Commissioner appointed to Clean Water Committee

Kirk Boxleitner | Nov 03, 20220

Art Whitson, District 1 commissioner for the Port of Grapeview, was appointed Oct. 25 by Mason County commissioners to fill an open slot on the Mason County Clean Water Advisory Committee. The committee’s purpose is to implement laws designed to protect and improve water quality.

Whitson’s responsibilities include establishing programs and projects to reduce nonpoint source pollution that threatens surface water quality in Mason County. He’s one of the committee’s nine stakeholder members (and one of its three resident members) who advise the Mason County commission and make recommendations for water quality work conducted within the county’s Clean Water District.

Whitson, a Mason Lake resident and retired Boeing environmental engineer, had originally intended to work for the Environmental Protection Agency or the Army Corps of Engineers, but he ended up taking the lead in instituting environmental assessment programs at Boeing, where he ensured site compliance in its releases to the environment.

“A lot of environmental management problems, in any industry, are simply down to ineffective maintenance,” Whitson said. “Everybody is forced to put certain maintenance off, but because I write all the maintenance plans for the Port of Grapeview, I can factor in the indicators of potential failure that need to be monitored and include those in our plans.”

Writing up the port’s annual reports to the Army Corps of Engineers is no less laborious, but Whitson is passionate about environmental protection, though he says he sees his role more as an environmental engineer than an environmentalist.

“When evaluating a system, you have to take stock of the whole process, from cradle to grave,” Whitson said. “For example, as much as I think electric cars are wonderful, if we’re assessing them environmentally, we have to compare the air emissions of fossil-fuel vehicles to the impact of mining for the minerals that go into electric car batteries, as well as the capacity of the existing power grid.”

Whitson agrees water quality is essential to the area’s shellfish industry, but he also advocates “going upstream” to take a broader view. Although he’ll be acting in an advisory capacity, he hopes that by getting acquainted with the “movers and shakers” who make decisions that affect water quality, he’ll be able to influence their outlooks, and possibly affect processes such as how water quality is sampled in the first place, in both marine and freshwater.

“Again, it’s about applied science,” Whitson said. “I make my decisions as an engineer, and what I love about systems engineering is that we can apply it to virtually everything we do, once we determine the boundaries of the topics at hand.”