"Never, ever stand on top of an unearthed drum of chemicals," said Jeff Hegedus with a grave look in his eye and his left palm extended vertically in front of him. He then pointed to a picture of himself doing exactly that 20 years earlier.
Hegedus is the environmental health supervisor for the Whatcom County Health Department. The drum he spoke of in this case was one of dozens used to store phenol, a caustic solvent. He had to dig them up while cleaning up a hazardous waste site in Kent.
"I once heard about a man that was climbing around on the rusty lid of a drum, and it collapsed under his weight and his body was burned severely by the acid," Hegedus said. "Those were certainly the toxic cowboy days."
Hegedus said that prior to 1989, when Washington adopted the State Model Toxics Control Act, no regulations were in effect for cleaning up a toxic waste site. Hegedus and other environmental consultants had to learn through experience when clean was clean enough. Clear standards for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites were not set until the early ’90s through the state act. Hegedus was working as a site hazard assessment specialist at the time. He also was one of the individuals who created Washington state’s toxic cleanup regulations that now determine the permissible levels of chemicals in the ground. Through his multiple and varying positions in the environmental field, Hegedus has experienced a colorful existence thus far.
The Toxic Cowboy Days
In 1982, Hegedus graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. In 1985, he received a master’s in operations research and statistics and an MBA in business management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. Hegedus never received an environmental degree — in the early ’80s, he said, jobs related to toxic waste were not in high demand and in some cases didn’t exist.
After graduate school, Hegedus worked for a telecommunications company for two years. He was the assistant to the vice president, moving throughout the country every six months, wearing $500 power suits, driving a Mazda RX-7.
"I was being groomed for corporate gold," Hegedus said. "I was essentially a yuppie."
After two years, he decided he wasn’t a suit and wanted to do something more than be a marketing tool for a corporation. He told his vice president, "the success I had found at the telecommunications company was something I had settled for because I couldn’t think of something noble enough worth fighting for." He sold the suits, sold the car and moved across the country to Washington to "clean up the world."
"I left a very lucrative business, moneywise, in order to sweat in a Tyvek suit in the sun and clean up toxic chemicals, but I was making a noble compromise abandoning money in order to serve my community," Hegedus said.
In the late ’80s, Hegedus and two friends formed their own hazardous-waste brokerage, called Envirotech Systems Inc., in Seattle. He worked as a hazardous-waste broker, managing field operations in waste management. Envirotech would collect 55-gallon drums from companies that didn’t know what to do with their chemical waste and package, label and transport that waste to a treatment facility.
"We would round up unlabeled or mislabeled drums, figure out what was inside and dispose of them as the Department of Ecology or the Environmental Protection Agency desired," he said.
No rules or regulations dictated their movements — Hegedus said Envirotech determined and created proper rules and regulations as they went.
It was during his time with Envirotech that Hegedus had a dangerous encounter with phenol, a highly poisonous solvent. He was working by himself, which is rare today; pouring 5-gallon buckets of used chemicals into 55-gallon drums that Envirotech transported to be treated. Someone at a business that manufactured rubber seats for exercise equipment had mislabeled one of the buckets; Hegedus ended up pouring a bucket of an isocyanate-based catalyst into 40 gallons of a rubber production byproduct resin, which caused an exothermic reaction and released hydrogen cyanide — the same product that killed more than 2,000 people and caused long-term harm to more than 200,000 when it escaped from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984.
"I was suddenly tasting bitter almonds — and I’m a chemical engineer, I knew what that meant," Hegedus said.
A polymer, or a chemical compound comprising more than two chemicals, formed on top of the chemicals and sealed off all ventilation. The drum started to bulge and Hegedus had to jam a pipe down to vent pressure and keep the drum from exploding. It took more than 24 hours for the drum to cool down completely.
"I remember driving away feeling violated that afternoon. People almost lost their lives for rubber seats on exercise equipment," Hegedus said. "Rubber seats! Are those really necessary?"
From 1992 to 1996, Hegedus designed, constructed and operated a hazardous-waste collection and disposal facility for household and small-business chemical wastes for Skagit County Public Works in Mount Vernon.
"It wasn’t abnormal to see semis lined up outside the facility loaded up with thousands of chemical-filled drums being shipped off for proper disposal," Hegedus said.
In 1998, Hegedus accepted a job in Ketchikan, Alaska, where he lived in a log cabin by the water and worked to clean up and demolish a hazardous waste site, much like the Port of Bellingham is planning to do with the old Georgia Pacific plant.
"I was making such good money on that project that it didn’t even register as odd to me to be flying back and forth between Seattle and Ketchikan every other week," Hegedus said. "I was making an adventure out of my livelihood."
It was in Alaska that Hegedus bought his first sailboat. It also was there he met his future wife of three years.
"For our first date we went on a 30-day trip around the San Juan Islands and Gulf Islands, then we flew to Mexico for our second date. It was soon after that I proposed," Hegedus said.
Hegedus’ experience in the environmental field has led him to his present position of two years as Whatcom County’s environmental health supervisor. He works with site hazard assessment specialists to clean up hazardous waste spills and meth labs in Whatcom County according to MTCA regulations.
Sandi Hughes-McMillan, business service supervisor, has worked with Hegedus at the health department for a year. The staff she oversees, offers supervison and support for Hegedus’ environmental health department program. She describes Hegedus’ work ethic as "over the top."
"He sets high expectations for himself and his staff and expects things to get done — and done correctly," she said.
Hughes-McMillan depicts Hegedus as a charismatic individual who can put a framework around what he does and make people see the bigger picture, but also someone of whom she can ask questions outside a business context because he offers good life lessons.
"Jeff is certainly someone I would be comfortable stranded on an island with. He can add humor to any situation, and he’s a talker! There wouldn’t be any silence. We’d be figuring out the answers to all the world’s problems," she said, laughing.
The Philosophical Environmentalist
Hegedus’ gold hardhat gleamed in the sun beating through the window as he discussed his recent promotion to chair of the Marina Advisory Committee. His promotion allows him to be involved in deciding what to do with the waterfront and all the land-use applications after the Geordia Pacific plant is demolished.
"I’ll have the opportunity to take my philosophies and make something out of it in my own community," Hegedus said. "We live in this check-and-balance system of competing self interests, and it’s important to recognize the value of everyone’s role."
Hegedus explained that all parts are needed for change. The activists bring attention to the cause, the technicians provide objective facts and elected officials suggest legislation.
"We have got to respect the roles of all parts and stop getting angry and blaming," Hegedus said. "This is what democracy is."