What I do

Hi all, I will see if and how this works. I'm just an old farm kid, 52 years old, with no college. Graduated with my class in 1974 even though I didn't go to school my senior year. I had to start working at 14 when I left home. Worked on a farm that grew to 1600 acres of soft white winter wheat and peppermint, about 1/2 irrigated for over 20 years. I left farming in the fall of 1992 and built a new house in Dallas and moved to town. Worked at a little feed store for a while then a small farm for 2 summers (all for the great bass fishing on a large irrigation reservoir). 2 friends wanted me to come to work for the city, I started the day after Christmas 1994. Became foreman and then supervisor 4 years ago when my supervisor retired. I run the water system for our town of 15,000 people from the reservoir to intakes, water treatment plant and throughout the distribution system. I have a plant operator for 8 hours a day and I am on call for the rest, There are 4 other operators in the distribution system. We read the meters, do the meter maintanence, install new services, water mains and manage all the facilities. In the last 3 years we have done a lot of upgrades, new PLC (program logic controller)to run the plant, 2 new pumps and 3 new variable speed drives at the intakes, new variable speed effluent pumps to pump water from the plant 40 feet up the hill to a 2 million gallon storage tank. We are building another 2 million gallon reservoir on the south end of town along with a 2 mile long 14" high pressure water line to fill it. We have just installed a new fixed base meter reading pilot project that will read the water meters and send the readings by cell radio to the billing equipment, we won't have to walk to read them or even go out in Oregons rain. Anyway it keeps me busy and I feel like I have been given a second chance at being a productive citizen in my home town. Enough (or probably to much about me).