Individual Placement Spotlight Series: Bekka Ginzburg
By Jesse Wolk, Utility Mapping Specialist Individual Placement / AmeriCorps Member placed at Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks and Trails
XII: Hydrology and Sentimentalities
The Individual Placement (I.P.) Spotlight Blog is a reflection series based on interviews between Jesse Wolk and his fellow full-term I.P. members. The goal of the series is to highlight their unique positions, projects, and backgrounds while situating their service term in the context of the Natural Resources career field in Minnesota. In the twelfth, and final, edition of the series, Hydrology and Sentimentalities, the spotlight is shifted to our Water Monitoring Specialist – Bekka Ginzburg!
To be blunt, this post will be my last. Not because I don’t like writing this series but because my term ended on Friday, December 13th. Interpret that omen as you’d like.
As a brief reminder, I was one of the two I.P. Utility Mapping Specialists serving to map the utility systems for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Parks and Trails. Under the direction of our two amazing supervisors, my partner, Renee Lambas, and I collaborated with State Park staff, IT professionals, and private Utility companies to locate parks’ utility infrastructure and represent that on a map.
Renee and I traveled the state, saw plenty of wildlife, participated in a prescribed burn, gained new certifications and skills, and learned how professionals manage large-scale projects. Additionally, thanks to the flexibility of my supervisors, who encouraged Renee and I to broaden our professional horizons, I dedicated a few hours every couple of weeks to this spotlight blog series. Through these conversations, I reflected with my peers on their successes, and challenges. Looking back on the series, I believe I sketched a broad picture of the diverse needs that I.P. members are filling through their service work, from mitigating recreational impact to conducting agricultural water quality testing to combatting aquatic invasive species spread.
While I covered a lot, even if I expanded my reach and wrote a blog post about every C.C.M.I. crew in Minnesota, I would never be able to capture the nuance of all the natural resource topics that are relevant to the state. Although, even if I did, I’m confident that the endless variations on buckthorn removal would get tedious to read and strenuous to write. In short, while the variability of Minnesota conservation projects is infinite, the themes are often repeated. However, I am pleased to write that the last position that I get the opportunity to cover is one that I haven’t really touched on yet: Hydrology, or the study of how water moves across, and under, the land.
If my posts were analyzed and re-read, a move this self-critic could never do, I’d surmise that the water motif would be the phrase that has been composed the most frequently. It makes sense. We all know Minnesota as the land of 14,380 lakes and plenty of rivers to boot. This water is available to the public and is managed by a myriad of state agencies each with their own monitoring and enforcement tasks. Less known, but more important to most Minnesotan’s way of life, is the water beneath our feet. The aquifers throughout our state provide the source of water for agricultural irrigation, industrial production, personal sanitation, and our spaghetti. The Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Ecological and Water Resources is responsible for monitoring the water levels of not only our lakes and streams but also these underground canteens. Bekka Ginzburg, the Water Monitoring Specialist, serves directly to do just that.
Bekka Ginzburg grew up in Eagan and reported to me that her childhood wasn’t full of kayak trips or water-skiing. She wasn’t really an “outdoorsy” kid but noted that she did go to an environmental charter school her last two years of high school. That experience introduced her to the natural resources career field, and she figured that it would be a good fit for her. While at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bekka studied Environmental Science with a focus in policy. Her studies culminated in a research project that studied the relationship between urban heat islands and large-scale tree removal due to Emerald Ash Borer.
Like all good college students, myself included, Bekka had no idea what she wanted to do after she graduated. To give herself some time to think, Bekka joined a CCMI field crew in the beginning of 2022, and this is where she eventually discovered her passion. Much like many other field crews, Bekka did a lot of chainsaw work and herbicide application. Although exciting at first, the monotony and physical difficulty of that type of work can be overwhelming and it never called to Bekka. However, she participated in a project where she installed cedar trees as streambank revetments to prevent bank erosion. She liked this project so much, she realized she wanted to pivot to hydrology.
After four grueling months of job hunting, Bekka temporarily gave up on hydrology and started a position with a private company doing habitat restoration and management. Things changed for Bekka when she found the Water Monitoring Specialist position with CCMI and realized that it could meet her goal of getting her water related experience.
Throughout her service term, Bekka served under the direction of an ocean of hydrologists to accomplish the mission of the Water Monitoring and Surveys unit. Bekka’s field work reflected that mission which is “to store and manage continuous and discrete data from the network of stream gages, groundwater monitoring wells, mesonet stations, and lake gages.” Aside from the mesonet stations, which apparently are clustered weather stations, Bekka collected data from all these systems and more.
To do this, Bekka spent about half of her time in the field. During this summer, she visited approximately 300 groundwater monitoring wells to download their data, hand-measure their depth, and change their batteries. The purpose of these wells is to keep a long-term record of changes to groundwater to determine the sustainability of regional water use. In some places, this issue is quietly growing. For example, in 2009 it was found that the Mt. Simon Aquifer, the aquifer that supplies most of the water for the Twin Cities Metro Area, was being drained at a faster rate than natural forces could recharge it. Quick googling didn’t give me a more recent study and I couldn’t find any articles declaring an emerging crisis in the depletion of the Mt. Simon aquifer. As a result of the pool of nothing I found as an update, I’ll go on a hopeful limb and say this isn’t a pressing issue in most of Minnesota. Yet. Right now, we seem to be fortunate. Fortunate enough that the rate at which we are depleting our groundwater isn’t rapid enough for local news to report on it. That certainly isn’t the case when viewed nationally. In some places, like the central plains, groundwater depletion is a swelling crisis.
When she wasn’t hunting for observation wells, Bekka also conducted surface water monitoring where she used Acoustic Doppler Current Profiling equipment to measure the flow of rivers and streams for drought monitoring. The rest of Bekka’s time was spent in the office organizing files, completing a geographic names project, and painstakingly entering hand-written lake-level data for lakes from citizen scientists.
Looking back on her year, Bekka noted that the office work could be monotonous but that she enjoyed the field work. Most importantly, she learned a ton about how the DNR conducts its hydrological management. Along with professional development opportunities like two Minnesota Groundwater Association Conferences, an Intro to ArcGIS Pro course, and a BWSR technical training, she gained skills to prepare her for her next step. Excitingly, she gained a temporary position for the Water and Monitoring Surveys unit doing the same work that she does now! A happy ending, even if it is only seasonal.
Stories like Bekka’s are really energizing for me to capture. Her narrative is a success in a time when conservation feels periled. While this project has wrapped up, the timelines of all our experiences will march on. Here’s to hoping that our character arcs bend towards a future that prepares and protects our natural resources for a sustainable future.
Thank you for reading. As mentioned, this is my final post. The Spotlight Blog Series was a fantastic way for me to connect with my peers and forced me to exercise my malnourished writing muscle. If you have any feedback, concerns, comments, or words of appreciation please reach out to my email at jessedwolk@gmail.com!
Cheers!
Jesse Wolk