Rusty Tournade came to the water industry only nine years ago.
He started with the City of Eudora, in Northeast Kansas, in 2012 as a seasonal worker on the mowing crew. Then he went full time, reading water meters for two weeks a month and otherwise working on the streets or running the vacuum truck cleaning sewer lines.
“I was interested in the water plant,” he recalls. “They had only three operators at the time.”
He asked for training, and the city manager agreed. “So they cross-trained me over here. It wasn’t two or three months later when water plant foreman left, so
