Deb LaVergne grew up just a stone’s throw away from the Blackstone River in Massachusetts. And she’s spent her career helping to clean it up.
As laboratory and pretreatment manager for
the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District, she makes sure the effluent from the district’s wastewater treatment facility meets strict discharge requirements. It’s a critical job because, as she says, “Where we’re located, our effluent makes up most of the river’s flow.” In other words, the performance of the plant has had everything to do with improving water quality in the river.
“When I was little, we’d go down to the river
