President's Page

January 2024

Happy 2024 from your TAEP Board of Directors!

I want to take a minute to reflect on all that we did last year:

• We kicked off 2023 with our Holiday Social (New Year’s Edition) at St. Arnold’s Brewing.  We’d like to thank everyone who attended and our event sponsors:
  • The Law Office of C. William Smalling- Gold Sponsor
  • Roux Associates- Gold Sponsor
  • BGE- Green Sponsor
  • Opal Environmental Consultants- Green Sponsor
  • GHD- Green Sponsor
  • Terracon- Red Sponsor
  • Phase Engineering- Red Sponsor

• We also enjoyed a slate of very informative speakers at our monthly luncheons at the Cadillac Bar & Grill:
  • Briana Gallagher (SJRA) - SJRA Water Resources and Flood Management Division Updates
  • Mark Tarrien (World Energy Management Systems) - The Renewable Fuel (R)evolution
  • Jennifer Hadayia (Air Alliance Houston) - TCEQ, Transportation, and Sunset Review: Reflections on How Clean Air Faired in the 88th Session
  • Michele Wilkins (TxDOT Environmental Affairs Div.) - TxDOT UAS (Drone) Program
  • Clayton Collier (Hydrex Environmental Consulting) - Waters of the U.S. interpretation based on Sackett v. EPA
  • Todd Running (HGAC) - Update on H-GAC Clean Rivers Program
  • Kesavalu Bagawandoss (SGS North America) - Regulatory updates and Significance of Short Chain PFAS
  • Bill Smalling (The Law Offices of Bill Smalling PC) - 2023 - 2024 Texas Enviro Update: News You Can Use

• And, our Young Environmental Professionals (YEP) group met several times throughout 2023 for Happy Hour networking at:
  • Platypus Brewing (March)
  • CounterCommon Beerworks & Kitchen
  • Equal Parts Brewing

I want to say thank you very (very) much to everyone who worked so hard to put these events together (especially Glenn Buckley, Kathy Garland, Bano Benevides, and Craig Klein).  I’m looking forward to 2024, as we look forward to more of these events and look to bring back the Environmental Challenges and Innovation Conference (ECIC) later in the year.

Other news

• Our TAEP Holiday Social (New Year’s Edition 2024) in partnership with SAME-GCC- New Year Edition is coming up February 1^st at St. Arnolds!  Please watch our website for details. We very much hope to see you there!
• Jobs Board: We are proud to offer this service to our members and encourage you to take advantage of it! It allows Employers to post opportunities for as little as $50 for a 30-day listing. Job Seekers can post their resumes for free.
• TAEP Consultants List: It’s open!!  The list provides a searchable venue for TAEP members and/or non-members in search of a qualified TAEP member service provider.  Now we need members to list!  Member pricing is only $150.

Finally, thank you for your support, engagement, and membership in TAEP!  The success of TAEP is built on your enthusiasm and effort to support this valuable organization. Your support is crucial to our continued growth and success. Please continue to help by:

1. Renewing your membership if it is due (the proceeds of which offset the cost of hosting meetings and in part support student scholarships)
2. Mentioning TAEP and/or our Young Environmental Professionals (YEP) to your colleagues and get them involved
3. Bringing your thoughts and suggestions to our attention- we appreciate helpful input
4. Recommending speakers for our monthly luncheons
5. Volunteering to help out if you are interested in a TAEP event

As always, please let us know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one. Thank you for your membership and your support!

Jim

December 2021

Holiday greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors!  We hope everyone had a restful and enjoyable holiday so far, and that you are looking forward to a bright and productive 2022.  Things are looking up as we emerge from the rollercoaster of 2020 and 2021!

I want to start out by saying thank you to everyone who has continued to support TAEP, and be a part of our professional association over this past two years and through the ups and downs that it has brought.  I am pleased to report that TAEP remains in good health.  While our finances have been stretched during this time, we are continuing to build membership and increase our services to our membership. 

We have had many very interesting and informative virtual meetings this year, including our annual TAEP/AWMA Joint July Regulatory Update featuring TCEQ Deputy Executive Director Ramiro Garcia Jr.  My extra thanks to TAEP Board member Kathy Garland for coordinating with Mr. Garcia to speak with us, and to Kathy and TAEP Board member Glenn Buckley, who have continued to put together excellent speakers and topics each month for our “Virtual Brown-Bag Lunch-and-Learn” meetings (extra thanks to Craig Klein for figuring out the tech for those!).  

We are continuing to grow our Jobs Board (check it out!) and coming up in December, we will be launching our all new TAEP Consulting Directory, aimed at providing a searchable, easy-to-use database of TAEP members and companies for the public to identify service providers across a range of environmental services to help meet their need.  More on that to come!

