The Monday morning after the agency's meeting with DuPont in Raleigh, Tom walked down the hall in the direction of his office on the 6th floor of the Systel Building in downtown Fayetteville expecting to find an email scheduling a conference call to discuss the meeting. The email never arrived.
As he approached his office, Christy Richardson came out of her office and stopped him. She had recently graduated from the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University.
Oddly, she started whispering to him.
"They took you off of DuPont."
He was stunned. He had never considered, nor had he ever heard of, anything like this happening in North Carolina's environmental agency. He had expected that the two bosses, Director Keith Overcash in Raleigh and Supervisor Steven Vozzo in Fayetteville, would want to learn more from him about DuPont Fayetteville Works. The fact that they never spoke or asked questions during a lengthy presentation about the large DuPont industrial site in Bladen County with its multiple chemical manufacturing plants and complex chemistry suggested they might be overwhelmed.
The two agency bosses had sat there in silence during the entire meeting. After the Fayetteville coordinator & DuPont inspector politely pointed out how the DuPont presentation was misleading the Dupont official did not respond and the entire room went silent. It was as if he did not exist. The two bosses, Director Overcash and Supervisor Vozzo, sat frozen and never spoke a word.
Curiously, the DuPont environmental manager, Mike Johnson stood in front, classroom lecture style, with agency attendees sitting in seats arranged in classroom-like rows facing the teacher. The Fayetteville coordinator was the only person sitting in one of the front rows. The other attendees sat near the back of the room as if they were hoping to make an early exit from a potentially long-winded meeting. However, the two bosses, Director Overcash and Supervisor Vozzo, were sitting up front, but not in the first row. Instead, they were sitting up in the 'teacher area' of the room, facing the DuPont official from the side, almost as if they were members of the DuPont team rather than the public agency team. They never spoke.
The two bosses seemed like 'agency statues' placed there to give the meeting a certain holiness during the presentation by the DuPont environmental manager. It was similar to the holy statues surrounding the students in church as they knelt in pews at Mass before the beginning of a Catholic school day. The DuPont official was essentially the head priest leading the Mass. He was like Father Jerome MacEachin giving a solemn sermon to the students and nuns at St. Thomas Aquinas School in Michigan. No student or nun dared to question or challenge Father Mac.
Rather than statues, maybe the two bosses were more like altar boys sitting up front and facing the priest during his sermon. Was Mike Johnson supposed to be 'Father Johnson?' Or maybe to Director Overcash he was 'Bishop Johnson.' In any event, while driving back to Fayetteville after the meeting in Raleigh, the Fayetteville coordinator had reflected on how it felt like they were there simply to get their marching orders and talking points from DuPont. Yes, the company is powerful. But why so much timidity? Why such a lack of professional curiosity? If anxious or uncertain, just ask questions and listen attentively.
"They gave DuPont to me," Christy added.
The Fayetteville coordinator went into his office and checked his email. Nothing at all. He stared at his computer screen swept up in a feeling of eeriness and foreboding.
Later that morning, Supervisor Steven Vozzo, stepped into Tom's office and stood at the door. He stared at him with an angry look on his face, but never said a single word. After less than a minute, he turned and left, still carrying an angry expression.
What is going on here? Why is he angry? Tom tried to make sense of what was happening. Was the DuPont meeting somehow a major setback to Steven's often stated goal of getting promoted by Director Overcash to an upper-level supervisor position in Raleigh where he and his family lived? It was a lengthy commute to Fayetteville each day for Steven and he was a talented, ambitious, and strategic person who clearly wanted to be in Raleigh, the center of action.
Was Director Overcash blaming Steven for the fact that Tom had spoken up and pointed out how the DuPont presentation was misleading? Did he expect Steven, as the Fayetteville supervisor, to shut the Fayetteville coordinator down? How would that even work? Rap his knuckles with a yard stick? Duct tape? The DuPont presentation discussed their onsite groundwater monitoring wells at great length. However, it did not mention the scrubbers. And it did not address the most important issue of all - the persistent fluorocarbon chemicals going into the Cape Fear River and the need for an advanced or upgraded wastewater treatment system at DuPont Fayetteville Works.
