to 1980. Right. And those were all installed sort of as the modernization of Alaska will most facility infrastructure, you know, in ages and ages, less gracefully and really cold or caustic environments like Scherzi water and you know, and I think what's happening now is when we do capital improvement projects, instead of saying this is going to fix the problem, we're now saying this will fix the problem for 20 years or 50. And then we're going to reassess at that time because nobody really knows but I can tell you when they were doing the temperatures study of the actual permafrost lends itself they ran projections 20 years into the future with the different things on it. And the firm we were working with Golder just did some really advanced technological stuff. So probably, it's like environmental and engineering. It's like the gap. As you know, that's where we live. We're not the environmental, we're more bridging the gap between environmental and engineering. But it was interesting to see their modeling for ambient air temperatures and season shoulders, right, like when spring and fall are and when things begin warming up and when they begin cooling down. Those changed over 20 years and were trending upwards and that was following the data that had been collected about the weather. So I do think that a lot of the projects we're working on now they're just looking at what they can accomplish in the next 20 years. That seems

Laura 
I mean, that makes sense. Right? Because like even if they wanted to make them permanent, like they may have thought they were doing previously they're kind of not right.

Speaker 1 
Well, and yeah and like for a lot of places, there's other things going on. Like for example, with the port of Nome, there's a very large federal state joint project to upgrade and improve the port of Nome. And so that's going to change where the actual interaction with land and sea is because it's going to move it out and change it. And it's going to change a few things like how roads are routed and you know, so all of those things feed into this decision about where to keep the tank farm and moving the tank farm to a new location was one of the options that was looked at, but finding a place that has that much land is difficult and finding a location that wouldn't have the same problem wouldn't also have a permafrost lens underneath it is was also difficult. So that decision to stay in place was made because the cost was too high to acquire new land. Right, right. So to me it's always fascinating to watch our clients go through that process and have to make decisions and then get to be part of the data that goes into that decision. I really like as part of that problem solving. I get to like go in and be like Eli, you can do this. You can do that. But the regulations say you can't do this. Right.

Laura  
Well, that does sound fun. And speaking of like future needs, will we need these tanks in the future if we go to renewable energies mostly?

Shannon Oelkers
It is such a great question. And it's one that I answer a lot. I do think that there's some what have a misconception that once we have renewable energy, we will no longer need fuel. And for some places in America that may be true because they have alternative ways of getting energy like coal and natural gas. But in Alaska with our road system being so fractured, reliable transportation of you know large volume things like coal, or connected electrical grids, or just it's almost impossible to imagine we are so vast just the amount of land between different communities. So for Alaska, the challenge with renewables and I know this is a challenge for everyone is wind and solar work, but they're very difficult to provide a consistent and variable. Like I don't know how to describe this because I'm not an electrical person. Sure, but but a community when you turn your lights on, there's a draw, right? And there's surges in that draw right? So when everybody gets home at seven o'clock everybody turns on the Netflix and the lights and the run the dishwasher and right there's a draw. And so for a community power plant to be able to meet that need. They either have to have diesel backup to meet those searches because wind and solar don't provide that consistent energy or they have to have battery systems that can store the energy and provide it and we have better batteries than we've ever had before. Also, thank you. I don't normally say that all the time. But his battery technology has also revolutionized how things are happening with utilities. But those those battery banks are incredibly expensive. And they they have a very limited life like eight to 10 years. They're also very resource heavy, lots of heavy metals inside of them. And so they're expensive and limited in capacity and lifetime. And behind all of that all of these facilities have diesel generators and diesel tanks already in place. So those costs are already paid. And one of the interesting things we're finding because we have quite a few utility customers now and they all utilize renewable resources, hydro dams, windmills and or wind turbines, I guess, and then also solar. So we have companies that do combinations. Of all three and some just wind and solar. In what we're finding is the the wind and solar are reducing the amount of diesel they need one of our clients Kotzebue electric they went I think from like 1.4 million gallons of diesel a year they consumed that are somewhere in the 400 1000s right now. So if it cut their bill in their usage and their footprint by two thirds, but that last third and being completely independent from fuel, I feel honestly just based on what I have seen sitting in the front receipt of Capital Improvement Planning is that's going to be another 50 years in the future and our batteries are going to have to get a lot better and a lot more moderately priced and are going to have to last longer to be able to provide a community that's larger than a few households, a reliable source of energy. So that's created something of a need and our firm is doing a really good job of this is when most of these article utilities were constructed. It was the 1960s and 70s. And they were full diesel so that 1.4 million gallons of diesel and fuel was very cheap back then. So they built really large tanks 500,000 gallon tanks right and you would get one partial every year and you fill it up. And that would be your fuel for the year. But what's problematic about those big tank farms is they have a lot of water, and they get what's called microbially micro microbially induced hearing. Say everybody calls it MIT MIT. Yeah, so that corrosion happens if there's a layer of water inside the tank, and there's more water in tanks that are less full. So if you're a utility that has had wind and solar added and you're now using a quarter or a third of what you're used to, there's a whole lot of the surface area of the inside of the tank where water can condense and roll down so that condensation really impacts the tank and they're struggling to maintain the tanks. They have a lot of repairs when we take them down, because they have a lot of corrosion on the bottoms. And so what we're looking at now is a lot of facilities are trying to prepare for the next 20 years and they're looking at smaller tanks or different tank configurations. So still using fuel or diesel hydrocarbons to support and smooth out the availability of their renewables, but have been smarter about what kind of tanks you're installing and how they work and some of the safety features you can put on them and our firms are really good at that. We're really good at saying okay, this big tank isn't going to meet your needs but you can replace it with these two smaller ones or this big take can work but here's what you're going to have to do. Right and so yeah,

