A nine-year county employee with an engineering license and degree from West Point will run the county’s new environmental department.
Kevin Gray, a Vancouver resident, is now the No. 2 employee in the county’s public works department, where he often negotiated with state and federal agencies over new stormwater rules and county road projects.
“The learning curve is going to be very, very small for him,” said County Administrator Bill Barron, the county’s top unelected official and Gray’s supervisor as of Dec. 1.
Gray beat 106 other applicants, Barron said, including two out-of-state finalists.
The new $38 million Department of Environmental Services will combine three small departments and parts of two others. It’s the biggest reorganization in county government since 2002.
As its director, Gray will immediately face a challenge from environmentalists who have threatened to sue the county over its rules for storm runoff from new developments.
The state Department of Ecology has said the county rules don’t do enough to prevent habitat-killing pollution. County commissioners have called state environmental laws unreasonably strict.
Gray will earn $112,806 annually, a 5 percent raise. He’ll supervise the equivalent of 52 full-time workers.
The new department will include:
nThe county’s small conservation lands, vegetation management and endangered species act departments.
nThe clean water, solid waste, sustainability, and environmental permitting programs from the public works department.
nThe forestry, habitat biology, and stormwater code enforcement programs from the community development department.
Barron said he and the commissioners want Gray to “bring an environmental consciousness to all that we do as an organization” while cutting the county’s expenses.
Dvija Michael Bertish of the Rosemere Neighborhood Association, a Vancouver environmental group that has threatened a lawsuit, said Gray’s work will be hamstrung by politicians.
“He has to do the bidding of the county commissioners, and they say to do certain things that have become insurmountable tasks,” Bertish said. “Their decision-making process hasn’t been on behalf of the environment.”
County Commissioner Steve Stuart, a Democrat and former environmental lobbyist who had been pushing for the reorganization since taking office in 2005, disagreed.
Gray’s new department will bring “better environmental outcomes with less-complicated process,” Stuart predicted.
Stuart said he started the hiring process looking for someone who could be “a face” for the county.
“After the interviews, I came to think that what we need most in these times that we live in is someone who can make it work,” Stuart said. “And with Kevin, I know it’ll work.”