We are also looking forward to our first in-person event since February of 2020(!), our Holiday Social at St. Arnolds with AWMA-GCC and SAME Houston-Galveston Post!  We are excited to host this event again this year, having missed last year due to COVID.  We hope you are able to join us for a fun evening, including food catered by St. Arnold’s, door prizes, a raffle, and great networking and visiting with friends and colleagues. Oh, and great craft beer and root-beer from St. Arnolds! 

Thank you very, very much to our sponsors for the event (so far!), including: 

• Gold Sponsors: The Law Office of C. William Smalling, Roux Associates, and Raba Kistner
• Green Sponsors: Alliance Emissions Monitoring and Spirit Environmental
• Red Sponsor: Terracon Consultants

If you would like to be a sponsor, or would like to donate to our scholarship fund, please follow the links, check out our website, or please feel free to reach out to me directly at [email protected]. These funds provide valuable resources for students in our field, a core mission of TAEP.  We greatly appreciate any and all support.

Upcoming luncheons

We are looking forward to resuming our in-person luncheons in January 2022 at the Cadillac Bar and Grill!  Please see our website for updated information on our January and February, as we welcome:

• January: Jill Boullion with Bayou Land Conservancy to present on “Aggregate Mining in the San Jacinto Watershed: Issues & Opportunities”  
• February: Lisa Mairs,  USACE Project Manager, to present on “USACE Galveston District Flood Risk Management and Coastal Resiliency Efforts”.

If you have a topic that you would like to see TAEP highlight through one of our luncheon meetings in 2022, or if you would like to share a presentation on a topic, please reach out to Kathy Garland and Glenn Buckley at [email protected].  We would look forward to your insight!

As always, please let me know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one.  Thank you for your membership and your support!

Jim

April 2021

Greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors and Happy Earth Week!  

I just wanted to send a quick note to say that I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the gorgeous spring we’re having here on the coast.  Thinking about Earth week, I am very grateful for all of the good work you all are doing as environmental professionals to safeguard our environment and improve the quality of the air, water, and soils, while still maintaining a strong and stable economy in the state.  I continue to be impressed by the innovative approaches to these important tasks that are demonstrated by our members every day. I am thankful be a part of this organization and appreciate that you are as well!

For Earth Day this week, April 22^nd, we are pleased to have Dale Crownover joining us to give a luncheon presentation on “Improvements in Environment and Profit Through Innovation: Small Business Perspective”.  This promises to be an interesting presentation and am important subject as we move forward.  Dale’s visionary leadership has resulted in numerous awards, recognitions, and designations, such as the Texas Quality Award, Malcolm Baldrige Award, Texas Business of the Year from the Texas Chamber of Commerce, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), and Quality Texas Foundation Fellow.  I hope you can join us this Thursday at noon!

We are continuing to work on some new services and programs to roll out in 2021, and I look forward to announcing those as we finalize them over the next few months.  As always, please let me know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one.  Thank you for your membership and your support!

Jim

January 2021

Greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors!  We hope everyone had a restful and enjoyable holiday, and that you are looking forward to a bright and productive 2021!  

It was fun getting to visit with so many of you at our “Virtual Year-end Happy Hour” in December.  Thank you to Thomas Pommier with the City of Houston for providing an informative presentation on the City’s Climate Action Plan.  Thank you also to Terracon Consultants for their sponsorship to help support our YEP and student scholarship programs.  And congratulations to our bingo winners, Corrine de Zeeuw, Bryan Mason, and Courtney Klaus! 

I am writing as I want to provide an update on the organization as we look toward the spring:

We are working on some new services and programs to roll out in 2021, and I look forward to announcing those as we finalize them over the next few months.  As always, please let me know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one.  Thank you for your membership and your support!

Jim

October 2020

Greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors!  We hope you, your family, and your work are doing as well as possible under the circumstances. It has been quite a while since I last posted, so I want to provide an update on the organization as we look toward the fall.  

Jobs Board

We are proud to announce the rollout of our new Job Board as a service to our members as an alternative, targeted options for Employers to post opportunities and Job Seekers to post their resumes!

• To help with recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that has resulted in many furloughs and business slowdowns, TAEP is offering free job postings by employers to the Job Board through the end of 2020 using the temporary discount code TOGETHER2020
• Please see our website for how to post.  As always, we welcome your feedback!  Please contact us at [email protected]

Upcoming luncheons

It was great “seeing” everyone at the Virtual Brown Bag Luncheon yesterday (10.15.20)! We enjoyed a great turnout and the presentation on PFAS Awareness and Management in Texas was very informative. Thank you to all who attended and to our speakers Lori Carter and Seth Kellogg for sharing their expertise with our members!  As always, a PDF of the this presentation (and others from our past luncheon meetings) are available in the member area of the website, so that you can log in and find them if you missed the luncheon or would like to take another look.

