How it started…the early early days

I’ve been building tools for Environmental Engineers since 1983 when we released our first software (DOS-based) that printed Hazardous Waste Manifest forms. Before there was the Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifest form. 20+ totally different state forms. 5-7 part not pin-fed. Just getting a printer that would pound through all the copies and was friction fed was a challenge.

We (it quickly became 2 of us) didn’t start building software because I was a computer software person (our first project was on a mainframe timeshare system, PC’s were just on the cusp). Not because I was a consultant (yet).

But because they were tools I needed back when I was working in" “the shop”. Which was a mile square auto plant where we cast engines at one end, drove cars off the other end, and did everything in between. Built in 1918. Our most recent sewer prints were 1930 when it was the Oakland Motor Car Company.

We plated 12,000 bumpers a day (Cu, Cu-CN, Ni, Cr), used soluble and insoluble oils for machining and grinding, painted vehicles (undercoat, body, eventually urethane bumpers) and lots more. We were the first plant to “cook” our oil so we could be paid for it instead of sending it out as waste. We had a 2M gal/day treatment plant for the plating and other process wastes.

The city separated the storm and sanitary sewers without telling us and we had a “visible sheen” on the river, so we put temporary treatment in the 106” storm sewer 28’ under the plant. We had a PCB spill from a rooftop transformer into a storm drain when I had been there 30 days. Within the month a helicopter doing a lift crashed on the roof (no one hurt), so we had to submit our SPCC plan to EPA.

What a learning laboratory!

Just as the environmental regulations were coming out.

I gradually integrated the new regulations piece by piece. And that integration and optimizing it is what I have beeen working on ever since

More to follow, I’ve been told to keep these short (and I prefer reading short posts…