When Alan Pollock began his career, environmental quality wasn’t just a government responsibility. It was a cultural movement. “Back in the ’70s, in some respects, the environmental movement was akin to—or maybe grew out of—the anti-war movement,” recalls Pollock. “We had Rachel Carlson, Earth Day—it wasn’t dealing with war, but it was still looked at as kind of a street protest, a demonstration kind of issue. Today, [environmentalism] has become more a mainstream expectation. It’s part of our life and pursuit of happiness.”

 

Pollock joined the State Water Control Board in 1973, and through the years, his role has evolved along with the department. Today, he heads the Office of Water Quality Programs for DEQ. In his 30 years in the industry and even before that, one topic has emerged as a major water quality concern.

 

“If you want to look back over the years, the one thing that pops out is chlorine—chlorine toxicity and discharge from wastewater plants. When you really step back and look at water quality protection, public health protection over the years —way back before the water board, early in the century—chlorination became a public health salvation, certainly for [drinking] water systems. It then slowly caught on with wastewater systems to protect public health. That became more and more the norm. And then it became recognized that with chlorine discharges there would be residual chlorine. That was probably a contributor to fish kills, so in trying to fix one problem, we created another.

 

“A chlorine task force was formed, recognizing that something needed to be done to protect the aquatic life and to control the high level of chlorine. We knew we needed to have a water quality criterion for chlorine.” That problem, and the solution that followed, may not have been fully anticipated, Pollock believes. Engineers had to deal with the situation of chlorinating the discharge water to purify it. Then, because of that new water quality standard for chlorine in the stream, it was necessary to dechlorinate the discharge as well.

 

Pollock believes that the biggest success story he has been involved with is nutrient control for point sources for wastewater—and he is passionate about extending that success to nonpoint sources as well. “If governments could somehow set a cap for nonpoint sources, figure out what’s best for them, I think that would be a good way to go. Generally speaking, people know if they contribute to a problem, they know what their share is—and they’ll mostly act in a way to try to deal with the problem and contribute to the solution.”