Episode 0 Description:
This inaugural episode of The Current was recorded during the Michigan Section Annual Convention and Expo 2023 in Port Huron, MI. Jamie Fleming and Matt Lane talk to Gary Wozniak, incoming Chair of the MI-AWWA and Bonifer Ballard, Executive Director, about challenges and opportunities emerging in the water sector and their vision for the podcast.
Episode 0 Description:
This inaugural episode of The Current was recorded during the Michigan Section Annual Convention and Expo 2023 in Port Huron, MI. Jamie Fleming and Matt Lane talk to Gary Wozniak, incoming Chair of the MI-AWWA and Bonifer Ballard, Executive Director, about challenges and opportunities emerging in the water sector and their vision for the podcast.
Welcome to the Current, the official podcast for the Michigan section of the American Waterworks Association. I'm your East Side host, Matt Lane. And I'm Jamie Fleming, your host from the West Side. Join us as we dive into water and wastewater topics from across Michigan. Hi, Matt. I'm Jamie. And our guests today are. Bonhoeffer Ballard, executive director of the Michigan section, and Gary Wozniak, our incoming chair for 2024. Welcome to the Current Things. Do you like our name? I love the name you. It's very clever. It's hydraulic. Yeah. Well, Bonhoeffer, why don't you just give us your elevator speech of who you are and why you're here and what you do. So I'm Bonhoeffer, Ballard. I'm the executive director of the Michigan section, and I've been with the organization for about nine years. My primary role is to work with the board on implementing the strategic plan, which I love. We have a team of a total of six, so five others than me. And I really enjoy working with all of them and watching them serve the members. And that's really the kind of the focus for us is making sure we're delivering member services that keep members engaged and happy. And Gary. Gary was Nick. I am the chair of the Board of trustees for Michigan, a WWE as of a couple of hours ago. So this is this is new for me. I've never done a podcast before. I usually can't shut up. And now you know. Getting on the spot, it's it's it's tough to find words to say. Yeah, but what is your day job? Oh, I'm a distribution engineer for the Lansing Board of Water and Light. So basically replace water main, whether that is old water main that needs, you know, exceeded its useful life. We we do have some old water main that that from the late 1800s that needs to be replaced in downtown Lansing to water expansion. If a customer wants to expand the water, we allow them to do that and give us the water main when they're done. So it's a project manager. I would oversee both of those types of projects. Right. Do you still find Wood man? I haven't. I know we have some in the office, but I have found wooden plugs and my understanding to those wooden plugs is that in that was the way they fixed leaks. They would pound a wooden plug into a hole in the water main. The wood would allow the plug to swell and the leak would stop. Wow. Now we have sleeves, but it was just pounding a wooden plug into a water main back in the day. So I do see those plugs in excavations. Well, so when you heard about the podcast, what was your first thought? I think it's really neat. Kinda like podcasts. I don't listen to a whole lot of them, but I just think that's something where we need to go. I think that's a good way to get the word word out that, you know, to talk about water supply and the issues that we have in this day. So I'm excited to be part of that. Yeah. What do you think? Like your number one objective would be for this podcast? What what do you think we could accomplish with it? I think to give some public awareness to what we're dealing with in the water industry that we've got some big hurdles coming up, as you know, with emerging contaminants, with water affordability, with and, you know, population leaving Michigan now, but potentially coming back in droves in the future. I would kind of foresee that, maybe hope for it. I think we need to prepare for more industry weather that might not look like it did with industrial age, but maybe a battery plant or or something that uses a lot of water. Maybe coming back to the Great Lakes area and we have to have the infrastructure ready for that. Do you think that relates to some of the the climate issues that we're seeing from. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. When when I hear what's going on out west and last year we had delegates from California section out. Yeah. With the droughts and the water restrictions, they think of water a lot different than we do. You know, and as we speak, I've got three Great Lakes flowing behind me, you know, and this huge, huge torrent of current, as you would say, of it, you know, and it just we don't worry about water scarcity or water availability. And it makes this place very desirable for a water using industry. But we need to prepare for that. Yeah. So for what? When you heard about the podcast, what would what would you say maybe your vision would be for it? Very similar to what Gary has said. I think this is this is the way that people are getting information now. So getting information out, whatever that is, whether it's technical or educating others outside of the industry, I think that this is a great opportunity. It gives people bite size information. Right. You're not committed to a three hour class or a two hour webinar. You get a little bit at a time and you can look at the topics you're interested in. Just makes it super easy and you can do it on your phone when you're in the field even. Yeah. I think that's the beautiful thing. Particularly it's not live, so you can listen to it whenever you want. That's why I love my podcasts. I listen to them in the car on the way to work and on the way home. So what is the section doing to prepare for some of the things that Gary mentioned? Anything? Are we forecasting an increase in demand for water usage statewide? So I think the