Kicking off this regular department of The Canoe View News, we were able to nail down the very busy Mr. Kevin Carter, longtime friend of Wildlife Research Team, for a brief question-and-answer session. Thanks, Kevin, for your uplifting positive attitude, your 14+ years of hard work to keep our waters clean for us, and for serving on WRT's Board of Directors for the past few months.

Canoe View News: Who is your employer?
Kevin Carter: South Florida Water Management District/ Watershed Management Department. A state/regional governmental agency. There are five water management districts in the state of Florida.

CVN: What is your job title?
KC: Technical Program Specialist - Senior

CVN: Can we break that down to what it is that you actually do?
KC: In the world of protecting and managing the environment, there are a lot of laws to help determine the best way to make decisions on our environment. I work with mostly with a part of environmental law known as the Clean Water Act (CWA). There is a part of the CWA that deals with water pollution and is called Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL). It basically is a law to see how to best manage and protect our water quality in river, canals, lakes, and oceans. I coordinate all of our scientists, planners, engineers, and lawyers in making sure we are able to provide important input to the state of Florida's and US government's decision making. So I have to be able to work with people that have many different professional backgrounds. That is an important point about the environmental field—almost every kind of profession works in the environmental field. I review and analyze many documents and spend much time discussing at times controversial items among different teams here at my office and with other governmental agencies and members of public and private businesses.

CVN: What are your basic responsibilities/duties/tasks?
KC: I am our Agency's TMDL coordinator. I keep the Agency on top of current water quality issues and decisions. Make sure we have the right technical people informed and providing information to help the process move better. I attend many meetings and my job is to bring back the technical and policy information to our leadership here at the District and see if we agree/disagree with information provided at these meetings. I am an informational portal for our agency on this water quality issue, so I spend much time informing people of the progress/work of what we call outside agencies. I also spend much time talking with those outside agencies to make sure we are all on same page. All of this is done to make the best management and protection decision for our waters such as the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee.

CVN: Is this an office job?
KC: For the most part yes, I spend most of my time in meetings or preparing for meetings. However, the results of these meetings can significantly influence what is happening to our environment, so even though I work inside I feel like I am in the outdoor world because of the issues we work on. I send many, many E-mails and use the Internet for information gathering much of the time. I read and review, many documents. I also write small technical analyses to help people understand what something may mean to their particular group.

CVN: Do you travel a lot?
KC: I travel probably about 10-15% of the time, as we have 16 counties in our District. We stretch from Orlando to Key West and Ft. Myers to Ft. Lauderdale, so that is much area to cover.

CVN: What do you like most about your job?
KC: Working with great talented people who are enthusiastic about what they do and working in some of the most incredible water resources of the state of Florida and actually the world. One of our sayings at the District is "We do the coolest work on the planet!"

CVN: What do you like least about your job?
KC: I really don't have anything about my job I don't like. This is a great place to work. Right now I have to drive far to get to work, so I wish I had a closer commute!

CVN: What type of skills are required of you in this job?
KC: I read and write every day and being a trained scientist, math is very important. Critical thinking is also important, as well as being able to pull much information together in short time periods. I love and have to be able to work on numerous things at once. Having full knowledge and experience of what we call watersheds (the area of land that drains to a water body) is also critical. I also have been trained in holding meetings and coordination which is important, because I work with 20 to 30 people at a time on some projects, issues.

Continued on next page.