Senior Water Quality Planner - Pollution Prevention Specialist

Senior Pollution Prevention Specialist

The King County Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD) is seeking a Senior Pollution Prevention Specialist (Water Quality Planner/Project Manager III) to support the division's lines of business as a lead subject matter expert (SME) in matters of pollution prevention and source control practices and regulations, and technical support for issues in toxic contaminants and contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) that enter the County's wastewater system.

The Senior Planner role is a key team member in the division's regulatory compliance work involving the Clean Water Act-NPDES and Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) and sediment management programs. The position also will help coordinate source control related work across the division's other planning, operations, resource recovery and environmental monitoring programs. The Senior Pollution Prevention Specialist will help to influence the policies and strategic planning of meaningful and innovative programs to protect public health, improve Puget Sound water quality, and achieve the division's fiscal and environmental stewardship commitments.

The work will leverage the County's resources and expertise involving legacy contaminants from historic operations (e.g., PCBs); and technology and management approaches for CECs such as PFAS, personal care products, and microplastics. Your expertise will be critical for communicating and educating diverse audiences on complex contaminant topics, collaborating with technical teams, engaging supervisors and division leadership, and building strong partnerships for the division's work in wastewater, hazardous waste, recycled water, biosolids, and stormwater operations at WTD facilities.

If you're driven for experience in environmental regulatory compliance, strategic policy, problem-solving, and program development, this position offers exciting opportunities to grow your leadership skills and have a lasting regional impact.

The Senior Pollution Prevention Specialist will be a technical lead for teams and projects aimed at enhancing comprehensive approaches to contaminant source control activities and investments. The primary objective is to support teams and organize, develop, manage, and track actions to reduce the impacts from excess household and commercial/industrial products and chemical sources to domestic and industrial wastewater; stormwater (from WTD infrastructure) and CSO discharges;

and our recovered products. You will serve in a pivotal position providing expertise and guidance in contaminant source identification, pollution reduction Best Management Practices, internal and external communications and education, and regulatory compliance issues. As a senior planner, you will help define and track program effectiveness, coordinate with activities across other divisions and County departments, recommend internal policies and compliance documentation, and develop annual and long-range program updates related to WTD's NPDES permits.

Senior planners also administer regulatory submittals, databases and records requests, and assist internal budget and financial processes, and provide technical program information for King County Council and committee processes (e.g., MWPAAC and RWQC). The environmental regulatory and permitting programs of most importance to this work that the position may coordinate with include:

• West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant NPDES permit (renewed 4/29/24) and federal Consent Decree for the CSO system, and NPDES permits for South Plant, Brightwater, Carnation, and Vashon Island wastewater treatment plants;
• King County's Source Control Implementation Plan (SCIP) for the Lower Duwamish Waterway Superfund site and related CSO basin prioritization and source tracing studies;
• King County Industrial Waste (KCIW) pretreatment program;
• WTD's resource recovery products and programs (e.g., biosolids, recycled water);
• WTD's coverage for facilities under Washington's NPDES stormwater permits.

The Senior Pollution Prevention Specialist also will help to achieve objectives outlined in King County's Clean Water Healthy Habitat Strategic Plan, PFAS Strategic Plan, 6-PPDQ Strategic Plan, and Equity and Social Justice Strategic Plan. This position follows a hybrid work model, blending remote and in-person work.

About The Team: WTD's Environmental and Community Services Section is a diverse team of professionals responsible for supporting the division's comprehensive planning and capital wastewater infrastructure delivery programs totaling over $600 million per year, and operations of three large regional wastewater treatment plants (and two small community systems) serving a population of 2 million located within numerous member sewer agencies. The West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant is the largest treatment facility in Washington serving the Seattle urban core and surrounding areas, and includes a large CSO system consisting of 38 permitted County CSO outfalls and five intermittent…