This episode of ALCIVIA Co-op Talk with Pam Jahnke and Bob Bosold discusses the importance of environmental safety to ALCIVIA with Environmental and Regulatory Specialist Tom Overby.
Time again this morning for a very important conversation on our ALCIVIA cooperative talk program. We’ve talked with sales, we’ve talked energy, we’ve talked grain, agronomy all kinds of things. Today an area that a lot of people probably don’t realize is part of the cooperative: environmental and regulatory specialists.
Tom Overby is with us and Tom this is not something you can pull somebody off the street to do, you’ve got a background in understanding our land, the environment, and keeping it safe, clean, and healthy right?
Yes, I’ve got 30-plus years working in the agronomy department for co-ops and so I do have you know pretty good background.
Let’s talk about the environmental side of things. What does that mean being the environmental specialist? What falls under that purview?
Well, anything that deals with the environment, you got the land, you got water, you got the air, you know we’ve got the regulations and whatnot that we have with federal and state agencies that we have to abide by. But then we have land that if we’re going to repurpose it we have to test it, make sure there’s no contamination. If there is, we have to remediate and remove contaminated soil and replace it with clean soil.
So, you’re kind of like well a middleman if somebody is going to do what you just suggested, repurpose that land or whatever, they can get you in there and help make sure that we can go forward legally under the environmental laws of this country and the state.
Correct, correct, and you know we all want to be good stewards of land that we live on so we have to abide by the rules and meet or exceed them.
How busy are you in that area? Most of our farmers are such good stewards of the land but you know accidents can happen
Yes, yes if there’s any type of spills that happen, which you know they are going to happen at some point, they have to deal with those, and you’ll get the cleanups and help coordinate with our environmental consultants and the regulatory agencies that gap and DNR you know they all get involved with it, so it gets to be a coordinated effort.
Tom Overby is with us, the environmental and regulatory specialist with ALCIVIA cooperative on our ALCIVIA cooperative talk program. Regulations, a term that no farmer likes we, just have too many regulations you know, that as well as I do in a farmer’s mind.
But, thus far as a regulatory specialist, does that mean you can kind of act as a middle man for the farmers that have to make some changes on their land and they’ve got to go through all kinds of regulatory procedures be it CAFO’s or nr51 and all those sorts of things.
Yeah, we can help them out with that, you know we’re not you know the the specialist or the expert on it but we can help you find somebody to get your questions answered you know. We’re familiar with the rules and regulations and know how to comply with those and we’re here to assist and that means of course we’ve got to have documents signed sealed and delivered.
Can you walk them through that and get them to the right people be it yourself or whoever to make sure these documents are filled out to the satisfaction of the higher powers so to speak?
Yes, yes, we can help out any way that we can assist them because you know if it is not documented it didn’t happen.
You’re in the Hammond office in western Wisconsin, as far as your area, environmental and regulatory for ALCIVIA cooperative do we have specialists located throughout the ALCIVIA network?
Well, the environmental and regulatory specialists, I cover all the territories both north and south so I cover from Luck down to Racine, and we have a couple of facilities in Illinois as well so I cover quite a territory.
He puts on some miles, but he knows what he’s doing and that’s Tom Overby who is the environmental and regulatory specialist at ALCIVIA so, if you have some challenges, concerns in those areas Tom is the man to contact and is headquartered at the Hammond facility with ALCIVIA cooperative.
This morning was with Tom on our ALCIVIA cooperative talk program.