Clearly, the plant needed an advanced treatment system to remove the persistent fluorocarbon chemicals discharging into the river, rather than the site's existing conventional system that futilely used microorganisms for wastewater streams that contained numerous chemicals that could not be broken down by microorganisms. Why was that not discussed? It was college-level Water Chemistry 101. And it was Civil Engineering 401. Were agency meeting participants supposed to sit there in silence during the entire meeting and then discuss it in a conference call the following day? Was that the Director's expectation? Why not say so? They had called a meeting, but it was essentially a DuPont lecture.
Why should the meeting jeopardize Steven Vozzo's chances for promotion to a high-level position in Raleigh? Why should he be blamed? Yes, DuPont has a lot of clout in North Carolina. But the Fayetteville coordinator was likely the agency employee most familiar with the several DuPont chemical manufacturing plants at the Fayetteville Works site. He had described in his inspection report the glaring problem of persistent industrial chemicals discharging into the Cape Fear River, information that DuPont had shared with him during the inspection. He was the person who described the problem in writing and spoke up at the meeting. Why would the bosses now be angry and reluctant to communicate with him? After all, he was the Fayetteville coordinator and DuPont inspector.
Had the DuPont Fayetteville Works environmental manager and his bosses (the Fayetteville Works site manager, Barry Hudson, and the corporate bosses in Wilmington, Delaware) changed their minds about openly discussing the discharge of persistent fluorocarbon chemicals into the Cape Fear River and how their treatment system was not designed to remove the chemicals? Had they expected the Fayetteville coordinator not to include this important information in the inspection report? Perhaps they had shared this important information with other agency officials who had not put it in writing. To the point, was their primary concern that Tom McKinney put this important information in writing? Or were they displeased with being challenged or contradicted by anyone when making a presentation or lecture at a North Carolina agency meeting?
The Fayetteville coordinator thought about how it might take several days, but eventually Steven would tell him what was going on and why the agency wanted him removed from handling DuPont Fayetteville Works. It seemed likely that Director Overcash was the driving force behind the decision to remove him as the field person responsible for handling DuPont Fayetteville Works. After all, Keith Overcash, a licensed engineer with a degree from the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University, was the top boss in the agency's Division of Air Quality. But why so much timidity and inability to communicate? Yes, DuPont has a lot of money and power. Did DuPont request that Tom McKinney be removed? If so, why not tell him? Was there a "meeting after the meeting" in Raleigh? Who attended it? What was discussed?
Did Steven's anger towards the Fayetteville Coordinator indicate that he was feeling terribly squeezed in the middle, with his goal of getting promoted to an upper-level position in Raleigh by Director Overcash now at great risk. Certainly, he was in a tough situation. Why not just ask Tom some simple questions and then listen? Just communicate! Why the angry face and silence?
Nearly everyone in the agency's Division of Air Quality knew that Steven Vozzo could be a bit hotheaded at times, but eventually after a few days he would always calm down and fully explain the situation. In Tom's view, Steven was a rising star in North Carolina's environmental agency. He had gotten to know all seven field office bosses and considered Steven to be the most qualified to eventually be promoted to Deputy Director and Director. He was bright, articulate, and not afraid of agency reform and modernization. Steven had a masters degree in science from North Carolina State University and a fundamentally curious nature, an essential quality in this type of work. Most of the other bosses had degrees in engineering and often seemed uninterested in the big picture. Maybe they had ended up in the field of "environmental science and engineering" by accident or chance. Steven asked lots of questions, encouraged discussion, and wanted all available information put on the table for consideration. He could carefully analyze the technical details and then step back to discuss the big picture. However, Steven Vozzo's behavior with DuPont Fayetteville Works was completely out of character. Why? Something was wrong.
Tom thought again about how he might have to wait several days to gain an understanding of what was happening with Dupont Fayetteville Works and Director Overcash. Maybe Steven would explain the situation to him next week after some additional time to calm down. However, he was wrong about this. It was going to take much, much longer.
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