Jarrod Peckford is a CNA graduate who was recently featured in a Fort McMurray newspaper. The following article is reprinted with permission from Fort McMurray Today.
By Morgan Modjeski
Jarrod Peckford, who moved to Fort McMurray in 2005 from Newfoundland, is the supervisor of environmental and public services and one of the main players in the implementation of curbside recycling in Wood Buffalo. Even though Peckford came to Wood Buffalo on a "two-year plan," after falling in love with the area he has decided he's here for life.
Today: How did you get where you are today?
Peckford: It tied in with my academic background, I had done a diploma in environmental engineering through the College of the North Atlantic, which was completed into a bachelor of technology in environmental engineering, so it fit in the field. I specialized in water quality and sample analysis and environmental systems, so when I came to Fort McMurray my attempt was to get into an environmental discipline to pull off my academic background. I just happened to run into the manager, we had a discussion about some of the solid waste programs here and what's the current state of the service levels and it seemed like a good fit. I started off in 2005 as a utilities inspector, looking after the water treatment plant, water delivery contracts into rural areas and within two months I got transferred to the solid waste coordinator, so since then its been coordinator, planner, tech-planner, active supervisor, into the permanent supervisor role up until June of this year when I got transferred to the environmental sustainability branch.
Why Fort McMurray?
Like most people who came up, I was in debt to student loans, so we came up with a two-year plan, it turned into a five-year plan and now its looking like I'm here for life. I fell in love with the area and we recently had a kid three-years ago, just started school. So we're looking at the long term, this is our home, we love it here.
What are some of the most rewarding aspects of your job?
Again, with the environmental background, just the milestones that we've managed to achieve since 2005. We're currently at the curbside recycling phase and that took a lot of work. We took a lot of pride in that team approach between the different stakeholders and the amount of support from the residents, that supports give us the confidence that we're doing the right thing and to know that it's the drive for the region, it give us something to come into work to try and achieve for the region, it's those little steps. Then the capital projects, like the landfill expansions, development of the material recovery facility, just taking it from a 90s facility to the new compliance.
Why did you get into this field?
With my background from the east coast, I think our culture has always been a little more entwined as we rely on the environment quite heavily back there. So the passion has been there since a young age and to come up to a place like Fort McMurray that was getting such bad PR, didn't really know much about the place when I came up, but I wanted to do my part to make sure we're leaving a good legacy for the future generations.
How does it feel to be playing such a large role in the process of getting Fort McMurray to become a sustainable community?
It give me great pride, its truly a labour of love as they say. A lot of hard work, a lot of long hours but to see that progress in a region that has had such PR for such a long time it give us that pride and ownership of it and it keeps us coming back everyday.
What are some of the most challenging aspects of your job?
Just the stakeholders, there is a very complex area where I've over seen a lot of communication plans on the recycling for the last few years, is coming up with a way to engage the transient population, most people were coming up for six-month shifts in 2005 so they weren't having that sense of ownership, so finding a way to get those people engaged so they started respecting the area, that was probably the biggest challenge we had. They're in-and-out so quickly, so how do we get them to understand and get the buy in right off the top.