Eyes on Earth Episode 98 – EROS 50th: Conservation

Brent Nelson

We had a very unique photographic laboratory. It was one-of-a-kind for what we did. We had a lot of different people through the years come out and train with us and learn how we did things and do things. And I was fortunate to spend most of my life in that environment. It was a lot of fun. There was a lot of things that we did that were, that were great, and I miss the old days of the photographic laboratory. But technology changes, and we move on.

Sheri Levisay

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Eyes on Earth, a podcast produced at the USGS EROS Center, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Our podcast focuses on our ever-changing planet and on the people here at EROS and across the globe who use remote sensing to monitor and study the health of Earth. My name is Sheri Levisay, your host for this episode. EROS was born in the ’70s, the same decade as Earth Day, the EPA and the oil crisis. Landsat’s benefits for the environment are well known, but conservation efforts within the EROS building’s footprint also have been ongoing from the very beginning. Today we're going to investigate that history with Brent Nelson, information and management services operations work manager; Tim Smith, information management services archive task lead; and Tracy Michel, safety and occupational health specialist. Brent, we’ll start with you. Fifty years ago, before the shift to digital imagery, one of the biggest tasks at EROS was developing photos of satellite scenes from negatives. The EROS water tower provided the 20,000 gallons of water needed daily, and five manmade ponds were created to manage the wastewater. Tell us about the silver and other minerals recaptured from photo development and the steps taken to ensure that there were no adverse effects on the water supply.

Brent Nelson

This goes back quite a few years with the development of the EROS Center, when the management on the government side said we need to have a four-fold look at the future. The first was to use current and future technology to reduce the amount of chemical effluent into the environment. That was their number one concern. Number two was to reduce, again, the operating cost by regenerating as many of those chemicals as possible, which also reduced the amount of effluent being pushed outside to their collection ponds. Three was to reduce the heavy metals from silver from entering the wastewater system and the surrounding environment. And four, to capture the silver and to recycle it and receive the funding back out of it. As we talked about, many of the fixtures that we utilized were able to be regenerated, and in the process through the electrolytic silver recovery units removed approximately 95 plus percent of the silver from those fixers, so that it did not end up outside. Many times, those fixers were regenerated 50 times or more, again reducing the amount of effluents to the outside world, which also reduced our cost substantially. So our process was to collect the fixers in 100-gallon tanks in the basement in collect tanks. Once those were full, they were, that chemistry was pumped into another 100-gallon tank and then a silver recovery unit, electrolytic, what we called SRU, started running that would run for up to 48 hours, recirculating to capture electrolytically the silver out of the chemistry. Once that was completed, then the chemistry was pumped upstairs, analyzed, regenerated as needed and then back into the system again. And so the goal here then again was to not only save on the amount of chemistry going outside, but to collect that silver. After so many runs with the silver recovery unit, the cathodes were removed, and they were quite heavy at that time, with the amount of silver on those cathodes, and then they were set in a safe and to be dried out, and after they had so many of the cathodes they would—with security—they would go through and bust the silver off of that, weigh it, and then put it up for auction to reclaim the silver out of it and the funding back to the United States Geological Survey. In the later years as technology changed, another system came about where we could capture silver out of the wash waters after the fixers. And we used a system, it's very similar to a water softener that you would use in your house. It had the little beads in it, it was called the wash water in situ system, and then so we had to replumb all of our wash waters after the fixers on 11 processors to the basement, and then that was all run through these tanks, and, again, after so long the beads were taken out of those tanks, put in trays, dried out, and then that after that was weighed and sold out to the public, again to reduce the amount of silver going to the environment and to capture that cost. Another thing that we had, which is not necessarily silver-related, was to again reduce the what we call toxic chemicals to the environment was our developers. To better destroy those and break them down so that the environment could handle that, we ozonated them. All of the developers went into holding tanks, and then ozone was pumped through them 24/7, and then as it was in that system for so long, they would test it to make sure that it was broken down to a certain level. Then that would be pumped outside, again to help the outside biological activity help break it down again to reduce the amount of damage, if any, to the environment.