We are planning to host our virtual brown bag luncheons through the end of the year!  While we look forward to being able to meet in person again soon, we would like to be sure we are keeping in touch with you and continuing to do our best to provide informative presentations on pertinent topics by experts in their fields.  Please see our website for updated information on our November virtual luncheon, featuring a presentation by the City of Austin’s Resource Recovery Program’s “[Re]verse Pitch Competition”.

Thank you to all of our presenters for sharing your experience! If you have a topic that you would like to see TAEP highlight through one of our luncheon meetings in 2021, or if you would like to share a presentation on a topic, please reach out to Kathy Garland and Glenn Buckley at [email protected].  We would look forward to your insight!

Finances

Like many organizations, we are striving to continue to meet our core mission through the pandemic.  This is complicated by the need to be sure we cover our operational costs and long-term sustainability in a time when our fund-raising capabilities are compromised.  Currently, TAEP has been able to maintain our financial health by minimizing our expenses and taking steps to identify areas where we need assistance.  One area that you see we have had to adjust is with our Virtual Luncheon meetings, where we are applying a small registration fee to cover our costs to set up the meeting, host the site, etc.  We are working to keep these fees as low as possible, and we greatly appreciate your support.

Sponsorships

To this end, one of the areas we are wanting to ask our members to assist us with is sponsorships to help support our student scholarship program.  TAEP’s Chuck Glore Memorial Scholarship Program provides scholarship support to university students pursuing degrees in environmental fields, in addition to providing support for high school students through the Texas Envirothon and Houston Science and Engineering Fair, among others.  The program awards approximately $12K in scholarship funds annually.  

In considering how to continue to support this effort, we are asking for help from our members.  Starting for the spring semester of 2021, we are asking for your help to provide 1:1 (up to $500) matching support for scholarship funding support.  TAEP will thank our sponsors on our website, communications, and at our events.

If you or your company might be able and interested in providing support for this purpose, please reach out to me directly at [email protected]. These funds provide valuable resources for students in our field, and represent a core mission of TAEP.    

As always, please let me know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one.  Thank you for your membership and your support!

Jim

Jim Dobberstine

President of the Board of Directors

Texas Association of Environmental Professionals

[email protected]

May 15 2020

Greetings everyone!

I'm writing as I heard back from a few folks that the link to our Job Board was broken in my message last week (doh- my error!). I have corrected that and thank you for bringing it to my attention. Please do check out the Job Board- if you have any difficulties you can always reach out directly to Craig at [email protected] and he can help you get access and post as you need.

Also, I failed to offer congratulations to our scholarship recipients for the spring semester:

• UH Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Ms. Arnelle Gonzales is a PhD student who's research is focusing on quantification and understanding the fate and transport of PFAS in the environment.
• SFA Division of Environmental Science: Ms. Lais de Oliveira Machado is a MS student in Environmental Science, a teaching assistant in the program, and is conducting research evaluating the effect of environmental conditions on commercial production of kiwi fruit in South America.
• TAMU Dept. of Plant Pathology and Microbiology: Ms. Michelle Kirchman is a graduating (now graduated!) senior from the Bioenvironmental Sciences Program (BESC).

As you know, our Chuck Glore Memorial Scholarship Program supports students in the environmental fields each year in an effort to provide opportunity for these students to secure their degree and pursue their professional objectives and passion. Please join me in congratulating these excellent students!

Finally, we have posted details for our May 21st TAEP Virtual Brown-bag Luncheon, featuring Matt Stahman, Director of Regulatory for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES) presenting on "The Contentious Definition of WOTUS: Past, Present and Potential Future." We hope you can join us for this free event! Please check out our website for registration information.

Have a great weekend,

Jim

May 7 2020

Greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors! We hope you, your family, and your work are doing as well as possible under the circumstances. This is certainly a difficult and uncertain time, and it is our hope that we will all endeavor to persevere together.

It has been quite awhile since I last posted, so I want to update you on the organization, and our revised plans for the next month or two.

New Job Board
We are proud to announce the rollout of our new Job Board!

• The Job Board is located here, and allows for Employers to post opportunities and Job Seekers to post their resumes
• Pricing is well below market value for posting on sites such as ZipRecruiter, Indeed, Monster, etc. 
• Please see our website for pricing details and how to post.
• To help with recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that has resulted in many furloughs and business slowdowns, TAEP is partnering with MemberClicks to offer free job postings by employers to the Job Board until June 30th using the temporary discount code TOGETHER2020
• After that, we're rolling out a 25% discount using the code 25OFF until August 31, 2020 
• We also offer free postings for non-profits, regulatory agencies, and to post Internship opportunities; request a discount code at [email protected]
• As always, we welcome your feedback, please contact us at [email protected]

Luncheons
We are planning to host our next luncheon virtually in a webinar format in May! While we look forward to being able to meet in person again soon, we would like to be sure we are keeping in touch with you and continuing to do our best to provide informative presentations on pertinent topics by experts in their fields. Please see our website for updated information on our May virtual luncheon.

