Employee of the 2nd Quarter 2016
OCWD is very pleased to announce that Supervising Chemist Lily Sanchez is the Employee of the 2nd Quarter.
The Water Quality Department recently asked for the Advanced Water Quality Assurance Laboratory’s participation in a project with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) volatile organic compound (VOC) split analysis for evaluating VOCs in the North Basin. Lily Sanchez volunteered to provide the required EPA quality assurance/quality control documents.
From the beginning, Lily helped organize the team working directly with the project and she has kept an eye on how it progressed through the Lab. She also streamlined chain of custody and several thousands of pages of quality control data and analytical results which required additional paperwork that was above OCWD’s normal practices. All this involved working extra hours to make sure all the items that are required by the EPA were included and could be approved by USEPA Region 9, San Francisco, in a timely manner. Lily’s work is extremely valuable since this EPA approval can be extended to validate OCWD’s historical data up to 10 years.
It is truly an outstanding effort and excellent quality of work. She is also working on urgent emerging contaminants such as PFOA/PFOS analysis to monitor the entire groundwater basin due to the recent health advisory level of 70 ppt (ng/L) issued by the EPA.
Congratulations Lily and thank you, too, for helping to monitor our drinking water supplies!