Frank Daniel is in his 28th year with the Department of Air Pollution Control and DEQ—and through those years, he has seen a world of changes, both in the agency and in the environment.

 

“I started in 1980,” Daniel recalls. “I came on as a field inspector for the air program—this was pre-DEQ. We only had about 124 members in that department statewide. There were about 12 of us in the Tidewater office. They were all retired naval officers, all captains, and the director was an admiral. I had been in the Navy for four years and I obviously wasn’t retired, so I’ve worked my way up.

 

 “It’s been an interesting 28 years, right from the start. The first big thing that came along in my career was when acid rain hit the news. There was a big tizzy going around the state over what were we going to do about acid rain and how were we going to research it. The air board decided it would make use of the State Advisory Board, and we really worked out a pretty good partnership with NASA and some universities in the state. We had an acid rain monitoring network that ran throughout the state that really produced a lot of interesting data. It really showed that we did have an acid rain problem in Virginia. Our rainfall was about 5.6 on a pH scale—distinctly acidic.

 

Daniel was particularly involved with efforts to regulate tributyltin, a highly toxic additive in coatings for ship hulls that protects against marine growth.

 

In the late 1980s, the State Water Control Board “passed just about the world’s most stringent TBT standard and from that point it showed a lot of leadership,” Daniel says. “The problem was that nobody knew how to get that rate, so it also produced tremendous industrial problems for all the shipyards. … I guess I felt somewhat justified on that later on, when … everybody realized shipyards were having trouble meeting the rules. We came up with a memorandum of under-standing, which basically gave a lot of relief to the shipyards but yet kept them focused on the problem. So with that agreement, and with the recent passage of an international TBT ban, I really feel like that issue has been dealt with, and knowing how toxic TBT was I think that was a big success story that involved leadership on Virginia’s part.”

 

Along with his successes, Daniel also feels a bit of frustration with how Virginia’s efforts have been perceived over the years. “It’s a little disappointing to know how much you’ve done” that the public may not recognize, he says. “If you [went to] the southern branch of the Elizabeth River in 1968 and looked north towards all the plants that lit up Norfolk, you could hardly see anything. I mean, it was just one smokestack after another. There were just constantly gobs and gobs of smoke. If you go there today, you don’t see anything, it’s clear up there.

 

“People don’t realize how much we’ve done. We’ve still got many of the same problems because of population growth, the increase in the number of cars, and the increase in the number of vehicle miles traveled. Those significantly offset a lot of the good work that we’ve done, which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have done that work. If we hadn’t done it, we would really be in trouble.

 

“Looking back to April 1, 1993, we’ve come a long way. I think all in all, we’ve got a pretty good agency. We just can’t rest on our laurels, because I think there is still a big gap in terms of the resources we need. I think we’ve made tremendous progress, but there is still tremendous work to be done.”