section I think the focus that we've had has been on training, on technical training. But I think going into our next strategic planning process, this is something that we're going to need to be sinking our teeth into to understand what our role is and to really map out what we want to do and how we want to influence. Even in the last 4 or 5 years, we've seen the impact of extreme weather events in multiple communities. And there's got to be a way for Michigan, Section eight a better to provide resources for communities that are experiencing those. And it may be training, but maybe there are other ways that we can help, too. I think Michigan Warn is another one that we could certainly promote more strongly to help in those situations. But I would I would really hope that during the strategic planning process, we can identify some very concrete things that the section can offer. Can you explain what Michigan warn is? The concept behind Michigan Warn is a network of communities who opt in. I don't believe it costs anything. So you just have to say, yes, I want to be a part of it. And it provides a network in case of emergency. So if you end up having 120 edge water main that goes down and you need to have access to supplies, whatever that is, the main or other supplies, Michigan warden can help with that. Or if we have a does a natural disaster in Michigan Michigan warn is that community that comes together and helps water systems continue to operate. So it's a basically a mutual aid agreement that people can opt in to for their community. And I would expand it beyond just, you know, pipes and valves and generators. It can also include people. So, you know, if we have a natural disaster or we have, you know, a community that is lacking in staff because they're responding to something else, we have the expertise that we can lend amongst our our professionals. Yeah, that's that's really interesting. I know coming from local government, I know that we have those agreements in place for police and fire and electric utilities. Yeah. Yeah. That we do that very well with electric utilities. What about that? We forecast a storm and we start having people from other utilities already showing up waiting because we know the storm is going to take down power lines. But you make a good point. Personnel, too. And I remember the hurricanes 20 years ago, I think was after Katrina that, you know, they needed water operators. The systems down there were were damaged and lost pressure and people needed needed water. And so they were asking other states for licensed operators to come down. It's that type of thing. But to follow up with you bottom for I do think education's part of that. I think we've failed in the past few generations. We've told I know since my my day of high school, we've told our students that to make it anywhere, you need a college education. And what we've done is created a lack of water utility operators pool for those between that I think, and some of the basic chemistry and the math that high schools should have given a foundation for. It's tough for for water supplies to have somebody stay in town and work at the water plant and pass the certification exams. So I think that's someplace where the section could meet that need not only to get the information to the school district so isd's that, you know, push these jobs. These are good jobs. There's plenty of them. And you make a difference in the future, but also to instill in and high school students. This is the importance of chemistry. This is the importance of learning your math equations. You know that it'll help you get your water operator license or. Or whatever wastewater chemistry that those type a type of things as we do heard for that in Michigan, finding a good pool of, you know, high school graduates that can walk into the water plant at least be trainable. Right. What does this action do now to address at least try to address some of that stuff? Well, currently, we have both a youth education committee and a workforce development committee. I think it's actually called an industry recruitment committee. And they're actually working together. There is a program, I think it's done by Michigan Works called Michigan. Quest Or am I? Quest And they do career fairs around the state. And so both our Youth Education Committee and our industry recruitment committee have been participating in those. I think as we move into 2024, we've definitely gotten feedback from members all over the state, particularly in the U.P., that are really hurting for qualified candidates. And so coming up with different ways to reach out to not just high schools, but even nontraditional students, adults who are looking to change careers or just looking for something that is different than what they're doing now and finding a way to ingratiate them into our community so that they don't feel like a fish out of water, so to speak, and and attract the talent, I think to the other side of that is water Utilities are going to have to start thinking differently about how to recruit too much. We rely on sort of the traditional what we're looking for years of experience or, you know, that kind of thing. And we just have to be willing to find someone that has the aptitude to do the job and be willing to train them and provide them a clear path for for getting that education instead of looking for somebody who already has the license and already has the experience. If we really want to attract new talent, we do have to be willing to flex our our view on what a candidate might look like. Is it incumbent upon utilities to maybe be more willing to invest in people that aren't already up to? The standards that they might be looking for because, well, when I was in local government, we wanted people who already had licenses. And so there was this I wouldn't say horse trading, but there was a little bit of poaching, a little bit of trying to get the best and the brightest from other communities. And so it creates this this sort