Sheri Levisay

Another potential environmental issue was the commute. EROS is located on country roads with the outskirts of Sioux Falls, the nearest major city, 10 miles away, making it relatively expensive for individual drivers to get to work. Tim, tell us about how the employee association worked to reduce both pollution and costs during the height of the oil crisis in 1979 and won a federal award in the process.

Tim Smith

Yes, EROS Vanpool Association was created out of necessity back in 1979. We were staring at potential gas rationing. Fuel costs were rising, and people didn't have the in-pocket capabilities to take that ride by themselves. So the to the help of the U.S. Geological Survey and the TGS primary contractor, the EROS Van Pool Association was formed, and with the extra funding that came in from the Southeast Council of Governments, the SECOG group, we were able to buy our first van in late fall of 1979, and it was later added with three more that serviced the Sioux Falls area, and it became so popular it actually was extended into Brandon Valley, Dell Rapids, Trent, and a fifth van was added in Sioux Falls. So we were, at a key point in time, we were 102 members strong with seven vans servicing Sioux Falls. Over the course of the van pool, we felt like we had saved at least 450,000 gallons of gasoline, traveling more than 2.5 million miles, which equated about 75 million passenger miles over that course, and what finally caused a demise of the van pool was COVID, which caused us to cease operations and sell off the last three vans that were operating at that time.

Sheri Levisay

So costs were somewhat different back in the day; let's say, when you started, how much per month did individuals have to pay to be partaking in the van pool?

Tim Smith

Yes, that was at $36 a month. We were able to provide the driver a stipend for driving the van, and he rode for free. But again, we were carrying anywhere from 10 to 14 other people on board that van, and it was quite successful. The other thing that happened later on is the US government decided that it was such a great plan to subsidize commercial commutes to work, they were able to, USGS employees at EROS were able to ride for no cost.

Sheri Levisay

Can you tell me a little bit about the award?

Tim Smith

So in 1988, the EROS Vanpool Association did win an award for being so ahead of the curve and providing a rideshare program in South Dakota, and for South Dakota, we were the first and foremost to be able to prove that would work and service so many people in the process.

Sheri Levisay

And by the end of the time of the van pool, which, unfortunately, happened around COVID— makes a lot of sense—what was the cost by then?

Tim Smith

By then, we had moved up to about $84 a month, which was covering the cost of the data center being operational with the vans. And again it just slowly demised from those the high point of so many vans on board only running three at the end. So it was about 20 members remaining, and as COVID shut us down in March of 2020, we never got restarted again, and I don't believe it will come back just because the nature of the work at EROS and so much being able to be done at working from home and other things like that.

Sheri Levisay

Also in 1979, EROS was awarded a $500,000 grant for a 10,000-square-foot solar installation, one of the largest in the country at the time. It was operational in 1980. Brent, what was that used for, and what eventually happened to it?

Brent Nelson

Again, due to the photographic laboratory using a large amount of hot water primarily for our color processors, which were running 100-plus degree temperatures, that water was used both to cool and to heat the chemistry to keep it at certain temps, and so the photographic laboratory used a fair amount of hot water. And as technology evolved, one of the concerns that came up is how can we better heat our water to save energy and to utilize the natural environment? In this case it should be the sun, and henceforth they installed solar hot water systems which had a collection tank in the basement that they put in. And I don't know what percentage of hot water we got from it, but during the summer time it was a fair amount, and that kept our processors going and cut down on our expensive heating and hot water. A lot of times during the summer we had problems with the water being too hot in the water tower because we had our black and white processors. The water was used to cool the developers and our black and white machines, and so they'd fill up the hot water or the tank, water tank out there, and if it was 100 degrees for a week, week and a half, it got too hot, and we'd have to shut down our black and white processors because we couldn’t cool them, so during the summer they would limit the amount of water in the water towers, so that there was always fresh water going in there to keep the machines cold. What happened to them is when we had a hail storm come through, it pretty much not only damaged the building, but it destroyed the solar collectors that we had out there because the hail was about the size of baseballs. It naturally destroyed every virtually every car in the parking lot on that Sunday also. So at that point in time they were dismantled and removed.

Sheri Levisay

Was that about the time when more things were becoming digital as well, so that was one reason why they didn't ever replace the solar panels?