Environmental Challenges and Innovations Conference
Unfortunately, we do not think it would be wise to move forward with our planned ECIC this fall. Given the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 moving through the next several months, the potential risk to our members and their families, and the potential financial liability to the organization if we move forward only to have to cancel at the last minute. We will work to bring the conference forward in 2021, and hope everyone understands and will support us at that time.

I also want to say thank you to everyone for their support and enthusiasm for our events in 2019 and early 2020, including our luncheons and Holiday Social. Along with your membership, these events are paramount to sharing information with our membership on current issues and technology advancements in our fields, opportunities for networking and dialog, and raising scholarship funds to support students working to enter the profession. Thank you greatly to our volunteers who work tirelessly behind the scenes to put these events together and serve our members!

A special thank you also to all of you who supported our Holiday Social at St. Arnolds in December! A big thank you also to our sponsors for the event (see our home page!) and our partner organizations AWMA-GCC and SAME HG-Post. We had a great event and raised important funds for scholarships.

The success of TAEP is built on your enthusiasm and effort to support this valuable organization. Your support is crucial to our continued growth and success. Please continue to help by:
1. Renewing your membership if it is due (the proceeds of which offset the cost of hosting meetings and in part support student scholarships)
2. Mention TAEP and/or our Young Environmental Professionals (YEP) to your colleagues and get them involved
3. Bring your thoughts and suggestions to our attention- we appreciate helpful input
4. If you are interested in any activity that TAEP is engaged in, volunteer to help out

2020 marks my 10th year as President of the Board for TAEP. It has been an honor to serve in this role, and I am thankful for the opportunity to serve the association alongside so many dedicated and thoughtful board members and volunteers during my tenure. I am blessed to be affiliated with all of you, and appreciate the hard work you do to make our professional association a great one.

As always, please let me know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one. Thank you for your membership and your support!
Jim

Jim Dobberstine
President of the Board of Directors
Texas Association of Environmental Professionals
[email protected] 

PS: I had the opportunity to serve on the Blue Ribbon Committee for the 2020 Texas Environmental Excellence Awards through the TCEQ.  There were some great projects and award winners- I would encourage you to check them out and consider nominating a project or individual for a 2021 award!

May 2019

Greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors! We hope you enjoyed a peaceful Memorial Day and you are looking forward to a productive summer.

I am writing to announce that the TAEP Board of Directors (BOD) elections for 2019 are complete! Elections of members to the BOD are a very important component of the long-term direction and stability of the organization. Please join me in welcoming back Pam Embody and Glenn Buckley to the BOD (along with myself), and first-term BOD member Latrice Babin! My sincere thank you to all of our candidates for their willingness to serve, and to Kathy Garland for serving as Chair of our Nominating Committee. If you are not familiar with the members of our Board of Directors, please visit: http://www.taep.org/board-members.

I would also like to take this opportunity on behalf of TAEP to thank departing BOD member Mike McClellan for his many years of dedicated service. He has served the organization as a volunteer in a number of capacities, including as our long-time Programs Director leading our luncheon meeting programming, and as a regular supporter of our annual Environmental Challenges and Innovations Conference (ECIC) and annual Holiday Social. His service is representative of the commitment and professionalism of our TAEP membership.

Speaking of events, thank you to all of you who supported our Holiday Social at St. Arnolds in December! Thank you also to our sponsors for the event (see our website!) and our partner organizations AWMA-GCC and SAME H/G Post. We had a great event and raised over $3000 for scholarships. My thank you also for those of you who have come to speak at our luncheon meetings this year- I look forward to the third Thursday each month as the presentations have been really informative and insightful! We have meetings set through September this year so far, and you can always find out about upcoming events by taking a look at our calendar! Please keep an eye out for our July Regulatory Update meeting hosted in partnership with AWMA-GCC, as registration tends to fill quickly!

I also would like to note that we are partnering with GSI Environmental to provide Texas Risk Reduction Training again this year. This is a 2-day program designed for professionals who work in soil, groundwater, or surface water contaminant evaluation and remediation. Through our partnership, a portion of the proceeds from the program will support TAEP.

Finally, I have received a number of inquiries regarding our biennial ECIC! I want to let you know that we are looking to hold the ECIC in the spring of 2020. I am looking forward to the event, and we will be kicking off planning in the next few weeks, so please stay tuned to our website for information and let us know if you would like to be involved in the planning!

The success of TAEP is built on your enthusiasm and effort to support this valuable organization. Your support is crucial to our continued growth and success. Please continue to help by:
1. Renewing your membership if it is due (the proceeds of which offset the cost of hosting meetings and in part support student scholarships)
2. Mentioning TAEP and/or our Young Environmental Professionals (YEP) to your colleagues and get them involved
3. Bringing your thoughts and suggestions to our attention- we appreciate helpful input
4. Recommending speakers for our monthly luncheons
5. Volunteering to help out if you are interested in a TAEP event

As always, please let us know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one. Thank you for your membership and your support!
Jim

May 2018

Greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors! We hope your spring has been excellent and you are looking forward to a productive summer.