of adversarial relationship from community to community. So what do you do? I think I think there are two things. I think, first, getting out of that mentality that you want someone that you will only hire, someone that hits the ground running. You got to be willing to invest in the people that you're hiring. And frankly, even if they come in with a F2 or F1, you've got to be willing to pay them what they're worth. Right. Some of that is reeducating our managers and our and our leaders in the water community. Thinking differently about how you manage people. I think the other component that seems to be we don't talk about because we don't have a lot of control over it, is the H.R. piece of this. I know there are a number of communities who are sort of locked in to the policies that their h.r. Department has created. And not to suggest that there, you know, there's no panacea. But even H.R. has to get into that discussion about changing how they approach new candidates. They that really needs to be revisited because often that can be the barrier to hiring a good candidate is that they don't take the boxes that h.r. Developed 20 years ago. I think something the section can do to help with this. Of course, it's easiest to bring somebody in who already has a license, who has experience, who's done this in another plant that looks similar to yours. And the idea of bringing in a young person or a new person who's learning a new trade seems kind of daunting. How do we bring them up to speed? Does this mean we're at risk, that something's going to go wrong? Absolutely right. The whole the whole point of water treatment is that we're protecting public health. But in actuality, the list of things that can go catastrophically wrong is smaller than it seems. And so there is a little bit of room for someone to learn with someone partnered with them. So I think if we can step into the space of teaching people how to teach others, I think it's a skill that we're missing a little bit so that it doesn't seem like so much work and so daunting. We in our utility plants have hired about half a dozen people in the last 2 to 3 years who have zero experience, you know, dropped our years of experience in our operator pool from, you know, 20 years or so two to like overnight. And we didn't have the skill necessarily to teach them right away. We had to learn how to teach them and they needed to teach us how to teach them. So I think that's something that the section can do. I love that. Is that targeting starting the targeting the management training for people who were sort of infiltrated into the system back when these old school rules were in place and trying to have that that knowledge transfer. How do you how do you get people who might be set in their ways about the way things are done to be able to train somebody new who has a different way of thinking about the same work? Hmm. That's interesting question. One of the ways is that you just your hand gets four straight. I don't have a choice. We have to fill the spot, and I've got to teach you what you need to know. We have found that, you know, going back and asking the people that have been newly trained, what worked for you, what didn't seems to give us some really good feedback. So the first part of your question is who are retraining? Yes, it's the people that came in before and, you know, just kind of inserted into an already solid structure. Really, I think teaching just kind of how to be brave. Right. And it's okay to not know what you don't know. For the young people coming in and for, you know, the people who have been around for a while to say, I might not really know how to teach you. Right. We're going to learn this together. I love working with our young professionals because sometimes they talk about, okay, not sometimes I hear it a lot. I hear imposter syndrome, Right? They don't feel like they fit. And I like to remind them, look, you have a generational superpower to. It's different than mine, right? I'm a Gen Xer, and somebody taught me this week how to do LinkedIn because I just couldn't figure it out. I have an account. I don't know what to do with it, but they were just so excited about it. Right. And here's here's how this works. And I just need your information. So I think if we can just kind of set down this, I need to be the smartest person in the room and understand that we all have the same goal. And it's okay to just be a little awkward and uncomfortable sometimes. And our management supervision class, we talk a bit about the courage of being first in. And what that means really is as a supervisor, particularly as a new supervisor, you have to be willing to try things that you don't have expertise in. Obviously keeping public health and regulations in mind. But part of that is having the courage to say, I don't know and to learn from people. Right. It's it's a two way street. It's not just you teaching your employee. That employee has something to teach you. And I think too often, particularly people who have been in any job for a long period of time, forget that they have something to learn as well. Perhaps the ego gets in the way, or it's just that they've been doing it for so long. Right. But I think there's a lot of opportunity. We've also talked a little bit this week about mentoring. And one of the things that I think gets missed when we talk about mentoring or even apprenticeship is that is a two way street. I don't know that people understand that, but a successful mentoring relationship is the mentee giving as much as they're taking from that mentor. So I think if we can help members recognize that, whether it's through the management supervision class or something else, I think we'll be more successful at recruitment. Excellent point. I have to give a shout out, though, for our first step. I'm at the Lansing Board of Water and Light. We partner with the local school districts in our service area and we offer for their senior year, 2.5 hours of paid employment at the border, water