LAYTON—Longtime Executive Director of Wasatch Integrated Waste Management District (Wasatch), Nathan Rich, retired at the end of June and Preston Lee has been appointed to replace Rich as Executive Director. Lee took over the role on July 1. 

“Leading Wasatch for the past 25 years has been the honor of my professional career,” said Rich. “I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and confident that Wasatch is in excellent hands with Mr. Lee.”

“I’ve worked with Wasatch Integrated for 23 years," said Lee. “All of which were under Nathan. He has had such a big impact in my life as a mentor and a friend. He left the district with a very strong staff and we expect that we’re going to continue with his legacy and continue to march forward.”

Lee graduated from Utah State University with a watershed science degree. “That gave me a little bit of insight into groundwater,” he said. “When Nathan was promoted to executive director, it opened up his position as environmental engineer. I was able to come in and work alongside him to make sure that all the regulations, the environmental regulations, were being met for the district.”

Former Executive Director Nathan Rich walks around the landfill site. Rich is retiring after 26 years. Courtesy photo

  “It was in 2001 I was looking for someone to replace some of the work that I was doing at Wasatch,” said Rich. “A mutual friend of ours mentioned Preston and I remembered him. We worked together at a company called Bingham Environmental. So it was nice to hire somebody who I knew and had confidence in.”

Preston has been familiar with all the projects and intimately familiar with district operations for many years, he said. “He’s been with the district through some of the transitions that we’ve been through, through closing the Waste to Energy Facility and in building the improvements that we have at the landfill. He’s been an integral part.”

Working with a 19 member board is always interesting, Rich said. “I had board members ask what I was doing in terms of succession planning. One board member told me ‘It’s not your decision, it’s the board’s.’ I thought ‘you know that is absolutely correct.’ So as I started thinking about retiring and really I set a date about a year and a half ago in my mind, I didn’t go public with a date until about six months ago.”

Rich said his goal over the last couple of years was to make sure that he was leaving fully capable staff. “Of all the things that I may or may not have achieved, I think that’s the one thing that I’m really proud of.”

“Nathan and I have worked closely together,” said Lee. “We often talked about how it’s nice that both of our visions for the district were aligned. We always wanted to be one step ahead on utilizing waste as a resource and trying to find ways to divert that waste out of a landfill.”

As Rich reflected on his career with the district, he said one of the first big challenges that Wasatch overcame was the air quality. “The air emission problems associated with the waste to energy facility. That’s been a long time ago but we installed pollution control equipment in 2001 and took what was a very controversial facility and really turned it into a first class well performing environmental facility.”      

Wasatch got the first landfill gas to energy project in the state of Utah and that was at the Davis landfill, said Rich. “We collect gas from that landfill and in the past have generated electricity. That project is now transitioning to a renewable natural gas (RNG) where the gas will actually be put into the pipeline.”

Rich said there have been several design changes and expansion of the landfill itself. “We installed a mechanically stabilized earth and berm at the landfill that substantially expanded the capacity there, the customer service facilities that are at the landfill, that citizens drop off area, the green waste, the composting, the landfill thrift store and most recently the construction and commissioning of our Material Recovery Facility.”

“Right now I don’t have a lot of goals,” said Lee. “The district is running very strong right now, both fiscally and operationally. There is always some room for expansion of transferring waste to try and maintain this asset, which is the Davis landfill. So I'm just going to be focusing on operations right now and just trying to make sure that we’re doing the best with what we have and I hope to continue to steer the ship in the right direction.”