I am very pleased to let you know that we have completed a significant upgrade to our website!  I invite you to visit it and take a look.  The site has been improved for easier navigation, especially if you do so from a mobile device.  The new site should provide an easier, more convenient experience for you while also providing a better platform for growth for TAEP.  I would look forward to your feedback, so please reach out to me or to our webmaster, as we will continue to make adjustments to the site over the next several weeks.

I’ll look forward to seeing you at upcoming luncheon meetings this summer.  Please be aware that our new luncheon fee pricing structure goes into effect this month. As I mentioned at the meeting in April, we have had to raise our registration fee slightly to accommodate costs to host the luncheons that have increased over the past year.  This will allow us to continue to provide topical meetings at our new central venue without impacting our ability to support our student scholarship program.  We appreciate your understanding and look forward to seeing you at our meetings as we move forward.  As always, please let me know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one. 

Thank you for your membership and your support!

Jim

December 2017

Greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors! We hope you enjoyed an excellent holiday season and are looking forward to the upcoming New Year. 

In the spirit of the season, I would like to say thank you for helping to make TAEP a great professional association!  As I look back over this year, I can identify so many great people doing really neat things for our association, ranging from hardworking volunteers serving on our event committees (ECIC, Holiday Social, YEP) and helping at our various events and monthly luncheon meetings, to our very dedicated board members and committee leaders that labor on their own time to organize these efforts and ensure they function smoothly.  My many thanks to those that served as speakers at our luncheon meetings and the ECIC this year, presenting valuable and timely information on topics ranging from environmental risk assessment, regulatory issues, and coastal resilience to environmental liability estimates, ethics, and technical presentations across a number of fields.  Thank you to those of you who helped us host a successful National AEP Board meeting and evening social here in Houston back in January.  I also want to thank our partners at AWMA-GCC, who frequently collaborate with us to host and sponsor events and join our respective memberships together, a principle on which TAEP was founded.  And thank you to our member companies that go above and beyond to sponsor their employees for memberships, partner with us to offer training events, and donate funds for our events and fundraisers for scholarships.

For those of you who joined us for the Environmental Challenges and Innovations Conference (ECIC) in October, we would like to thank you for your support and participation in making this one of the best conference events yet!  Please visit our conference page for a wrap-up and a few photos from the event.  The event featured a great array of informative presentations, an excellent vendor venue, and fun opportunities to network and catch up with colleagues.  Further, the event raised critical funds to support our Chuck Glore Memorial Scholarship Program, one of TAEP’s core endeavors.  My personal thanks to event Co-Chairs Andy Adams and Bryan Mason for leading the event again this year, and to the ECIC Conference Committee who worked tirelessly over several months (and through the tragedy of Hurricane Harvey) to put this event together and execute it so brilliantly! 

Likewise, our annual Holiday Social in partnership with AWMA-GCC was a huge success!  We filled the event hall at St. Arnold’s again this year with nearly 200 professionals joining together to celebrate the year!  The event raised critical funds for our scholarship programs, and we would like to thank you for your support.  Please visit our event photos page for a wrap-up and a few photos from the social.  My thanks to Mike McClellan (TAEP) and Jessica Ross (AWMA-GCC) for their leadership in pulling this event together again this year!

Looking ahead, we are preparing for our annual Board of Directors elections, and are asking for nominations from the membership as we prepare the ballot.  If you are a member and would like to serve on the board, or would like to nominate another member to serve, please visit our annual elections page for information to email Kathy Garland (TAEP Board of Directors Nominating Committee Chair).  Please do so by January 19th.

As we approach the end of 2017, it has been my continuing pleasure to serve as President of the Board, and to be a part of this unique organization.  I am blessed to be affiliated with all of you, and appreciate the hard work you do to make our professional association a great one.  I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.  As always, please let me know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one.  Thank you for your membership and your support!

Wishing you Happy Holidays and New Year,

Jim

February 2017

Greetings on behalf of your TAEP Board of Directors!  I am writing to let you know about a couple of upcoming Spring 2017 events and opportunities that may be of interest to you:

