For nearly 40 years NOAA’s National Mussel Watch Program has been monitoring contaminants in coastal waters in over 400 sites around the U.S. by testing sediment and bivalves, such as oysters and mussels. A CSS employee owner organizes and coordinates the regional missions to collect and test samples. This includes developing a schedule and coordinating several teams to collect samples in different subregions for each region as well as shipping equipment and supplies needed for each of the team to carry out their tasks.

CSS employee owners work alongside federal program staff and local partners to collect samples throughout the regions. In fiscal year 2024 CSS staff deployed to the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean, which includes Alaska, Hawaii, and the West Coast. The team adds data they collect during these missions to the Coastal Pollution Data Explorer, a cloud-based ArcGIS platform that allows users to search by location or type of contaminant, generate a report, and download the data. A CSS employee owner serves as the lead developer for this online platform. Learn more about NOAA’s National Mussel Watch Program.

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Person on a boat holding a bucket.

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An Approach to Assessing Laboratory Space 

CSS employee owners were part of a team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health who developed an approach to evaluating new laboratory space to determine if the space will fit operational needs. This concept, titled The BaseLINE Approach, combines traditional safety processes with additional safety and environmental factors to assess before operations begin.…

Large-Scale Decontamination Proves Successful

In the spring of 2022, we worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard on a project called Analysis for Coastal Operational Resiliency-Wide Area Demonstration (WAD) which tests large scale decontamination following the release of surrogate bioagents. The team conducted a WAD at a military base in Virginia to test decontamination…

Expanding a Popular Flood Exposure Tool

We recently assisted our client, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Office for Coastal Management, with updating one of their most popular tools, the Coastal Flood Exposure Mapper.