A QUARTER CENTURY OF GROUNDWATER CONSULTING - FLOW AND TRANSPORT FROM DEIKE BUILDING

The seeds of Dick Parizek’s career at PSU have blossomed over many aquifers and a few aquitards. His students have created and worked for many consulting companies. One firm, GeoTrans, was co-founded in 1979 by Charles Faust, a 1976 Ph.D. student of Dr. Parizek. Known for its expertise in groundwater flow and transport modeling, the company has matured over the past 25 years into a diverse consultancy in groundwater, environmental, and engineering disciplines with a few hundred employees in 15 offices across the U.S. Throughout its history, GeoTrans and its many PSU employees (past and present) have benefitted from lessons taught and inspiration provided by Dr. Parizek

Three case studies are presented to illustrate the diverse nature of groundwater issues that have been addressed using wisdom imparted by Dr. Parizek. At the S-Area site in Niagara Falls N.Y., understanding of contaminant transport and development of remediation strategies evolved from integrating information from many investigative and analytical techniques. Fracture trace analyses are routinely performed in conjunction with geophysical surveying, geologic interpretation, aquifer testing, and modeling to develop groundwater supplies in fractured rock in Virginia. At the Nevada Test Site and adjacent Yucca Mountain, our emphasis has been on understanding transport processes in fractured rock, using a variety of techniques. These include application of fracture mapping on aerial photographs and downhole borehole televiewer; thermal and radioactive tracer flow logging; multi-well tracer tests using multiple diffusing tracers; fracture network modeling; developing of modeling techniques for complex geologic terranes; and use of natural tracers to provide information on effective modeling parameters.

Dick taught us the importance of using one's imagination in solving problems, to think of the big picture, that solving environmental problems is almost always an interdisciplinary effort, to ask questions, and keep learning. By being too busy to meet with students until weeks later, he taught us how to solve our own problems. He is not a modeler, but educated many excellent modelers by ensuring that we understood the systems we attempt to model. And most importantly [not], he taught the principle of superposition as applied to office organization. We thank you.