When tar mixes with dirt, it becomes asphalt. So the company had been trying to vacuum up asphalt, something akin to raising the dead. Since Harris is often the bearer of bad news, dealing with people is often more challenging than analyzing chemical data, he notes. It's like the accountant who tells his client he has to pay a lot of taxes, so the client gets mad at the accountant. I've had cases where clients went absolutely ballistic on me and blamed me for the problem.
Most people see environmental consultants as kind of like leeches.
He considers global warming and ozone depletion to be earth's most serious environmental problems, and petroleum contamination the most overrated. A lot of people have had to pay a lot of money to clean up things that probably could have been left alone. Harris concedes that many properties have environmental risks. As an extreme example, Harris notes the detection of PCBs on both polar ice caps. Man has left his mark from the bottom of the deepest oceans to the tops of the highest mountains.