Reader Profile: Anne Germain

Delaware may be a small state, but for Anne Germain it presents immense opportunities in managing solid waste. The chief of engineering and technology for the Delaware Solid Waste Authority (DSWA), there are many responsibilities under Germain’s umbrella. She oversees the DSWA’s engineering group and all of the capital improvement projects, including the 10-year CIP. She’s also in charge of the landfill gas operations, where employees are busy doing monitoring and staying in compliance with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s New Source Performance Standards. The LFG is collected and pumped to a power plant to be burned with conventional fossil fuels to help generate green power. DSWA is in partnership with Cummins, which sells the compressed gas to its end users. Germain also heads up environmental monitoring and compliance at DSWA facilities, including  leachate, groundwater, and stormwater. As if that’s not enough to keep her busy, she also oversees the computer technology, facilities, buildings, and vehicles. “That’s about it, I think,” says Germain.

What Led Her Into the Solid Waste Field
The idea of working with such large engineering projects as bridges, dams, tunnels, landfills, wastewater treatment plants, and water treatment plants offered Germain great appeal. She earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from Virginia Tech and a master’s in civil engineering from the University of Delaware. She worked for a year for the Ohio Department of Transportation, then moved to St. Mary’s County Department of Public Works in Maryland for five years. “When you’re working for a small county, you become less specialized and much more of a generalist,” she points out. “I worked on transportation projects, but nobody was really taking responsibility for some of the solid waste projects.” So she did. It was an exciting time in the industry: it was pre-Subtitle D, and recycling regulations were just starting to take off. The young and idealistic Germain, “very much the environmentalist,” would pull cans out of trash for recycling to set an example for others. Her new responsibilities were serendipity, synching well with her environmental interests.

How She Spends Her Days
No two days are the same in solid waste management. Wherever there is fire, Germain shows up to put it out. Case in point: Weeks may pass before she runs into one of the IT employees, and then the mounting complaints will lead her to huddle with them, devising solutions. “Hopefully, we plan things well enough in advance that we avoid fires, but sometimes they do happen,” Germain points out. “If things are more active in one group than in another, then usually I’ll be spending more time focused on whatever is going on there.” Germain calls engineering the “perfect job.” On nice days, she can go outside to monitor a construction project. In inclement weather, there is plenty to do in the office.

What She Likes About Her Job

“I cannot say enough about the people who I have working for me,” says Germain. “They make my job easy. They make me look good. They work really hard. I have a great group of people I have the opportunity to work with every day. They’re fun, they’re dedicated. I just can’t say enough good things about them.”

Her Biggest Challenge and What She’s Doing to Meet It
“Our biggest challenge is more of a global challenge for the organization,” Germain points out. “From a macro scale looking at the solid waste industry, we’ve tried to reduce our waste, and that’s something for which everybody’s been advocating. Now it’s actually happening. The waste quantities have gone down and that is our source of revenue. The organization has had to make a lot of adjustments to where we’re tightening our belts. We’ve all come together in trying to figure out how we can do more with less. That would be the biggest challenge: in trying not to let it affect our morale or performance-the fact that we’re trying to do things without as many resources as we once had.”