Brent Nelson

Correct. The photographic laboratory would shut down a little after 2000, the year 2000, because of the changes we moved to a totally digital environment. And so there was not the requirement at that point in time for the hot water like we were using it because we went through, like you said, about 20,000 gallons of water a day. And a lot of that was the high temperature water for our color processors.

Sheri Levisay

Around that time, there was a government-wide mandate to reduce overall energy costs. I read that the goal was a 15% reduction, but Vesco, the maintenance contractor at that time, managed to cut costs by 37% by rerouting the heat produced by the computer systems to warm the building during South Dakota winters. Tracy, do we still have that today?

Tracy Michel

We do. Each time a building upgrade is needed, we incorporate new technologies to improve efficiency wherever possible. Our facilities contracts also contain language requiring improvements to the energy efficiency, and we also recycle as much of the waste material as possible.

Sheri Levisay

With the increasing prevalence of digital imagery, photo development dwindled. Tracy, please explain your role in monitoring the wastewater ponds. What year was that?

Tracy Michel

I believe that was sometime around the early 2000s, and I was working as an environmental engineering consultant to EROS at the time. After all the full processing was completed, I was hired to sample the wastewater pond sludge and also some of the other waste associated with the equipment in the building, like filters and things like that. The whole system got a clean bill of health.

Sheri Levisay

What were the kinds of chemicals that were around that you would be testing for?

Tracy Michel

Anything involved with the photo developing. We did metals testing mostly for silver, some volatile organic compounds, cleaners and solvents and things like that.

Sheri Levisay

What else were those ponds used for then?

Tracy Michel

Well, right now, that's our wastewater treatment system, and it's only wastewater. No other chemicals go into that pond.

Sheri Levisay

Was there fishing at one point?

Tracy Michel

The best fishing, our last pond is sort of the clean-up pond. It allows some of the sediment to settle out. It's basically a small lake at the end of our wastewater treatment system, and I know fishing was allowed in the past. It's not allowed right now, but we do see beavers out there occasionally.

Sheri Levisay

Energy efficiency efforts continue today, of course, as EROS relies on computers that, while smaller and more efficient than their historic counterparts, still put out a lot of heat. Tracy, please describe a few more recent innovations that help keep the computers cool.

Tracy Michel

We've added air curtains to contain the heat from the components in the computer rooms. Basically the racks are placed so they back up to a short hallway. The air curtains, then, are the doors at the end of this hallway, trapping the heat in a very small area. This makes it easier to capture the heat. In colder months, we use this heat to heat the building. In summer, we just vent it straight outside. This also allows us to concentrate the cooled air right where it's needed.

Sheri Levisay

While they have less of an impact on the overall energy bill, since the computers needed to perform EROS’ core missions account for the vast majority of energy use, are there some other initiatives that help save energy at the center?

Tracy Michel

Well, for our facility, people are actually a small part of the energy use. The computers are the driving factor, and we're in expansion mode right now. However, we look for energy savings wherever we can, including low-flow fixtures in the bathrooms. We recycle office waste as much as possible to reduce landfill waste. And we're currently upgrading our lighting system as money allows. As we replace the fluorescent fixtures with LEDs, we can add ambient light sensors and motion detection to reduce energy use in our lights.

Sheri Levisay

Tim, you're the history guy at EROS. Do you think that ethic of conservation helped preserve the center in the ’80s and ’90s when the political winds left some uncertainty about the fate of EROS?

Tim Smith

Yes, we were definitely a can-do data center with the staff that had the ingenuity and wherewithal to really persevere in otherwise tough times. I think it felt that we sat together and we worked through a problem, we were able to take them on, in a multitude of facets at the EROS Data Center, either in saving energy or in just working through problematic issues that were facing us as a center, and as a community, as a whole.

Sheri Levisay

I'd like to thank Brent, Tim and Tracy for sharing their insights about the 50-year history of conservation at EROS. And thank you, listeners, for joining us on Eyes on Earth. You can find all our shows on the USGS EROS website. You can also follow EROS on Facebook or Twitter to find the latest episode or to subscribe on Apple or Google Podcasts. 

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