and Light. And it's like a advanced placement work study. And it's interesting because we we do the interviews. They have to go through an interview process and they have to pick a department. Occasionally you get somebody on fire for the water department, but usually these high school kids have no idea, you know, what, what's working for utility. They just want to be part of this. And yeah, and and there's a semester off that mentoring mentee relationship. I'd like to say our success rate is good, but I think it's less than 10% and end up working for the board of Water and Light. I, on the other hand. That's not the only thing we. It builds a relationship with between the utility and the repair. So people now know that the board of Water and Light is, you know, helping the community. It's a great place to work because they have that first step program. And I have to I was excited today because one of our first step students and then intern at Western Michigan that I got to help. I gave a presentation for Great Lakes today and did a bang up job and I just so proud of them. So that was. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that was cool. So how many how many years from start to finish from the time you brought him in to now? So the first step senior year and a four years internship. And then he hung around the board for probably six months after that and that Great Lakes picked him up. So there was like a five year investment. And although he didn't work for the board, he is working for the water industry and obviously doing a good job If he's presenting at a professional conference, that's awesome. So you said you have about a 10% rate of people coming to the board? Yeah, I mean, it's an investment. You want to get good employees, local employees? Sure. Yeah, we'd like to see more. Stick around. But that's not the only the only thing. Yeah. Grand Rapids has a great internship program right now, too. And I've had some great conversations with Hillary, Karen, about this. You know, sometimes we measure success out of these programs by being able to employ people in our own, you know, organizations. But we don't always have positions open for them. So this idea that, just like you said, you're measuring success by work, this is somebody that's in the water industry, right? We we caught them. We caught them. And that's a sport. That's a win. That is a win. And Hillary speaks of her program in the same way. You know, ideally, yes. They're, you know, placing people into jobs that they have open. But that's not always possible because there isn't always an opening. And I say this because we pulled an intern out of their program and is one of our newest operators, and he's fantastic. So thank you for training, folks. Let us steal them. I mean, we just finished almost finished a week of conference sessions. So I wanna put you on the spot. What's been your favorite so far? What's your favorite session so far? What have you learned? That's just, like, mind blown. I love it. You put me on the spot. I got to. I got to think about. Okay. I'll go this way. Yeah, I'm totally ready. It's the affordability discussion we had at. If I had to pick one, I'd be selfish and pick the one that I facilitated with you and Sylvia. Partially because it's sort of a culmination of all this work, Right. And seeing that come to fruition is really gratifying. But there's a thread throughout a number of sessions about water affordability, about underserved communities. And it just it, it honestly, I'm getting chills right now. I'm just so proud of all the water professionals who are all in on those topics, right? What we do is amazing anyway, delivering clean, safe water to folks, but going beyond the bare minimum of regulations and making it accessible to people who might not otherwise be able to afford it or whatever the barrier is. That's what's motivating to me. That's inspiring to me. So I think just the thread that was woven throughout the conference was really exciting. I will say that I did hear a lot of compliments on that session, not just because I was in it, but the topic and, and I will say one for planted the seed for the topic for that panel about, I don't know six months or so ago when we were turning in abstracts and I talked to several people who said, gosh, you guys just got started and I wanted more. So yeah, it has been been really great. Good. It's a big topic. Mm hmm. I agree. That was mind blowing and it's exciting topic. I'm going to be kind of a downer, though. What really, really hit me between the eyes was the microplastics. Mm hmm. This really scared the crap out of me. You know, I. I can. You know that that's just a product. You know, we can look deeper. We can go to the parts per trillion nano meter, whatever. I mean, we can really the science is there. It's we know there's chemistry down there that we can't see and we will in the future. But this microplastic things. When she said that half the microplastics in the Great Lakes are in Lake Michigan alone, you know, we have so many. You know, Jamie, to be that should should hit home for for Wyoming residents that should hit home for Grand Rapids and Saint Joe and Benton Harbor and all those towns traverse. I mean, that is that's going to be a big problem we have to deal with. And to have that stuff into my body at the cell level, just it really gives me the heebie jeebies of how we're going to deal with that. And it's such a topic that or it's such a problem that. To me, it never should have happened. You know, it's just the waste of our society, you know? But, like, for us, you know, disposable plastics are still available. Paradise is still available off the shelf. And we haven't caught up with that with the regulations on that. We can we can regulate for us to a drinking water standard, but we can't prevent it from getting into the environment, apparently as a society at. Anyways. Yeah the microplastics one this that that was really scary. That that was a wake up you know. So water 2050 