Practitioner Spotlight--Audrey Pyle

Name:

Audrey Pyle

Office:

Austin, TX

Practice Area:

Environmental liability management, transaction support, and compliance

Area(s) of experience:

Phase I/II, environmental drilling and injection work, SWPPP/SPCC, exploring other environmental remediation practices

About Me in 140 Characters:

I was born and raised in Austin, TX, and I got my degree in geology from UC Santa Barbra. After school, I moved back to Austin and my first job out of college was with Antea Group! I started off working on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality chemical compliance sampling for public water systems. Then I was transitioned off of the project and started exploring other work—in our office and across the country—and helping managers with pretty much anything.

Favorite thing about being an environmental remediation practitioner:

The variety of work and being able to travel. While some of the tasks can be routine, the variety in the projects and teams is my favorite thing.

What are you hoping for in the future of your practice area?

I think the most interesting thing about environmental remediation work is figuring out how to clean up a site successfully based on the type of contamination. I would like to see more projects outside of the ELT portfolios (typical UST at a gas station scenario) in the future.

What is the most interesting project you’ve ever worked on?

Earlier this year, I worked at an emergency response site—a fertilizer plant. They overfilled one of their tanks, and all the fertilizer spilled into their retention pond, and we went in and had to pump it dry, basically. We had to install industrial bag filters and sand filters and figure out how to use them. Of course, we had some bumps along the way, but in a little over two weeks we were able to pump all of the water out—around 400,000 gallons—and pump that to the sanitary sewer. That was the most unique project I have worked on while working for Antea Group. The water in the pond was a nasty lime green, it was really gross!

What is a key ingredient for success for an early career professional?

Keep your mind open to different opportunities and take on a variety of work to get as much experience as possible. Doing that will help you determine which areas you can see yourself focusing on in the future.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

Getting to travel and meeting new people across the country, whether they are from other Antea Group offices or subcontractors. Every project I work on is a learning experience, particularly when I get to travel to our other offices and help them with their projects.

Is there something unique that people might not know about you?

I live on a ranch, and we have 11 miniature horses, four dogs, and at one point we also had four sheep and a goat. I got into that through a miniature equine therapy group—I started volunteering with them, and I enjoyed it so much that we got two of our own and it just kind of skyrocketed from there. When I tell people about it the number one thing they say is, “Like Little Sebastian from Parks and Rec?”

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