How did you end up in the world of Underground Storage Tanks?
When I tell people what I do for a living, people often ask me how I got into this line of work in the first place. Looking back on my 35+ years of analyzing and explaining UST regulations, I sometimes forget the odd chain of events that got me where I am today.
Here’s my story.
It all began in the spring of 1986. I was 23 years old, had recently received an AA in Natural Resources Management, was living in an old farmhouse in northern Vermont, and was looking for work. I wanted to do something environmentally related but I had no idea what that looked like.
One day I wandered into the office complex of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation in Waterbury, which was located — and I’m not making this up – at the Vermont State Asylum for the Insane. Being young and not knowing how things worked, I basically went up and down rows of office cubicles clutching my scant half-page resume, stopping at each desk and asking each person if they had a position available. I vaguely remember the confused looks on their faces which culminated into someone finally saying “Uh, this is not how you go about getting a job with the State. You have to fill out an application for an open position, mail it in, be registered in a pool of applicants, wait for a call, be interviewed etc..”
Disheartened, I was about to leave when I heard a gravelly voice from around the corner say, “Hey kid…what are you doing?” And there before me was the most outlandish government employee I’ve probably still ever come across. Imagine if you will, from the ground up: farm boots covered with sheep manure, dirty jeans, a denim farm jacket, a nicely pressed shirt, a tie, a cowboy-grade handlebar mustache, a striped railroad conductor’s cap (on backwards), shaggy hair, and a broad, aloof smile puffing away on a filterless cigarette. Meet my future boss, John Amadon – soil scientist, farmer, innovator, and according to most in the office (I later learned), not exactly a team player. I told him I was looking for a job. He was quiet for a moment, sized me up, took a drag (we still had office smoking lounges back then) and evenly said to me, “I’m looking for a young mind mold.” I gulped, paused, then excitedly replied that I think I was that person. He said he just needed one reference. I started to excitedly babble that “my former wildlife biology teacher is now commissioner of the Vermont Department of Fish and Game and he would” …. but John interrupted and said “Kid, shut up; I just need a thumbs up or thumbs down.”
I got the job. The next week, armed with only a gas vapor sniffing device, a little red Chevy Chevette, and a $2.50 a day lunch allowance, I begin driving all over Vermont, directing the decommission of leaky underground storage tanks. Aside from an early generation 40-hour Haz Mat training that utilized an actual burning tanker truck and live actors, I had literally no experience in what I was doing. I watched hole-ridden tanks get pulled out of the ground, directed soil excavation and treatment, ate lunch at quaint village diners, hand wrote field reports that the secretaries would then type up and put in the file, and basically got a crash course in old steel leaky underground tanks. My LEL explosion meter only went off once (10% potential of explosion, phew) and I once accidentally drove my state vehicle deep into an open tank. Talk about a learning curve!
The job, exciting and novel as it was, only lasted a year, and then I headed to Alaska to get my undergraduate degree at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1987. Looking back, I it seems I was destined to this industry because I wrote an English paper comparing Vermont and Alaska underground tank regulations. I interviewed with another unorthodox regulator, John Janssen, from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. We hit it off and he promised to give me a call if a position became available. Shortly thereafter the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef on Good Friday, 1989, and I got the call and John granted me emergency hire status.
Green as I was, I eventually was given oversight of all of the oil pollution programs for the entire northern half of Alaska. The programs were basically frozen because everyone in the Fairbanks office was down at Valdez directing spill response activities. So as a college intern, I started issuing road oiling permits, reviewing spill plans, and basically running the underground tank program. This all got thrown into my lap because John, the literal first responder to the Exxon Valdez spill, got a huge bill from the State of Alaska because they claimed they overpaid him when he was directing the Exxon Valdez cleanup. He was relieved of duty when he advised the incident command to “nuke the tanker” as the best clean up response. In protest he took extended leave and pretty much left me to run things.
There I was, going to college and flying to Anchorage, attending staff meetings, and doing my best to run a bunch of government programs when at the office I bumped into the head of HR who had just returned from Valdez and wondered who the heck I was. I smiled and said earnestly, “I’m John Janssen’s new hire.” She looked at me and muttered, not jokingly, “…that… bas****.”
John Janssen in Kotzebue, Alaska holding up a bailer of diesel fuel representing a 300,000+ gallon diesel leak.
Somehow I stayed on as a college intern after graduating and began doing contaminant site cleanup on the North Slope, and then finally got hired with a permanent position. Years later I accepted the statewide pollution prevention program in Juneau, where I fully and permanently entered the world of UST leak prevention (versus cleanup). I had a great boss who let me run the program as I saw fit and helped bail me out on serval occasions when my office jokes went awry and my cavalier approach to bureaucracy got me sent to the Commissioner’s office more than once. Regardless, I helped guide Alaska through the now-distant December 22, 1998, deadline. Pushing out tons of outreach materials and a few dozen consent orders, I helped get all of the Alaska UST operators over the finish line with upgrading or closing their UST systems.
In 2002, after 12 years of service to the state of Alaska, I decided to move my family out of Alaska and start my own UST business, which at the time I had no idea would turn into what it has become today. Looking back, I’m very grateful for the two Johns in my life who opened doors that under any other time and circumstance would probably never happen again.
What’s your UST story?