High functioning grifter employed by the State of California to protect the environment during oil spills. I encoyraged the CDFG's (now CDFW) legistlative Anaylst to write the proposal that became the Office of Spill Prevention & Response, where I transfered into after serving 6 years as a Marine Biologist/Environmental Scientist in then CDFG.
In those early years I worked with a foreign born Environmental Scientist who said of our jobs, "This is welfare for the rich." At the time I was highly offended but with time I have come to see his perspective. Spend time doing research that suggests you can catch only 500 fishes and the Commission takes that number and compromises it into 5000 fish after who knows how much money suffled around in the darkness. Truly depressing.
Oil spills were cool at first, helping clean up a mess and preventing additional damage to the enviornment by responding quickly and directly. Now we have to send the information up the chain and take orders on how to deal with each tiny detail, to the likings of our management who are not focused like a laser on environmental protection, rather they first check the political affiliations of the spiller, and many other metrics to decide how hard to press a case, or not. Most of my coworkers don't notice but the situation has made me depressed, especially to remember that I helped give birth to the Office that now opperates completely as a punative agency rather than cooperatively cleaning up accidental spills when they happen.
I've been retired in place (RIP) for a few decades of my 30 year career and the less I do the more I get positive reviews.
Depression stems from fear of God's judgement and feeling strongly that I have wasted my life doing what I do, except for reefing which has always allowed me the joy of tinkering with my tanks and distracting myself from the truth of the situation. I need to write a report but I can't get out of bed except to post junk on here and distract myself from the 5' of standing water that flooded many neighborhoods in the immegrant neighborhoods in San Diego recently and there I was with the Government to check out a few leaking oil barrels that dumped in the environment while nowhere in site, for 6 days, were anybody from the RED CROSS-like agencies and NGO's or the County or CIty to provide aid and comfort for the poor folks that lived in these flooded homes. They bailed out the water and moved back in because they had no where else to go.
I sent a few texts and asked a few questions about this topic during Incident Command Meetings but it took 6 days for the News Media (They were also there on day 2) to report that a help center was opening 20 miles away in the more affluent neighborhoods that had seen minor flooding.
Sorry for the rant, but I needed to vent this one. Free Therapy for the Rich.
Edit, also dyslexic and working on a machine with disabled spell check.