What do you do?
I review and authorize permits that may result in environmental impacts, specifically to aquatic resources — wetlands, rivers, mudflats, etc. We review permits from applicants that include Ma and Pa businesses, small business, large corporations, and municipalities. My job is to identify potential adverse and beneficial effects to aquatic resources, and, through laws like NEPA and the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, NHRA, Magnuson-Stevens, and many others, I ensure that applicants avoid and minimize adverse effects. Where adverse effects cannot be avoided or minimized, they are mitigated.
How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?
After high school, and after attempting and failing college for the first time, I joined the Army during The Surge of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I joined as a M1A2 Main Battle Tank crewman (19k). I spent two 12-months tours in Iraq, before I got out on honorable discharge.
With my G.I. Bill, I started going to school in the evenings, while I worked construction during the day. It was working outside in Florida where I fell in love with nature, and all of the natural beauty the state had to offer, so I switched to an environmental degree program, and I got a job in undergrad doing ecological work for a small stipend, until I graduated. Once I graduated, I applied for the job I have now using the (now defunct) Pathways Program for recent grads. I’ve been doing this job for the last 8 years, and have enjoyed serving my community, while also helping others be better stewards of our natural resources.
What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?
Personally, I believe in our organization’s mission. Even given my love for the environment, I think it’s important that we authorize and help inform development. That could mean more housing, or better municipal infrastructure. Doing this job allows myself and my colleagues to help private citizens and developers build in ways that don’t cripple our natural resources, or jeopardize the existence of endangered species. I’ve been a part of several instances of relocation of endangered species that would have been impacted by development, we have authorized emergency permits to help fix eroding shorelines, I’ve been a part of beach renourishment reviews, and I’ve worked closely with FEMA to write environmental assessments to authorize housing developments for those impacted by storms.
What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?
I don’t want to speak for the American people. However, what I will say is, without us, there would be significantly less federal oversight when large developers plan and execute their work. The risk that you will have less consideration given to neighboring properties, to water quality, to impact on natural resources and to native species will be high. In some cases, where state and local governments step in, things might not be as bad. However, I am not optimistic about the ability for state and local governments to be completely unbiased when it comes to large developers and their lobbyists. Unfortunately, corruption exists at every level of government. It’s my opinion that access to local and state officials, where local protections to natural resources can be exempted or waived, is easier and, therefore, more common. With federal oversight there is a robust bureaucratic machine that levels the playing field, where the rules are the same for developers in all 50 states.
What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it’s all going to impact your work and your mission?
Unfortunately, it means many people I work with are in a more dangerous position. I have people that now suffer a commute of more than two hours. Or, others who are new mothers, or have spouses that rely on the health insurance this job provides. It makes it harder for them to do their work to advance our mission. That, in turn, makes development suffer, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of government inefficiency. It puts our organization at risk, as well as our mission, and that risks the protection of natural resources and species.
I sympathize with the blue collar worker who isn’t able to go to work because their boss doesn’t have a permit. I sympathize with officials and developers who legitimately want to improve housing supply, or improve municipal infrastructure and have to go through the permitting process. I agree that our process could be more modernized, more efficient, and better serve the American public.
However, the wholesale slashing of government agencies, the trauma inflicted on the federal workforce, and the crippling of partner agencies we rely on to execute the mission is not the solution to this problem, and it will not bring change that improves the lives of Americans.
Instead, I fear, it will result in less protection for our natural resources, and lead to growing economic and environmental disparity. A salient point that’s lost amongst the disregard for federal workers and the work they do is that they are, themselves, Americans, many of whom worked on the private side of the industry before finding an opportunity in the federal government, on the other side of whatever industry they came from.
We know how these policies affect those people, because we talk to those people everyday, and in many cases, we have been those people.
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE 