Scientific talk with Chris Worley
Photography by John Matthews
John Matthews, staff writer
PVCC’s Science Club continued their career talk week on Wednesday, April 25, with guest speaker Chris Worley. Worley works for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as an environment protection specialist.
Worley attended Texas A&M University majoring in Wildlife Archeology. He went on to work for the state of Texas with the Department of Environment Quality, also referred to DEQ. After working there for a few years, he moved to Virginia where he attended graduate school at the University of Virginia. After working for the DEQ in Virginia, he worked as a contractor for 12 years.
For the past two years, Worley has worked for the EPA, participating in a few divisions with Air Management, Clean Market Division and Emissions Monitoring Division. Worley talked about some of the areas that he oversees, like the quarterly submissions from the power plants across the United States that are required to give their emission totals every three months.
Worley went on to explain one of the ways the EPA is working on lowering emissions through the process of environmental economics through giving out emission credits to manufacturers who are then free to trade, buy or sell the credits between each other while giving the EPA the ability to control the number credits in circulation. By doing this, he explained that it has led to lower pollution emissions over the years.
Worley momentarily dipped into the political side of the EPA. When asked about the EPA’s role in the international community, Worley explained that due to the current administration, the focus of the EPA has been domestic. He continued to talk about the difficulties to get projects going when it reaches the political level.
Worley said, “Despite the politics, I enjoy working on the different projects.”
