WEDNESDAY JUNE 27, 2007 Last modified: Friday, June 22, 2007 10:08 PM CDT

COUNTY PROGRAM FEATURED
http://www.wdtimes.com/articles/2007/06/25/in_times_square/times01.txt

Jefferson County’s highly successful pharmaceutical disposal program was featured in this month’s edition of Wisconsin Counties, an internal publication for county officials throughout Wisconsin.

A three page article titled “Jefferson County Launches Pharmaceutical Disposal Program” and which was written by Jennifer L. Bock, managing editor of the Wisconsin Counties Association, details how the county’s clean sweep program was expanded this year to include these drugs.

Local officials were pleasantly surprised when just over 200 pounds of pharmaceuticals were turned in to a one-day clean sweep program at the county fairgrounds earlier this year. A second clean sweep netted over 50 additional pounds.

Government officials are excited about the program because it removes all of these items, some of which are quite dangerous, from the ground and ultimately from getting into the water system.

Organizing the event took a great deal of time and effort as well as a lot of coordinating. For example, coordinating the event was the Jefferson County Solid Waste/Air Quality Committee. Members are county supervisors Donald Reese, chairman; Vic Imrie Jr., secretary; August Lehmann, vice chairman; and John Kannard and Carlton Zentner.

Working with that group were a number of specialized people, including Steve Brachman and Steve Grabow of the UW-Extension office in Jefferson; Gail Scott of the Jefferson County Health Department; Carol Quest, RN, BSN, who heads Watertown’s health department; Tim Anderson of the county and the city health department; John Schloemer, pharmacist at Watertown Memorial Hospital; Paul Milbrath, Jefferson County sheriff; and Adam Huebner, a member of the Rock River Public Health Emergency Preparedness Consortium.

Many of these are old and outdated drugs that remained in the medicine cabinets, some of them were incorrect prescriptions, and others were actual controlled substances. The bottom line, though, is that they could have easily been discarded along with regular garbage and then get into a landfill site and ultimately in the groundwater. But it didn’t happen because of Jefferson County’s new program.

The program is catching on in the state. In 2006 six counties offered to accept pharmaceuticals at their clean sweeps. The counties and the amount they collected in 2006 were: Wood, 418 pounds; Brown, 300 pounds; Milwaukee, 824 pounds; Winnebago, 184 pounds; Manitowoc, 190 pounds; and Rock County, 261 pounds. This year Jefferson and Dane counties were added.

If you have some pharmaceuticals you want to dispose, there will be two more chances in Jefferson County this year. One is Sept. 15 and the second is Oct. 18.

Want to know a little more about the program? Go to the county Web site at www.co.jefferson.wi.us or call Robert Mueller, county zoning/solid waste coordinator, at (920) 674-7130.

FORMER RESIDENT IS FEATURED

The Park Falls Herald in recent days carried a detailed front page story about former Watertown resident Bob Byrne and his new job as president of Flambeau River Papers, a large paper manufacturing operation headquartered in Park Falls.

The story was written by George Tresnak of the newspaper’s staff and was quite interesting as he traced Bob’s history in this industry.

Bob had worked as an executive at the mill and had a strong commitment to the Park Falls community. But, back in 1996 he was forced to resign from the company when it was sold to Noranda. After that he took a position with CityForest Corporation in Ladysmith where he was a senior project manager and saw the company through some challenges including the ultimate sale of the business. From there he worked for Georgia Pacific Corp. in Atlanta for a few years until he got the call to come back and be president of Flambeau River Papers which had been closed for a short while before being reopened.

The paper went into great detail of the various positions of high responsibility he held.

Bob is the son of John and Joyce Byrne of Watertown. He attended St. Bernard’s School and graduated from Watertown High School. His wife, Donna, was employed at Watertown Memorial Hospital as a medical technician until her marriage to Bob.

Bob and Donna are the two people who have funded the John and Joyce Byrne scholarships which are presented annually during Watertown High School’s annual awards program.

Bob was the oldest of six children in this family which truly has engineering it its genes. His mother was a teacher and that no doubt was a factor in making education a priority.

Bob has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in engineering with an emphasis on improving quality and productivity. His dad was an engineer and he has a brother and sister who are both engineers. His wife, Donna, is an internal technical consultant to Luther Midelfort Laboratories, part of Mayo Health System.

He has two children. Becky is a 2001 graduate of Purdue University with a chemical engineering degree and recently completed an MBA degree at Indiana University. She and her family will be moving to Minnesota shortly where she has taken a marketing position with 3M Corporation. Patrick is a 2003 graduate of the University of Minnesota-Duluth with a degree in industrial engineering. He works for an aircraft manufacturing company in Duluth.

Sure sounds like another of many people who have roots in Watertown and have gone out to make some impressive gains in the world.

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