I get excited because I know Michigan's a climate haven and I know people don't like that word, but I know people are going to come back. But then on the other hand, microplastics by 2050, you know, we might all have that stuff in our bodies doing harm and unknown. So it's it's kind of scary. So I think as much as that was maybe a downer topic, I think it's still important, right? We need to talk about these things. And I think the thing that I have personally taken away from this week, whether it's talking about, you know, something that's already occurring, but we've got to figure out what to do with it in the future or restructuring how we interact with communities and how we serve them in a very human way. I had this moment of we're teaching our next generation how to do things better than when we came in. I thought about this a lot in the terms of like the efforts we've made and affordability, but also, you know, making a better world for not only ourselves but the generations that come behind us. You know, what can we do? What can we teach them? What innovative things are they going to come up with to help us meet these these challenges? So I think it's this whole like looking forward into the future and just leaving the people behind us better than than than we found them. And we're showing them how to adapt to change. Yeah, right. Because generations before us didn't want to change, right? So now we're forced to change. And now we're trying to learn how to accept it and teach it. How do you accept change? Because that's the only thing that's inevitable, right? Speaking of that, I mean, you mentioned 2050. We've got this. Water 2050 nationwide. Vision from the National IWW. How is the Michigan section weaving that into what it's doing? We're just starting that process. So if you were at the opening session with Christine Spitz Lay, she gave us an overview of 2015. So that has laid the groundwork. What we now have to do at the section level is figure out what our role is in helping us carve that path and prepare for that future. We also need to understand what the differences are nationally versus in Michigan. We do have slightly different issues that are that are going to rise to the top for us. So we still have some homework to do to answer that question. I think it's and I think it's going to be a challenge, as idealistic as it is to look out to 2050. Like I can hardly say that and think of it as a real year. I think it's going to be challenging because I don't know that we have really acknowledged the difference that Covid has made in our society. And so we're just now getting back to a place where we can actually look beyond six months, right? Covid kept us looking at six weeks out, two months out. Right. Like we've been in this very short time horizon. So now we're finally getting to a place where we can look a little further out. I just don't know that we have really found our footing yet, and I don't want to use the phrase return to normal because I think it's I think it's just different. So I think we have to be careful about trying to project too far out. I think the way in which they approached 2050 and the report I think is very insightful. But when it comes to actually operationalizing how we're going to respond, we have to be more nimble than that, right? So we have to look at shorter time chunks to figure out what we want to do. Break it into manageable pieces. Exactly. Yeah. May I address one piece right now? Yes. I don't know how we're doing for time here, but. One thing we are going to have to address is water supply consolidation. Explain. We have a lot of community water supplies in in Michigan. Some of the communities are doing well. Some are not doing well as far as financially or keeping up on their infrastructure. One way to help this system is to consolidate those water supplies. And there's economies of scale. Okay. The bigger the water supply, the the cheaper it is to provide service per person. Okay, that's economic theory. But what we have is government units that don't want to combine or don't have the muster to combine. I mean, you guys were teasing each other about, you know, thanks for letting me poach your your operator. And it's, you know, we can get into this competition. I've seen a lot of government dysfunction in my career, a lot of tit for tat as far as you know, it's as petty as, you know, fire trucks or, you know, fighting over. So we're not going to have reliability, reliability with our water supply because 20 years ago, you you, you know, rejected our combining our fire departments and and it really hurts the customer. So there is no current legislation or law that requires a failing water supply to consolidate with a stable water supply next door, even though they may be interconnected by pipes like there is with sewer systems like there is with school districts. So that's got to change because we can't let our neighbors, you know, water. Fail and keep, you know, safe, clean water to ourselves. That's that that's that's not an option. I don't know if I could give any examples right now or if that's what you want to hear, but it is an issue. I think the state wants it because it's a regulatory burden to have what? Over 1500 water supplies, community water supplies in the state for them to regulate. If they would combine, it would, you know, help state government. It would help the rate payer would keep rates down. So that that's something we're going to have to come up with a solution for by 2015, whether that's new legislation or or education to government officials on the benefits of consolidation. I will give one example. I worked in what we call the Iron River Valley for for a few years, and there was a bunch of small towns in Iron County of the Upper Peninsula. Mineral Hills was one of them, Stambaugh, Iron River, Kaspi. And they were all in this little valley. They're all old mining towns with populations from 500 to 2500. And each one had their own Department of Public Works, their own water