• February 16^th: TAEP is hosting our monthly luncheon meeting at Brady’s Landing, where we will hear from my friend Scott Jones of the Galveston Bay Foundation (GBF). He will give us an update and overview on storm surge mitigation concepts for the Houston and Galveston area. As you know, post-Hurricane Ike, there have been substantive efforts by numerous agencies and organizations to develop a comprehensive, practicable plan to minimize the effects of storm surge along the upper Texas coast, so this should be an interesting and informative presentation. As always, please register early!
• Also on February 16^th: If your work is related to air, oil, or gas, you may want to check out the Air and Waste Management Association Gulf Coast Chapter’s (AWMA-GCC) 20^th Annual Conference and Exhibition (formerly the HAT Conference).  As part of our ongoing partnership with sister organizations here in SE Texas, AWMA-GCC has graciously offered TAEP members their AWMA member rate to attend the conference.  This offer is good up until February 10^th, so if you are interested please register soon!
• March 1^st -3^rd: TAEP is once again partnering with GSI Environmental to offer Texas Risk Reduction Program Training pertaining to the Texas Risk Reduction Program (30 TAC 350). This comprehensive, informative, and popular training series is instructed by GSI with participation by key TCEQ technical staff.  As always, TAEP members get a 10% discount on registration for the course. And, part of the funds raised will be returned to TAEP to support our student scholarship programs!
• March 27^th -30^th: The National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP) Annual Conference will be held in Durham, NC. As part of the conference, training sessions are being offered on Monday, March 27, including NEPA, air quality, ecosystem services, and wildlife habitat.
• March 1^st: More locally, the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies at Rice University is offering a course titled, “Full World- Houston's Ecologic and Economic Future” that examines the relationship between the economic and ecologic well being of the Houston-Galveston region.  The course runs for eight weeks on Wednesday evenings from March 1^st through April 19^th. CEUs are available.
• April 8^th -10^th: TAEP is a long-time sponsor of the Texas Envirothon. This year’s event is being held at the Texas Tech Field Station in Junction, Texas (Kimball County).  This year’s topic is “Agricultural Soil and Water Conservation Stewardship.”  If you would like to be involved, there are opportunities for sponsorship, volunteering, etc. You’ll be glad you did, as this is a great event and opportunity to support budding environmental professionals.

As always, information on these and other upcoming events can be found on our website.  As we start 2017, I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.  Please let me know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one.  Thank you for your membership and your support!

Jim

PS: Looking for a great way to give back to your community, help the next generation, and promote your profession? The Science and Engineering Fair of Houston needs volunteer judges with Science and Engineering backgrounds to evaluate student projects on February 24^th and 25^th.  You can register on their website.  Tell 'em TAEP sent you!

November 2016

Greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors! We hope you enjoyed an excellent Thanksgiving and are looking forward to the holiday season and upcoming New Year.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I would like to say thank you to all of you that help make TAEP a great professional association! As I look back over this year, I can identify so many great people doing really neat things for our profession, from volunteers serving on our event committees (ECIC, Holiday Social, YEP) and helping at our various events and luncheons (shout out to Mel!), to our very hardworking board members and committee leaders that labor on their own time to organize these efforts and ensure they function smoothly. I also want to thank our partners at AWMA, CHMM, and SAME, who frequently partner with us to host and sponsor events and join our respective memberships together, a principle on which TAEP was founded. And thank you to our member companies that go above and beyond to sponsor their employees for memberships, and donate funds for our events and fundraisers for scholarships. Finally, I would like to note the passing last month of Ed Fiesinger, long-time board member and Treasurer for TAEP. His work was instrumental in forging TAEP into what it is today. He will be missed.

Looking ahead, I want you to know about a few upcoming events and opportunities:

• Just a reminder that we are preparing for our annual Board of Directors elections, and are asking for nominations from the membership as we prepare the ballot. If you are a member and would like to serve on the board, or would like to nominate another member to serve, please visit our elections page for information and to email me directly. Please do so by December 2nd (the end of this week!).
• We are preparing for our upcoming TAEP/AWMA/CHMM Holiday Social on December 8th! Once again, we are hosting this event at St. Arnold’s Brewery. It promises to be a fun evening, complete with games, door prize giveaways, a raffle, and a very competitive Rock, Paper, Scissors (RPS) tournament! We will be raffling several Amazon gift cards and the RPS Tournament winner will receive a $100 Visa gift card! Funds raised from the raffle and tournament will help support scholarship programs for each of the host organizations. A special thank you to our sponsors for these prizes, especially our Gold Sponsor, Rineco Chemical Industries! Please visit our website to register for the event. If you would like to help sponsor the Holiday Social, please visit our website for additional details or email me directly.
• TAEP is proud to host the first quarterly (2017) meeting of the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP) in Houston on January 21st. As part of this effort, we will have a guest from NAEP at our January 19th luncheon, and then Friday evening, January 20th we will host an evening social mixer for our members and the NAEP Board. Please stay tuned to our website for updates about the times, locations, and other details for the social.

As we approach the end of 2016, it has been my continuing pleasure to serve as President of the Board, and be a part of this unique organization. I am blessed to be affiliated with all of you, and appreciate the hard work you do to make our professional association a great one. I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events. As always, please let me know if we can make your experience with TAEP a better one. Thank you for your membership and your support!

Happy Holidays,

Jim

July 2016

Greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors! We hope you are having an excellent summer and are looking forward to another beautiful fall here in southeast Texas.