Laura  
I love that. That's what your company's gonna tell us what else your company is good at while you're here because like you've been on three times you came on today on short notice yourself a pat on the back. What else do you guys do?

Shannon Oelkers 
I think we're really good at I do think our firm is we've really excel at community involvement. And one of the things we did this summer and I'm really proud of this is we have three separate clients on the island of St. Paul, the city, and then the city of St. Paul. We also have Trident seafoods. We work with our facility there. And then there's also a boat fuel company called St. Paul fuel that's owned by a larger Native Corporation. And all three of them were very independent. There was a lot of infighting and distrust and problems three or four years ago, and we were hired originally by the city and then we made contact with Triton and we became we actually work with Triton and all their facilities now but we started we basically just went to these three different communities or three different entities in the same community. And originally they weren't working together and after four years of us working with all of them individually, we finally brought them together and we did a community based fuel drill, or spill drill, sorry. And we have representatives from all the different components and we ran it through like this, like a fuel truck overturn, how are we going to get overturned by the fish plant? Right? So what's going to happen who needs to respond? What are our different things and we built capacity in that community to respond locally so that because they're very remote, it's like if the weather allows it's a six to 10 hour flight from Anchorage on most aircraft that can get there. You can get there quicker in a Boeing 737 But I don't think it could land. Right? So we were like you're really remote and everybody on island is the same families and the same, you know, the community members and they all have the same goal. Which is to keep they're really rare species of wildlife protected. And so we were it took us a while but our firm was able to kind of bring them closer together and get them to the point where they could sign mutual memorandums of agreement and have roles that they agreed to play during spills and so sort of restoring and making that better it was It felt so good. It was so satisfying to have that paytrail and have it go well and have it be culturally appropriate and include all the right people and I just was so happy at the end of it. It took us a couple years to get there. So I think that part of our skill planning and the permit writing that we do, there's a lot of community involvement with it. We could just write a plan that they'll never follow and put it on the shelf. But we really work hard to get to the you know, the nitty gritty of what's going to make it work for that community. Yeah,

Laura  
we've already talked about in the short time a bunch of benefits from doing that like Discovering True issues that if you need to respond are going to need to be addressed ahead of time, not during or after. And then you know, these community benefits are a huge bonus. So that's awesome small

Shannon Oelkers 
community you have to involve all these different like, if you need more available phone lines, you're gonna have to bring the city in and if you don't have a good relationship going into that that's gonna make things harder. But if you've got relationships, drills, good feelings, positive experiences, that's removing barriers for response time, right? We're going to increase our response time with all

Laura 
of that. Yeah, you know, it's all hands on hands on deck. At that point. If you have not built those relationships, then you don't get as many hands.

