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CUC to lose senior engineer to Alaska
Brian Bearden
Brian Bearden, who is a lieutenant commander of the U.S. Public Health Service, will be moving to Fairbanks, Alaska.
Bearden is sponsored and employed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and is commissioned by the Public Health Service.
“Public Health Service, they want us to move around a bit, we can’t stay in the same position forever,” said Bearden, who was part of a Public Health Service team sent to the CNMI to help CUC.
“I’m the last one remaining. It got complicated with EPA at the time, they were temporarily shut down, they were unable to send an officer down here a couple of years so that kind of resulted in the situation. Now they can do that again, so they are looking at bringing back at least one more public service officer to replace me,” he added.
Bearden will be providing engineering support to the native Alaskan organization Tanana Chiefs Conference on the operations and management of the 30 villages, including their wastewater.
Bearden served as acting chief engineer in 2012 during which they were able to achieve 100 percent 24-hour water service on Saipan for about two weeks.
“That was probably the best thing that I was involved with at CUC,” Bearden said.
Bearden has been in the CNMI for 20 years and also served for more than 12 years at the Division of Environmental Quality, now Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality.
Acting CUC executive director John Riegel said Bearden’s departure will be felt in the corporation.
“His absence is going to be huge. It will really be felt, widespread. He’s a really strong producer, technically capable and his institution knowledge goes back 20 years,” Riegel said.
He added that they are working on seeking a replacement for his position.
“I would like to get another commissioned officer here from EPA. Whether that’s fruitful or not, we’ll see,” Riegel said.