I have not written a President’s Update in quite awhile (over a year!), and I want to make note a of a couple of important things:

1. We just completed a successful election cycle for the TAEP Board of Directors. Congratulations to new Board members Bryan Mason and Kathy Garland! They join Jess Bailey, Pam Embody, Glenn Buckley, Jenny Towns, and myself on the 2016 Board of Directors. Bryan recently served as the Co-chair for our very successful 2015 ECIC, and will serve as our ECIC Liaison. Kathy, believe it or not, is back for a second term as a Board member, having served a term a few years back, and will serve as our Board Secretary. Also congratulations to returning board members Mike McClellan and Tom FitzHenry, each of whom are returning and have graciously agreed to reprise their roles as Programs Director and VP/NAEP Representative (respectively). Finally, thank you to Jayson Hudson and Brandi Naughton, our outgoing Board Members, for their dedicated years of service and hard work supporting our association.
2. I want to remind you that this Thursday, July 21st, we are hosting our annual Joint Regulatory Update in partnership with AWMA. Our guest speaker this year will be TCEQ Regional Director Ashley Wadick. We are very excited to have her join us and address our joint memberships. If you plan to attend, please be sure to register in advance, as attendance at this annual event tends to be quite large. We want to be sure to accommodate all of those who wish to attend, and walk-in opportunities may be limited.

With that, I wish you a happy summer! I want to thank you from TAEP for your ongoing interest and support of our organization. 2016 is TAEP’s 27th Anniversary, and will mark my seventh year as President of the association (ninth as Scholarships Director). I am proud of the work we do at TAEP, the partnerships we have with AWMA, SAME, CHMM, and numerous other organizations throughout Southeast Texas. I want to especially thank you for your support of our Chuck Glore Memorial Scholarship Program, which supports deserving students and programs in the environmental professional areas each (and every) year with funds that you provide through your membership and attendance at our events and luncheons. Thank you.

Jim

PS: If you are interested, I have included some highlights and thanks from the last year (follows).

Some highlights from this very successful past year:

• We hosted our annual Holiday Social at the St. Arnold’s Brewery in December 2015. This year’s event was a gathering of professionals from TAEP, AWMA, SAME, and CHMM. We had an outstanding evening visiting and celebrating with friends and colleagues over excellent food from Hickory Hollow and outstanding beer and root beer from St. Arnold’s. As always, we had great fun, and our congratulations to those that won door prizes and prizes for the table word games! I want to extend my thanks to the volunteers from all four organizations that made it a huge success:

• Not long prior, in October 2015, we also hosted our Environmental Challenges and Innovations Conference. What a great, successful event! We had more than 300 attendees, and a whole day of very interesting presentations and excellent luncheon plenary presentation by Dr. Michael Young from the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology. Congratulations also to our Chuck Glore Memorial Scholarship winners from the University of Houston, University of Houston-Clear Lake, Texas A&M, Texas A&M at Galveston, and Stephen F. Austin State University. Many students from the schools were in attendance at the ECIC, and I hope you were able to meet a few of these outstanding students and future environmental professionals. Congratulations also to Wendy Reistle and the Texas Envirothon Program for winning the Outstanding Service in Environmental Education Award! Finally, a huge thank you to Brian Mason and Andy Adams (ECIC Conference Co-chairs), and the ECIC Conference Committee volunteers!!
• We co-hosted two very neat Young Environmental Professionals (YEP) Socials  this spring (2016) with our sister YEP at AWMA! I attended both events, and was impressed at the number of folks that turned out for a great social and networking opportunity! My special thanks to our YEP Liaison, Jenny Towns, her AWMA counterpart Seneca Harvey, and our sponsor for the first event, PollutionTech.
• We hosted no less than twelve, very successful monthly Luncheon Meetings the past year, each with a unique topic and speaker ranging across topics touching on virtually every service area and professional discipline represented by the TAEP membership. My humble thanks to the many speakers and volunteers that make this ongoing effort. Most specifically, I want to thank Mike McClellan for his important and irreplaceable) effort identifying topics and speakers for the meetings, and Craig Klein for his technical support for online registration and onsite logistics. My many thanks to the volunteers that often support registration at the luncheons, including Pam Embody, Glenn Buckley, and Bryan Mason.
• Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Pam Embody and Craig Klein have continued their diligent work managing and refining our member database, and Jess Bailey has modernized and improved our financial recordkeeping processes. These efforts are critical to the long-term health and vitality of TAEP as we continue to grow. My sincere thanks to each of them for this important work!  
• Our partnership with NEAP and our sister Texas Chapters continued to grow stronger. In fact, thanks in large part to the efforts of Tom FitzHenry, TAEP co-hosted a very well 1st Annual Member Meetup at the TCEQ Trade Fair in Austin this past May 2016 with our friends at the North Texas Association of Environmental Professionals (NTAEP). The event was sponsored by KJE Engineering, Geo-Cleanse International, PEI, and Pace Analytical, and was very well attended by members and non-members alike!
• We continue to work with local partners in the Galveston Bay area. As an example, along with our friends at SWCA Environmental Consultants, AECOM, HDR, Gulf Coast Waste Disposal, ATKINS, and the Galveston Bay Foundation, TAEP cosponsored the 2016 Reception at the TCEQ Galveston Bay Estuary Program’s “State of the Bay” Symposium in January. The event was well attended and appreciated! Thanks to Bob Stokes at the Galveston Bay Foundation for organizing the event and including TAEP, and a special thanks to TAEP members Matt Stahman and Laura MacNeil for answering my call to sponsor it as well!
• Last (but, far, far from least) I want to thank the many volunteers, Directors, and members that work behind the scenes to make TAEP a successful service organization. Without you, it would be a futile effort.

