Pros
Intelligent community of coworkers High pay Flexible schedule start and end times for day, 9/80 available or 5/wk Learn a lot See the county Pension Adam springer is the best manager I’ve ever had, and everyone can teach you a crazy amount. Can be exciting for incident response Meet heads of major agencies like the epa Travel for unique training Do a job that helps protect the environment, fight corrupt big business, and keep mom and pop shops safe while being a regulator who can make intelligent decisions that aren’t unfair or burdensome on the people who deserve help (just because refinery (redacted but public info) got mad we enforce a three person owned mechanic shop less than them who released heavy metals all over town without notifying us in the required time :) Enjoy specialty foods in the different areas you travel to in the county. Government health insurance Insanely hard to get fired beyond negligence or lying on your time sheet. Harm reduction policies. A hazmat badge that makes you more suspicious than just walking in
Cons
Like 40 percent of your salary is your on call. The incident response team is volunteer but you’re not making much money if you aren’t on call 50 hours a month (over a third of the time) Due to lobbying and “ultra business friendly” policies, it can be exceptionally difficult to enforce violators who have not done something serious, and even some who do serious things, as it requires meticulous reporting and documentation spanning upwards of 90 days and then you have to pray someone will take the case because if the amount isn’t high enough or the case strong enough, nothing will happen. We cannot assign violations that the companies are required to clear in 30 days that then occur an automatic fine. We cannot even fine people without a court. Most people want to be in compliance and have no trouble, and you can make a huge difference, but less savory characters are abusing the rigor we have to go through to keep the environment safe. It is easier to go after an oil refinery for a 500,000 dollar administrative error fine than it is to go after someone you catch dumping oil into the Stormwater system or not complying for 5 years.