The Eco-Boom : Environmental consulting is the focus for a growing number of local firms. Getting a job with one requires specialized training.
The weeks preceding Labor Day were peppered with reports about the environment, jobs and training programs. The Planning and Conservation League came out with statistics showing that in California, half a million jobs owe their existence to environmental programs.
Senator John Seymour (R-Calif.), speaking in Burbank recently, hailed the creation of CALSTART, a public/private consortium. Seymour said the consortium will create more than 55,000 jobs for displaced defense workers in environmentally friendly electric car production.
On the other hand, Washington Post columnist George Will savaged U.S. Senator Al Gore (D-Tenn.) for promoting the “bad idea” of “environmentalism as business opportunity.”
There’s a local angle to this story: the firms that specialize in environmental management and consultation, and the jobs they provide.
One such Ventura County environmental firm has grown about 10% a year and now has activities reaching all the way to Russia.
“Ours are the ‘high-wage, high-skill’ jobs all the politicians say America needs,” said Brock Bernstein, vice president of Ecoanalysis, an environmental consulting firm in Ojai specializing in system design and data management.
Bernstein’s clients’ requests for environmental consultation “often are the catalyst for looking at their present products and processes so they can do what they do more competitively,” Bernstein said, “even if it is driven by a requirement to comply with regulations.”
Next month his colleague, David Guggenheim, a partner in Ecoanalysis, will lead a high-level American delegation to Moscow.
“Our meetings will focus on environmental management issues particular to the developing free market economies of the former Soviet republics,” said Guggenheim. Accompanying him will be experts from AT&T;, FMC Corp. and Xerox, as well as various public health officials.
Another Ventura County eco-firm, Fugro-McClelland, is working closer to home. Local oil companies call on the Thousand Oaks firm to help them clean up their production processes.
“They’re becoming smart about what to do. It didn’t used to be that they did cleanup at both ends,” said John Powell, a senior engineer.
Oil production processes are being designed to eliminate pollution from the start, he said.
“Waste minimization is the new trend. More and more companies have hired their own staff. Even people laid off (because of the recession) have been hired back to work on waste minimization.”
Most of these eco-related jobs are not generally obtained without effort and training on the part of applicants. The jobs are multiplying, but so are their requirements. (If you are interested in getting a job or training in this field, check the list of phone numbers at the end of this column.)
“This kind of work is very, very discipline-specific,” says Chris Richards of the Thousand Oaks executive search firm Career Connections, which sponsors environmental job fairs. A combined business and science background is desirable for applicants because of the new emphasis on the environment as a revenue producer. “Can this person bring business in?” is a question companies ask Richards of the job-seekers in his files.
“Go to school and stay in longer than you think you need to,” advises Patric Galvin, CEO of I.C. Technologies and an expert on eco-jobs.
Why should we listen to what Galvin has to say?
I called him after reading in Industry Week magazine how his firm has been converting Rocky Mountain companies from polluters into producers of resalable metals.
Galvin and an associated company, Wastren, signed a contract last month to clean up a 19,000-square-mile area around Chernobyl in Belarus, unrelated to Guggenheim’s visit to Russia. Galvin has called this “a project on the scale of a Panama Canal.”
Locally, the environmental affairs division of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn. has regular meetings where you can get to know people active in a number of eco-professions. Also, a lot of excellent published resources and university extension eco-job courses have become available this fall.
A final word on environmental projects in Russia, which are being heavily reported on in the Los Angeles Times. While reading one of these articles, I was reminded of a remark by a former candidate for California governor, Upton Sinclair. In the 1930s he came back from Soviet Russia and remarked, “I have seen the future--and it works.”
In view of more recent developments, nowadays he might want to say about Russia or any environmentally vexed country, including our own, “I have seen the future--and it’s work.”
JOB RESOURCES
* Environmental affairs division of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn. Next meeting Sept. 24, 7:30 p.m. Hilton Hotel, Oxnard. For information call (805) 988-1106.
* Career Connection. Ask about its Environmental Job Fair, Sept. 18-19. (805) 494-3896.
* Earth Work magazine lists environmental jobs from entry level through CEO. (603) 826-4301.
* Environmental Business Journal delivers on its pledge of “strategic information for a changing industry.” (619) 295-7685.
* “Emerging Career Options for Engineers” is a UCLA Extension seminar Sept. 12 on “career opportunities in environmental sciences, transportation, etc. for laid-off engineers.” Call (310) 826-0328.
* Also available this fall at UCLA Extension, an Air Quality Certificate Program and Environmental Law Specialty Program. Call (310) 825-0328.
* For a copy of the “Jobs and the Environment” report, call the Planning and Conservation Foundation at (916) 444-8726.
