Environmental Progress - Spring 2003

Employees of the Month

Editor's Note: Each month the Illinois EPA recognizes outstanding employees for making quality part of every job they do. Three recent honorees are listed below.

John Cashman was the EOM for January 2003. John works for the Bureau of Air, in the Permit Section, Clean Air Act Permit Program/Title V Unit, which is responsible for writing air permits for the state’s 732 leading industrial sources of air pollution. Title V permits are very detailed and can be 1,000 pages long. The Agency has an agreement with U.S. EPA setting goals for issuing these permits; meeting the December 1, 2002, goal required issuing permits at a record high rate. John developed a plan for streamlining the process and, through a team effort, the Permit Section was able to meet the December goal.

Meredith C. Kelley was the EOM for February 2003. She works for the Division of Legal Counsel (DLC). Her work in devising and implementing a more efficient way to store DLC’s closed files, saved months of work by eliminating extra steps required under the previous system. Meredith was instrumental in DLC’s 2002 Summer Clean-up that put a more uniform and professional image on DLC’s offices. She located hundreds of resolved case files to prevent their loss, and placed their contents in proper order.

Jody Kershaw was the EOM for March 2003. Jody works for the Bureau of Land, Division of Remediation Management, Remedial Project Management Section, State Sites Unit. Jody worked closely with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission to register the abandoned Lewis Landfill as a Land and Water Reserve, to ensure protection of endangered and threatened species at the site and turn an environmental detriment into an environmental benefit. She developed a comprehensive primer entitled“ Vegetation of Landfills with Native Plants” widely used in reclamation of landfills. Jodi is Project Manager for the Southeast Chicago Cluster Sites, a continuous 103-acre highly contaminated. unpermitted landfill that is one of the most complex sites in the state. She successfully coordinated sampling of 27 groundwater monitoring wells for more than 125 chemicals, in the Agency’s largest two-day sampling event to that time.