Most everyone knows Mindy Scott as the happy-go-lucky member of the Water Resources team. Mindy is the one with the crazy holiday fashion collection in her closet and she brings it to every office event. If you say celebrate, she says, “I have the perfect outfit for that!”
Mindy will not pass you in the hall without a quick and genuine hello. Stroll past her cube and you will find hints of her personality everywhere – a tiny Bob Ross paint by number canvas, French bulldog lamp, shiny hedgehog and miniatures representing everything from the Peanuts gang to Mardi Gras king cake babies.
Look closer and you will see things that Mindy is passionate about, such as 15 consecutive annual photos of her twins, Kentucky stream posters and in the middle of it all a group photo with her colleagues from the Kentucky/Tennessee Clean Water Professionals (CWP).
You see Mindy is very serious about doing all possible to monitor and maintain good water quality throughout the watersheds within the SD1 service area and beyond and her involvement in CWP helps her achieve that.
After graduating from high school, Mindy didn’t travel a straight path to a career in environmental science. She spent two directionless years at Northern Kentucky University, but the commuter college life didn’t work for her. A friend encouraged her to check out Maysville Community College, with its environmental science program she thought would fit perfectly with Mindy’s love for the outdoors.
A Minerva, Ky., native, Mindy thought, “What the heck?” She took her friend’s advice and attended the community college for two years before eventually becoming a student at Morehead State University.
Mindy loved Morehead and says she wishes it would have been her first stop. She is grateful for her experience there and the professional doors it opened for her. In 1999, she earned a science degree with an area of concentration in environmental science.
While at Morehead, Mindy interned with Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO), where she worked with our very own Jim Gibson conducting wet-weather surveys.
After graduation, ORSANCO asked Mindy to join as a full-time scientist on a team that executed bacteria studies on the entire 981 miles of the Ohio River. Her team’s job was to travel during the contact recreational season, May through October, with a mobile lab as far north as Pittsburgh and as far south as Cairo, Ill., testing the upper, middle and lower river to ensure bacteria were up to standards and the water quality remained eligible for recreation.
It was important work that paved the way for her role at SD1, which started 17 years ago. She arrived on the same day as fellow scientist Matt Wooten.
She says her job really hasn’t changed all that much through the years. Still today, she and her team are boots on the ground – out in the streams with pen and paper monitoring and sampling. One thing that has changed, though, is the technology used. Data collection is more robust and more reliable than ever.
Her primary responsibility is to monitor water quality in all of the 16 watersheds located in the SD1 service area and beyond. She accomplishes this through routine sampling conducted with her staff, Andrew Doyle and Liz Fet.
At a recent Board meeting, the subject of sampling beyond the SD1 service area came up. Mindy is happy to explain why we do this. Sampling watersheds outside the service area provides valuable background information that helps us to understand the water quality within the service area, she says.
“It’s simple,” Mindy explains. “Knowing about the water traveling toward the SD1 service area tells us what we might find within our watersheds or even what is contained in SSO’s and CSO’s.”
Mindy’s work is integral to the success of SD1’s Clean H2O40 program. Armed with the information she provides from field work, SD1 knows where and how to make necessary changes to improve water quality.
Once at SD1, Mindy became active in KY/TN CWP, which is a member association of the Water Environment Federation (WEF), which has a mission of “Boldly leading a professional community dedicated to safe and clean water through education, innovation and advocacy.” There are many CWP chapters across the US.
After attending her first CWP conference, Mindy was hooked. She began looking for ways to get more people involved in water quality, so she began to participate in the Watershed Committee. Eventually, she co-chaired the committee and each year she became more involved in the governance of TN/KY CWP.
Mindy was nominated for a leadership role in 2020, which she enthusiastically accepted. She is in the third year of her four-year commitment to the organization’s leadership team. This year, the gavel was passed to Mindy when she became KY/TN CWA president.
It is an important role that she takes very seriously (well, as serious as Mindy can be). Fun is always lurking when she is around. Having fun is a strategy for helping people retain her messages about water quality, Mindy says.
Mindy insists she works for the best department at SD1, where her colleagues are like-minded, goal-oriented team players. She credits the Water Resources leadership for this.
“Jim is a true professional,” she says. “He keeps us informed on all matters at both the industry and organizational level. We never have to be concerned about information trickling in or not being informed.” This keeps drama at bay, builds trust and shores up a strong team, she says.
Mindy also loves affiliations with local stakeholders that have been fostered through the Water Resources department. The partnership with Thomas More University for an internship program is one example. Mindy is a big proponent of job shadowing and interning. Her standard advice to young people is if you think you like something, try it!
Other working relationships and resources include ORSANCO, NKU, the Kentucky Department of Water and the three county conservation districts. All of these offer mutual benefit and positive interaction in the community.
If she wasn’t looking out for NKY’s water quality, Mindy says she would be living on a farm with friends and lots and lots of animals – especially dogs – where she would run a petting zoo, vegetable farm and flower garden.
And knowing Mindy, all would certainly be welcome!
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