May 2015
 
Spring greetings from your TAEP Board of Directors!  We hope you are having an excellent first half of the year and are looking forward to an excellent summer here in southeast Texas. 
 
I am writing today to (finally!) share with you the results of our 2015 Board of Directors (BOD) elections.  I wish to congratulate Jenny Towns on her first election to the BOD, and to Pam Embody on her successful reelection. I would also like to thank the membership for my reelection to the BOD to start my third term.  Collectively, we join sitting Board members Tom FitzHenry, Mike McClellan, Jayson Hudson, Jess Bailey, Glenn Buckley, and Brandi Naughton to serve you in 2015.  My thanks to this year’s Nominating Committee, composed of Jayson Hudson, Jess Bailey, and Tim Beyer for their effort vetting and selecting candidates.  Thank you also to our candidates, including long-time and dedicated TAEP member Joy Young, for running to serve the association.  We would also like to offer a sincere and heartfelt thank you on behalf of the board to outgoing TAEP Treasurer Ed Fiesinger, who has dedicated many years to serving our community and association, and been an invaluable member of TAEP.  His service and guidance have been a huge asset to the association for many years.  Finally, we would also like to thank you, the members of TAEP, for your participation in our BOD elections.  Selection of the Board is critical to the function and success of the association.  The BOD works to represent you, and your selections help shape the direction of the association moving forward.
 
One of the very successful elements of TAEP is our ongoing Chuck Glore Memorial Scholarship Program, through which TAEP supports college and university students in environmental programs at several SE Texas schools.  We also help sponsor programs for high school level students interested in careers in the environmental field through our support of the annual Science and Engineering Fair of Houston, and the Texas Envirothon.  As it happens, I had the opportunity to attend part of this year’s Texas Envirothon, held at Schreiner University in Kerrville this April.  It is a remarkable competition, where teams of students from high schools from around the state compete to solve an environmental problem or issue (case study), making use of three full days of field training, information gathering from regional experts, and collaborative work within their peer groups, culminating in a professional presentation to expert judges for the opportunity to go on to represent the state of Texas in the National Envirothon competition to compete for scholarships.
 
I have to say that I was thoroughly amazed at the level of effort and excellence I saw at the event, from the dedicated effort of the many volunteers who set up the workshops and tours and serve as judges, to the organizers to work tirelessly to ensure the entire event goes smoothly to the smallest detail, to the students themselves, who work remarkably hard to during three very tough days!  And let me tell you, these students are true standouts and great representatives of just how excellent our Texas students can be.  I had the honor of serving as a judge on the panel deciding a tiebreak between the top two teams in the competition.  After 25 years as a scientist, and nearly a decade teaching at the college level, I was thoroughly impressed by the sophistication and ability of these students to solve complex problems and develop professional proposals for implementing truly viable, well-considered solutions.  The competition was remarkably close.  Congratulations to the first place team form the Academy of Science and Technology in Conroe, who will be traveling to the national Envirothon competition in Springfield, Missouri this July.  My congratulations to all of the students and their advisors, and to the dedicated volunteers and organizers, led by Wendy Reistle of the Environmental Institute of Houston.  And a special acknowledgement to the gracious host organizations in Kerrville, including the Riverside Nature Center and Schreiner University, who provide an excellent experience for these young scholars to shine.  For information on the Texas Envirothon, please visit our website (www.taep.org) or the Texas Envirothon website at www.texasenvirothon.org.
 
As we head into summer, I want to thank you for your ongoing interest and support of our organization.  I am proud of the work we do at TAEP, the partnerships we have with organizations throughout SE Texas.  We look forward to seeing you at our luncheons and events over the remainder of the year.  Please visit out website to find event and registration information on our luncheon meetings, the upcoming Environmental Challenges and Innovation Conference (in October!), the Young Environmental Professionals, and more!
 
On behalf of the Board of Directors and TAEP volunteers, we wish you a successful and happy summer! 
Jim
 

Photo:  TAEP President Jim Dobberstine with Envirothon Coordinator Wendy Reistle at the 2015 Envirothon Award Luncheon at Schreiner University in Kerrville, TX