A broad skill set and a strong belief in collaboration and communication has helped Michael Brown build a varied and successful career in environmental management in multiple Department of Defense stops.
“I started out at Joint Base Lewis-McChord as a fish and wildlife biologist there, did that for a short amount of time, until the garrison learned that I was good at math,” he said. “So, I transitioned from counting fish, going out in boats, out in the field almost every day, to looking at contracting. It transitioned into a totally different job.”
Before this first job out of college, Brown had worked with the military while completing his education at The Evergreen State College. He holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Evergreen in environmental science.
“I wasn’t really thinking of working with the military, but I met a couple of people who worked for the Army National Guard. They asked if I might be interested in a job, and I asked what it entailed, and they said, ‘We’ll let you know when you say yes’,“ he said. “I ended up taking the job and travelling around the state (Washington) looking at armories. Sort of an informal environmental auditing of all the environmental programs at the armories. I was working 36 hours a week and going to school.”
From that start, he now has more than 27 years of experience with Department of Defense organizations ranging from Army installations and Army National Guard to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Office of the Secretary of Defense – a career path he says he did not anticipate.
In his current role as a team lead in the West and Pacific Division at the U.S. Army Environmental Command, Brown has been engaged with Joint Base Lewis McCord on the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) remediation and cleanup efforts in Washington state in Yakima, an ongoing effort with site specific challenges that Brown and the team face.
“In Yakima there’s no water purveyor that is present, all the people are on their own wells. Some of the strategies used at other sites that use a single water source just aren’t possible. When a municipal system isn’t available, you can’t do that,” he said.
PFAS are a group of man-made chemicals that includes PFOA, PFOS, and many other chemicals. PFAS have been manufactured and used in a variety of industries around the globe, including in the United States since the 1940s. PFOA and PFOS have been the most extensively produced and studied of these chemicals. Both chemicals are very persistent in the environment and in the human body – meaning they don’t break down and they can accumulate over time. There is evidence that exposure to PFAS can lead to adverse human health effects.
In Yakima, Brown credits the comprehensive effort to create individual solutions for residents at the homes with improving the level of trust among residents about the Army’s intentions and commitment.
“Once we had a plan in place and as we’ve rolled this out, we’ve seen community engagement increase and outrage decrease. I will tell you that has taken us going out to the Yakima community, having open houses every quarter, focusing on transparency and communication,” he said.
“We’ve seen the amount of people asking questions to the right people to get the right information increase dramatically. I speak with the public affairs office in Yakima almost every day, if there is one thing that has been super important, it is having strong public affairs engagement with the community and with the regulatory and state agencies. If there’s one thing that has been critical it is that piece,” he said. “I’m really proud of our team that has done the work out in Yakima, which includes real estate support, plumbers, electricians, and garrison folks. All have worked extremely hard to make it happen.”
This focus on communication played a role in Brown’s career prior to his current role. Brown said in an earlier post with the U.S. European Command, he was charged with using environmental topics to engage foreign governments—both allies as well as with the Russians.
“I was charged with building communications channels and relationships, using our friends in Norway to invite the Russians to have a conversation about common issues in the Arctic,” he said. “My job was to figure out how to talk to the Russians using the environment as the topic. We were able to create an Arctic Roundtable. That was in 2011, and I understand they’re still holding these events today. We opened a communications channel that previously didn’t exist.”
That approach is more than a philosophical approach, it takes commitment, Brown said.
“In this work, there are always a number of stakeholders,” he said. “The only way to succeed is if we all work as a team and we have one message. Because of the complexity of environmental issues, information changes all the time, so we have to work extremely hard to make sure we are sharing the most up-to-date information constantly.”
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