Draft:Lucy Scholes Bottomley

• Comment: Just a suggestion: please consider changing the 'anterior future' expressions (eg. "Scholes would begin her career..." to the simple past tense ("Scholes began her career...". IMO it is an affectation, and not particularly suited to the encyclopaedic context. DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:46, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: The referencing requires more work. There is too much unreferenced content for an article on a living person (WP:BLP). Also, some sources cited don't appear to actually verify the information they are cited against. Please ensure that every material statement, anything potentially contentious, and all private personal and family details (such as WP:DOB) are clearly supported by inline citations to reliable published sources, or else removed. DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:39, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

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Lucy Scholes Bottomley (neé Scholes; born March 6, 1938) is an American retired Navy environmental engineer who was paramount in the recognition and remediation of the Lakehurst Maxfield Field superfund site. She was the leader of the Navy Lakehurst Environmental Program for 25 years. Over the course of her tenure, she would lead the team to completely remediate 34 of 45 individual Superfund sites and planned or began remediation of the remaining 11 sites. Bottomley's efforts led to multiple awards and recognitions from both the NJ DEP and EPA including the 2005 Environmental Quality Award for an individual citizen. She also helped establish many community education programs and assisted in the initial creation of the Marine Academy of Technology and Environmental Sciences (MATES).

Early life and education

Early life

Lucy Scholes was born on March 6, 1938, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Charlotte and Joseph Scholes. As the daughter of a tool and die maker, Scholes was exposed to machine shops at a young age. She would sometimes visit her uncle's machine shop on occasion just to play with the mill and lathe. By the time she graduated from Frankford High School in Philadelphia, she was already set on becoming a mechanical engineer.

College years

In 1956, Scholes enrolled in Bucknell University and majored in mechanical engineering. She was active in her college years, becoming the rush chairman for the sorority, Delta Delta Delta, and joining the Panhellenic Council. Later, she would take a role on the class council in the House of Representatives. She also was engaged in both field hockey and volleyball and would serve as the captain of both clubs during her time in college. Scholes graduated in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering as the only woman in her class.

Early career

After graduating college, Scholes would begin her career at Standard Oil of Ohio in 1960. Here she designed gas stations and was exposed to the engineering of runoff and groundwater. Scholes would remain at Standard Oil of Ohio until her marriage to Donald Bottomley in 1963, when she would move to Island Heights, NJ.

Lucy Bottomley would then work in Philadelphia, at Univac as a tool and die designer and later Deval LCS where she led a team that was contracted by the Navy. Bottomley left Deval just before the birth of her first child, Amanda Bottomley, in 1969. She would take care of housework while she had two more children, Tom Bottomley in 1971, and Sam Bottomley in 1975. Once Bottomley's youngest child reached 4, she would once again begin working as a mechanical engineer in the Navy.

Career in the Navy

From 1979 until her retirement in 2004, Bottomley was the leader of the Navy Lakehurst Environmental Program. Bottomley was the first environmental engineer at the Navy base, Lakehurst Maxfield Field. At the beginning of her career in the Navy, she focused on setting up systems for recycling and improving wastewater and hazardous waste management of the facility [EPA] [DOD]. She would also begin work, both studying and remediating areas of hazardous contamination on the base, that were not yet recognized in the Superfund program.

In 1985, there were large quantities of carcinogens found in the water supply in a few regions near the base. Since the base sits on the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer, the largest aquifer in the northeast, a few newspapers and authors were quick to blame the navy base for the pollutants. Bottomley was paramount in navigating the controversy and determined that the base was not responsible for the carcinogens found in the water supply and gave testimony before the EPA and NJ DEP in 1987. It would later be determined to be caused by the nearby unresolved Ciba-Geigy Superfund site. Regardless, Bottomley used this opportunity to push the EPA to recognize the base as a Superfund site and put it on the National Priority List (NPL) with a total of 45 sites on the base with contamination dates stretching as far back as 1919.

From 1987 until 2004, Bottomley would focus her efforts on leading her team to remediate the Superfund sites. She and her team would completely remediate 34 of 45 sites. Before her retirement, she placed plans for remedy on the remaining 11 that require further action [Lakehurst EEP]. Her most famous and final remediation she led was the clean-up of the BOMARC missile accident site on the adjacent Air Force base which involved the removal of contaminated topsoil. By the end of her career, the base would receive over 20 major environmental awards.

Throughout her time in the Navy, Bottomley helped establish multiple community programs that focused on the environmental education of local young students. She ran the “Adopt-A-School Program” where students would spend time on the base at an environmental camp to learn about local wildlife. Additionally, she established the “Earth Day Program” which holds an exhibition on the base every year which focuses on the environmental education of base personnel. Her efforts would also assist in the development of the Marine Academy of Technology and Environmental Sciences (MATES), which began as a small program in a local high school, but now has its own building and ranked in the top 100 public high schools in the United States in 2016.