Pretty good day today in terms of tempo. Three witnesses through and a fourth on the stand for half an hour.
The day started out with Paul Heirtzler from NHDES. I missed the start but caught the meat of it. Mr. Heirtzler seemed to be straightforward and fair to both sides in his testimony. He testified that the site is not in compliance at current 150,000gpd discharge and could not be at 600,000gpd without some kind of remediation. He cited three conditions for rehabilitation of the site:
- Stabilize the slopes
- Eliminate the breakout that causes groundwater to come up and flow over the surface
- Comply through monitoring with water quality standards in Nineteen Mile Brook and elsewhere where applicable.
On cross examination, he said that he had seen a plan to stabilize the slopes, and that monitoring water quality is a straightforward requirement that is already mostly in place. He said he has seen no solution to the groundwater breakout problem but later said that if anybody can fix it, Wright Pierce can.
Next up was Gary Smith of Wright Pierce. He is the engineer that was responsible for field operations at the site from concept to completion. He interfaced with the modeling subcontractor. Wolfeboro called him to the stand as part of their continuing effort to prove their fraud case. As with the previous Wright-Pierce witnesses, Mr. Smith had reasonable explanations for the snippets of emails that Wolfeboro used to support the fraud claim. I’ll be surprised if the judge and nine jurors have been convinced.
Up next was Neil Cheseldine, the Wright Pierce engineer that coordinated the Phase III Hydrogeologic report in 2007. More of the same.
Last up was Prof. Jean Benoit, Wolfeboro’s Geotechnical expert from UNH. When he finishes telling us about his academic program and European travels, I expect he will say that in his expert opinion it was a no-brainer for Wright Pierce to have required a slope stability analysis prior to constructing the RIBs.
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