Shannon Oelkers  
Well, and it's interesting because the you know, business entities often don't get along, especially when they compete, but the people who are working at all of those entities are community members, uncles brothers, sisters, cousins in real life. So what we were finding is the closer we got everybody aligned, the more relief the people who were actually responding and doing the work were feeling because they weren't being asked to do something that went against like one of our for this drill. The leader of the drill was a girl named Stacy Porter kowski. And I would say things like well, what would you do? And she's like, Well, normally I'd call this person but I can't because we don't have a contract with them. And I'm like, let's get a contract. And then you could call them and she was like, Oh, that would be amazing. And we wrote down that like, right like, yeah, because her family time would be to call this person she knows them. They're part of her family. She knows they can operate a crane but the corporation didn't have a contract with the other corporation that this person worked with to be able to allow them to work together. And what I was seeing prior to this is when things went bad they were doing it but it wasn't part of the plan. It was kind of like under the table and then a cause problems later. So figuring all this out. and aligning it and getting it to match what's really happening on the ground rather than trying to make what's happening on the ground match what someone in Anchorage things that have happened or some bears need to happen, right. So for us, that's been a big focus of what we do because we have such strong history and all these communities and you know myself I've lived in Alaska one time. I think that a permit needs to match what's happening on the ground, not make what's happening on the ground match the permit.

[Networking]

Laura 
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, we're running out of time, but let's before I let you go talk a little bit about networking. Because I think probably 90 95% of people like career coach, people who've been on the podcast in the science engineering world, everyone thinks they're an introvert. And I think too, that people will be surprised that both you and I also would identify as introverts. As as nap naturally. I do walk the line and can easily chameleon my way over into what people think is an extrovert but at the end of the day, I'm tired, which means I am an introvert. But yeah, what is what's your take?

Shannon Oelkers
Well, I fought networking like a lion for a long time. I do not like walking into a roomful of strangers and trying to make small talk. I think that's the misconception that's not networking. That's cold call sales. And it's what I'm finding is that if I look at networking as an opportunity to meet a friend and find something interesting out about them, it's a lot easier. And so instead of going to a large event where I don't know anybody, I might call somebody I'm interested in getting to know better and ask if I can meet them for coffee for 20 minutes and just talk to them about what they do. Or call them about something relatively minor, but also try to establish a connection to them and call them and talk to them instead of just relying on email. And then for those big networking events, I've learned it's like bring a wing man. I bring some even if they're another introvert if I have someone to talk to that is like when I get scared or nervous because I still do there's I mean, I'm a very small fish in a very large pond and you'd be like wow, that person is really important. And I said hi awkwardly and now I feel bad.

Shannon Oelkers 
Having a weekend easier to stay in the room. So yeah, so I find having a weak man was really helpful and then string now I guess not strangely, but as a woman, entrepreneur, I'm realizing that there are other resources for networking out there that I had never thought to look at before and like there's a legal group called Davis Wright Tremaine and they have a program called Women. It's like WP AK and it's specifically to support women in leadership roles in Alaska and specifically women in business leadership roles in Alaska. And they had a big networking event. I was invited. It was really interesting. I had all these people I knew already and it was just like this amazing networking event. But it was put on by a legal from I don't even use, you know, yeah, but I knew one of the lawyers from a job we did and from LinkedIn, and he was like, I think you need to come to this. And so I do think that there are organizations out there that are trying to create avenues especially for women to connect because for me, I'm like this island are so few women in my industry are able to reach out and find other women. I do think that if you can find networking events or create them, where there are other women, it recharges me it makes it so much easier to network. Yeah, so those two those I guess my tips is like, think about it a little differently, bring a weak man and then kind of look for other networking opportunities that are more in line with where you want to go because for me going to Chamber of Commerce meeting was like, very, very painful, but the people I needed to meet were not necessarily in that room. So picking and choosing better networking opportunities made it a lot easier to do the networking.

