Right. Where is Tyler? Tyler — hey, there is Tyler. He's waving me down. Alright, my friend Tyler, come on in! Hey, hey! Hello! Tyler, how are you? I'm good. How are you? [inaudible] Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Tyler Kelly, Baltimore County Health Department, Environmental Health Specialist. OK, good! You got it down and look, to commemorate your environmental sort of activism and happiness, we have a bottle of water for you. Okay, sounds good. It is an incredible gift for you. Oh, wow. Stay hydrated. Thank you so much. I will need it. So, there's a lot I need to talk to you about. I'm really excited about this, but my first and foremost question is where do you recommend we go to do environmental, either, where do you go to do environmental safety right here? Well, we go so many places. How about a beach? A beach? Yes, a beach on a day like today, we should go to a beach. A beach near Baltimore? Yes. Are you serious? Baltimore County has a number of beaches, rivers, lakes, access to the Chesapeake Bay. Let's go to a beach. You're kidding me? Not kidding. A guy was like an Frank Urban and we were in horse country. Kind of I feel like I've been all over the world here and you're telling me there's a beach here. There is a beach. You promise? I promise. You're not making this up? I'm not making it up. All right. You'll be happy with it when you get there. OK. Ready to go? Yes we are. All right, let's do it. OK. We're going to the beach. OK. All right. Hey, we're here. We sure are. Wow. This is — where are we? That's the first thing I had to ask. I think this is technically Essex but it's Rocky Point Park. I see water. That's it? Yes, and when we get up here a little farther there'll be water on both sides. It's great but I don't see a beach. There's a beach here? There is a beach. It's hidden. That's amazing. That's incredible. Hoping you'll see some boats for the — I believe a private, a private sailing camp. Wow! This is, this is some place. This county is amazing. I know, we have our own gateway to the Chesapeake Bay. There are boats everywhere. Check out those boats. We actually have our own boat. It's not here, but yes, we have our own boat. Wait, you mean the Health Department has its own boat? The Health Department has its own boat. Tell me about that. Well, I get to drive it. That's that's my favorite part. OK. You have a boat license? Oh I do. OK. Good. Yes, of course I do. You do not not want to have a boat license. Says Rocky Point Waterfront Park. Yup, and program open space project. So, Baltimore County is very proud of our parks and places where our residents can enjoy themselves. So, we have a beach volleyball court. On the right side, there's a boat ramp past this playground. I mean it's a great place to come and enjoy your time. But obviously as people enjoy their time, you want to make sure they're safe and protected. Of course. So that's why... How often are you out in these kinds of places? So the state regulations determine how often we do our sampling and we do our own risk assessment every year. But typically, we do our sampling every two weeks. Now, if there are any issues we may come back more frequently, but we're here every two weeks. On the right side we have back river, so we actually get samples from on the boat out here and over on the right side, and actually — we'll you can't see it now but across here is another beach, it's actually a state park where you can only get there by boat. So we came, there's one road, we came in this one road but if you really needed to get here you would actually come in your county boat? County Health Department boat? Yes. So what do you do all day long? Well what's your...? Yeah, what do you do? I do all kinds of things. An Environmental Health Specialists has a whole list of things they do. My program involves food inspections — restaurants, schools, churches, anywhere that serves food of any kind. Including mobile food? Yes. We have some fun events. After hours and on weekends we get to go inspect. But so, I mean this water sampling program is really my favorite and I have a lead role in this and I'm ready to get back out there this season in a few weeks. Why is this your favorite? It's just great being outside, driving the boat. And I mean, it is critical to keep our residents safe. And so, after we take our water samples we enter the data we gathered into the state computer program. We actually drive the samples ourselves. Some of the counties have couriers that take their samples, we actually drive them and drop them off ourselves at the lab and they report the results back to us electronically the next day. So then we have to take that information and interpret it and we decide OK, is this acceptable? Do we need to resample, post any advisories? Go out post signage and educate people to keep them safe. So you are doing, how many folks are in your department that do this? That do the water sampling? Yeah, that do this environmental, water... OK. Well, we have about 30 environmental health specialists, that might be overestimating, but maybe three of us do this water sampling program, and then we have a few more that do the swimming pool inspections which I also enjoy getting outside and doing. And so, it's somewhat easier to control the bacteriological risk in a swimming pool, whereas these natural waters we can't really control it. If there, if there's an issue you can't just filter it or add chemicals to disinfect it. You just have to wait for nature to take its toll. But you have to tell people that in meantime stay out of this water. Right. So if we get a bad result, we post our results on our website. The county often releases press releases. We will physically go out and post signs. I had coworkers out posting water quality signs for sewage overflow today. Today? Yes, because even when you're not, when it's not raining which often leads to — I mean, if we are going to have a sewage overflow it's after a heavy rain or a power failure somewhere, but it can happen. And so, these unforeseen events we have to, you know, keep trying to keep tracking of what's going on out here and we have to resample. We post signs, we reschedule resampling and come back. And hopefully, the bacterias died off or dissipated because these rivers and, you know, and the tidal parts of the county that we sample, there's a turnover in the water — it's diluted as more water comes down stream, it goes out with the tide. But it's really at the mercy of Mother Nature. People see us as the bad guy sometimes. I mean we are trying to... Why is that? What do you mean by that? Because there are times when we tell people "no, you can't swim" or know your restaurant has to be closed, but we're really doing it from a public health perspective. I mean, if this water is full of bacteria you wouldn't know it from looking at it unless there was maybe a clear sewage overflow, but so we have to be out there working behind the scenes when the public might not be aware of what's going on. And we have to make tough calls sometimes and not everybody is happy with being told what they can and cannot do, but, you know, we're trying to be a partner with these businesses, beaches, we want everyone to be able to do whatever it is that they want to do. Our motto is "Healthy people living, working, and playing in Baltimore County" and that is what we strive for. And it's interesting, you know, earlier we were talking to some guy and as you know, I've been driving all day here and I've seen some just incredible passionate people doing incredible things. So yeah, like I was saying, you know I think those are real, you know, seeing Mary and you know all all the other folks today they were just talking about the fact the public works 24/7 and I think you're saying the same thing — 24/7 you're at it. And the public oftentimes doesn't know you're doing that job, but I am so thankful somebody is doing that job. Right. It needs to be done whether it, you know, we don't always give people the answer they want to hear, but we hope that we're giving them the answer they need to hear or the advice they need, or you know, making those tough calls to prevent the next public health crisis. So, let me ask you this question about you. OK. How did you get into this? Well. I think out of the blue you're like, "OK. I'm going to go I'm going to be the Environmental Health Inspector." Well, it's sort of funny, I really had no intention of this as a career path. I started when I was in college just as a summer employee, one of our seasonal pool inspectors, but my dad did this job before I did. He was the 1980s version of an environmental health specialist and he worked for Baltimore County. So that's how I found out about the summer job and I just liked what I was doing, liked the people I was working with, and meeting out in the field, and it just kind of happened. It wasn't intentional. Your father did this huh? He did. Like two generations. Exactly. So I think that's something special. Is he retired? He is retired. He's retired. So I'm sure he gave you words of wisdom. Yes, and warnings that this isn't always going to be the easiest and, you know, you might have people yelling at you but you kind of have to know that you're doing what is right or what you believe is right to protect public health. So words of wisdom? Words of wisdom.
