Meet . . .

Charles H. Delp Assistant State Soil Scientist Summersville, WV 39 Years of service

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to work on a variety of interesting projects and the satisfaction of seeing how a project benefited our cooperators and other land users. It really is a good feeling to be able to provide a customer with soils information that can save thousands of dollars. One of the activities that I have been heavily involved with over the past few years is making soil monoliths. When I was an undergraduate student at West Virginia University, Dr Pohlman got some of the students interested in taking monoliths and putting them on display in the soils laboratory. I always thought that this was a good way to demonstrate the variability in soils and to learn a lot about soil properties when going to the field was not practical. I was not to get involved with soil monoliths again until 1999, some 32 years later. In 1999, the National Cooperative Soil Survey celebrated its 100 year birthday. A part of the festivities included each state preparing a monolith of their state soil to be put on display at the Mall in Washington, D. C. In West Virginia, the soil scientists got together and took a monolith of Monongahela silt loam on the farm of one of our retired soil scientists, Mr. Troy Yokum. At about this same time, the director of the West Virginia State Conservation Agency asked our state soil scientist, Steve Carpenter, and I if we would make some monoliths for each of West Virginia’s Conservation Districts as a part of our out reach work. We agreed to do these as time allowed not really knowing just how much they would be in demand and the impact that they would have on educating folks on the importance of our soil resource. Making soil monoliths is hard work but a lot of fun too. Everyone seems to really enjoy doing this work. My office is located in the Post Office building and we often “pick the profile down” outside in the parking lot. Within just a few minutes a crowd will gather around to see just what we are doing. They are amazed by the process and the way a soil really looks. It is a great time to educate people about soils and the National Cooperative Soil Survey. We now have monoliths in many of the Conservation District Offices, Forest Service visitor center and National Park Service visitor center. I hope to be a part of “monolith mania” for at least a few more years.

John R. Cox District Conservationist Gassaway Field Office 39 years of Federal service.

Helping the farmers in Braxton and Clay counties has always been a rewarding experience. This year has been a particularly productive program year in my Field Office. My staff and I have written 88 contracts totaling over $634,789.00 in the 2 counties. The rapport we share with our farmers has earned us their respect and their assistance in getting program information out in these very rural counties where word of mouth is an important outreach tool.

To further assist my farmers, I spearheaded a mitigation effort which resulted in additional funds coming into my area. Consol Coal needed to mitigate for a facility they plan to build. We provided access and planning to willing farmers who will have conservation practices installed at Consol’s expense. Using these funds promoted positive environmental results while providing another means of installing conservation resource management practices for farmers in need of financial assistance. In addition to the immediate results of this effort, it has opened a new avenue for similar future projects.

Steve Baker
MLRA Project Leader
Huntington, WV

My name is Steve Baker, and I am the new MLRA project leader in Huntington. This is an exciting time for the soil survey as we transition from county to county surveys to a geographic area. Specifically, my new area will be the southern portions of the Western and Central Allegheny Plateaus, comprising 10 million acres.

While attending WVU, I worked for Dr. John Sencindiver as a lab/field technician where I met a number of NRCS employees and decided that I liked the culture and the career path of the agency. Unfortunately, there was an agency wide hiring freeze when I graduated in 1999, so my career led me to Wooster, OH as a manager trainee for Tractor Supply Company, then to Marietta, GA as an assistant golf course superintendent. I always kept an eye on WV as I traveled, and an opportunity arose in the form of a cooperative soil scientist between the WVCA and the NRCS. I began this co-op in the Fayette-Raleigh Survey in 2001, became a full NRCS member in 2003 in the Preston-Tucker-Barbour survey. The moral of this story? When you’re the anvil, be patient, when you’re the hammer, strike.

My wife LaRae, a soil conservationist with NRCS, and I were married in 2003; we have a son, Philip, a daughter, Rachel, and the unborn baby X. I want to thank my family for their patience in this trying time of relocation and promise them things will settle down soon. (We have yet to bring two children home to the same house) Also I would like to say to my fellow project members in Huntington, Rick Jones and Debbie Cunningham, thanks for the warm reception and I can’t wait to get this project running.

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