Laura 
That's true. Finding a place where you don't have to necessarily feel like you belong, but you don't want to feel like you're wasting your time or are completely not invited.

Speaker 1 
Right where you're welcome. You're welcome there, right like yeah, as a woman and all man industry, I think is changing. I

Shannon Oelkers 
feel a lot more welcome than I did when I started. But it does feel very welcoming when they're specifically inviting people like you to the table and everyone there is also doing some of the similar things that you're doing. So I'm in business, that's my focus. But

Speaker 1 
yeah, if you're, if you're a GIS user and you specifically go to like a women in GIS function, you're probably going to meet more interesting people that you want to be friends with there. Yeah, than if you went to a random GIS something that had hundreds of 1000s of people at it, right?

Laura 
Yeah, for sure. Well, I think that was great advice, but we're running out of time. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about before we let you go?

Speaker 1 
Do you want my fun fact about an Alaskan thing? Of course. So previously, I've talked about birds but I wanted to talk today about plant if you're up for it. Cool. Yeah, bring it okay. So previously talked about birds, but I want to talk about the fireweed plan, because it is really interesting. And it's a really big ecosystem booster and for those of your listeners who are not familiar with fireweed it is a woody stemmed, flowering plant and it is a classic transition zone plant. So after a fire comes through, you'll often see enormous fields of fire lead, and there's very famous pictures after fires in Canada and Alaska where whole hills of pink fire wheat is beautiful, makes a delicious jam.

Shannon Oelkers 
If you pick the flower is a very beautiful pink jam. But what I find interesting about fire wheat is one the vast amount of animals that depend on it for food. So everything from like shrews and voles, they'll eat the roots and they'll also eat a lot of the insects that use the fire weed for habitat. And then a lot of the insects like there's actually a fire weed moth that only lays its eggs on fire weed and can eat. I don't know like an entire fire weed plant. In like six hours.

Speaker 1 
Wow. Like you like every hour on it. Yeah. And those moths in their larva are really big protein packages. So a lot of the bigger birds like Chase and magpies they go looking for those fireweed moss in the fire weeds. So you can actually see magpies hopping in and out of fireweed like you know, like you won't see anything and then a magpie will jump up and then looking for these big fireweed moth hornworms. But the reason that fires are so successful and why brought them up as a random strange fact, is every single fire we flower which has multiple flowers to it, right it's got the technical main farm but well it's a little flowers. Each one of those fire weed stocks, it sends out 80,000 seeds on its little silky threads at the end of the season. Wow. And every fire weed has the ability it has what are called Rise of Mattis I pronouncing that right because I'm not a botanist, but resin mattes root systems. They make sisters they grow giant forests of sister plants. So that's cool. You can look at a fire weed field and in all likelihood, just like the Aspen like a whole third of that field could just be one genetic plant, even though it's got major things, growing all these sister plants and then it releases 80,000 seeds at the same time. I mean, it's just a powerhouse of a plant for survival. Yeah, and that's why they quickly take over these burned areas because they're able to reproduce like that. That's a

Laura 
very Stranger Things type of things perfect for Halloween.

Speaker 1 
Yes, so. Yeah, I wanted to bring up fire weed this time because I find them just fascinating. No, that's

Laura 
cool. I think I've heard of it before, but I didn't know that. So that that's really awesome. All right. Well, thank you for joining us and where can people get in touch with you if they would like to chat more?

Speaker 1 
Sure. They can visit me on LinkedIn. Shannon Walker's we also have a LinkedIn page for our company integrity, environmental, LLC, Alaska, because there's some other integrities out there. And then if you want to listen to our podcast, we're everywhere your podcasts are and it's just take talk with integrity. Environmental. How often do you put that up? Every other week? So twice a month. Okay, awesome.

Laura 
Well, thanks again for joining us and I look forward to visiting you and having you back on the show.

Nic
appreciate them coming right back. Thanks so much. That's our show. Thank you Shannon for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe rate and review. See you everybody.

Laura
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai