My name is Troy Herring and I'm an Environmental Technologist for Jacques Whitford Environment Ltd. I've been employed here, this is a brand new office opened up July 1, 1997 and I'm in the process of just developing this new company in the field of environmental.

Short term, I clean up things such as contaminated water systems. I'm making sure that the water ways that we have right now exist and stay as pure as possible, as clean as possible. I believe that if at all possible when a man leaves a place, there shouldn't be evidence left that he was there - if at all possible. And in doing so, I guess I'm trying to clean it up and leave it the way it was.

If someone wants to buy a building the bank says, "Well have you check out the environmental status of the site?" The client comes to me, he starts - I go through a review of the history of the site and low and behold I find in 1955 there was a gas station on this site. I talk to the regulatory body such as the Saskatchewan Environmental Resource Management and low and behold I find that they had 300 ground storage tanks, one of which leaked 3000 gallons of petroleum on 1958. And from there, I make my recommendation "Probably you should slow down. Maybe go in with a drill rig and just confirm that this was cleaned up."

This is our field lab. Not much of a lab, but actually this where we physically bring back the soil samples and we do a physical testing of them. These are some samples of a collected site in Regina where we were looking for contamination from a removed tank. (Sniff) Yeh, you can smell some diesel in there.

When I first started into school and everything like that, I really thought I wanted to be a geologist. As I, because I just, I've always just picked up rocks. I grew up on a farm so it was always, between working I picked rocks or walking along rail beds and that we'd pick up the old pieces of orthaglaze with the funny little specks in it or the pieces of mica that were shiny.

My formal education is a diploma in Water Resources Engineering Technology from SIAST in Moose Jaw. That course mostly deals with ground water quality, hydraulics for like piping networks and what not, and as well as touching on surveying, a lot of computer stuff, computer-aided drafting, physical drafting. Presently I am finishing a degree in Engineering at the University of Regina.

The advice I could give is just to get involved with, whether it be through tech school or whether it be through engineering, is get yourself involved with a co-op program and get as much exposure to as much as possible before you make the choice.

I believe people skills are very important, the ability to adapt, and the openness to learn and to new experiences is also very important. You find most of your education is what you gain on the job and is experience and being able to learn from the experiences you have had and being able to apply it to other adventures you take in the futures - adventures, projects, and what not.

Try to enjoy it. Find a job that you really like and really enjoy. It makes it so much easier to work at what you enjoy as opposed to going to a job where you are just going to a job. Have a job where it actually means something to you personally, and you enjoy it. I believe that's the most…that's the key to success in anything. Some days I just really love my job.

My job is new and exciting. Things are changing. There's a level of responsibility and as I'm getting older and getting more experience within my field people are asking me questions and I know the answers and I make a difference. And that's important to me. So, am I where I wanted to be? I don't know yet. Cause I'm still on the journey yet.