supply, their own water operator, their own fire department, their own police department. And they would occasionally combined fire departments one year and then they would break up and combine police departments. And it was just this cluster. It was they realized that was a bad way to go. And so they put it to a vote and the vote was, shall we just take our city charters and rip them up and write a new one that's combined? And each community would vote on them. And once they did that, I believe Mineral Hills, Iron River and Stan Bo decided to dissolve and form one city and the Caspian lost about one to remain by themselves. I, I believe it's been since the 1990s. But by doing that, they could combine fire, police, water, sewer, you know, and that was really precedent, I think, in our nation's history. That was the only like a third time where somebody voluntarily, a community ripped up their city charter and started a new one. And we've got some real issues. I don't know, you know, if this would apply to Highland Park, but I just I just can't see them sustaining what they're doing. They really need some help. I think a big piece of that, too, though, is these are people that we're talking about just departments. And so we mentioned it earlier. All politics is local. People have an affinity, a love, a loyalty for their community. And consolidation feels like they're giving something up, like they're losing something. And so perhaps and I don't know that Michigan section has a role in this, but perhaps there's a way that we can help our members understand how to engage the community in a way that makes this a little more less threatening, a little more of a creative discussion. Right. So it's not being imposed on them and they're part of that solution. But I think that people piece is going to be front and center. I think that's really what's going to stop us. Does that start with building an understanding from the ground up? Sorry. Say that. Again. Does that start with building an understanding and trust? From the last session, we talked about engagement and trust building. If you can't get people necessarily to understand how the water system works, how do you convince them to give it up? Yeah, I think that is the foundation. I think the reality, though, is there. It isn't. We're not starting from the beginning, right? We're driving. We're fixing the car while we're driving it. So we have to start somewhere. It does boil down to education, but it's also engagement, right? Not just understanding how your community water supply works, but really understand what the choices are. Right? I love my community. I don't want it to go away. I don't want to pay my neighbor's water bill. But the reality is, if I don't do these things, my water bill is going to double in two, three, five years, whatever that is. Those are the conversations that we need to have. But we need to start with trust first. So they need to understand what the community is doing. They need to understand how and why they're paying, what they're paying. And then we can move to the other discussion. I want to ask each of you one last question. What topic? I want to see the podcast cover. Like, what episode are you just. I really want that to happen. Bonhoeffer I'd really like to hear. I guess I'm going to answer with two topics. I'd really like to hear the story of someone who has sort of risen in water. Maybe they didn't start in water. What their water story is and why they stay in water. Where they get their resources like just really that. What's that water story that I think would be interesting. The other thing I'd really like to hear is a discussion with folks who are working on things like regionalization or consolidation or even overburdened communities. I'd like to dig more into that. I think that would be really interesting. And there's so many ways you can get at those topics, right? So just any thing around those topics I think would be really interesting. I got some thoughts. Okay. I'd like to have somebody from Flint area as a guest, just see how things have gone, how they've changed, you know, see how they how they recovering. The other thing is, I'd like to maybe do like a historical thing. When Paul gave his Saginaw Water plant history. That was that was cause some speaker didn't show up. I was just mesmerized or ice by that. That is just so cool to see the old history of Saginaw or what that town went through. And then their old water plant, their stories out there. There are some stories. I like hear in the war stories. Yeah. When I go to the U.P., my favorite part of going to the U.P. water conferences is sitting at lunch with the guys because they will tell the most hilarious war stories for lack of a better term. One guy told me about a trench accident where he was in a trench. He was digging into a pipe and the trench collapsed and he was trapped up to his neck and he's panicking. And his boss, he said his boss grabbed him by his ears and got in his face to get him to calm down so that they could then dig him out. But those kinds of things like I'd love to hear that just for stories. It would be interesting. The work is just so fascinating. It is. Well, thank you. I think we might be out of time, but is there anything else that we should cover before we go? Shout out to the Communications Council. What a great idea. I love that this is actually happening from vision to to reality. Good job. I'm honored to be a part of it, too. This is awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you both for being on. And and hopefully it just kind of builds from here. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you as a co host, Jamie. So I'm very excited about this. I can't wait to see where it goes. Yeah. So thank you so much. From the east side to the west side and statewide. From experts to everyday heroes. We've got it all. Join us as we dive into water and wastewater topics from across Michigan. Subscribe. Follow us and get caught up in The Current today.