Pro-Vac Featured in Cleaner Magazine

The Northwest has a certain reputation. No, we’re not talking about Sasquatch or Bigfoot. The region, more than others, has an exercised environmental consciousness born of a desire to preserve its celebrated natural resources. Consequently, businesses operating in the state of Washington are made aware of environmental considerations in their business planning.

Graham Gill, CEO of Pro-Vac, headquartered in Puyallup, Washington, knows all about it. The company is constantly disturbing and relocating soils, flushing sewers, protecting pipes with cathodic and epoxy coating and otherwise interacting with Mother Nature on several levels. The company is being watched as it does so.

“There definitely are different regulations from the West Coast to the East Coast,” Gill says. “In the Northwest, regulations are more environmentally strenuous than in the middle of the country, for instance.”

This is relevant to the company because it is expanding its operations beyond Washington and Oregon into other regions. The different expectations in different jurisdictions can translate into different operating methods — not less responsibly, but with different criteria in mind. 

“As we’ve gone into different markets, we haven’t run into any regulations more strict than what we were used to here,” Gill says.

That is, state and jurisdictional regulators in the new markets haven’t been an issue. What has changed is the expectations of different customers.

“The industries are different in our new markets,” Gill says. “In Texas and Oklahoma, for instance, we’re working with oil and gas companies. That’s far different than on the West Coast where we typically work with pulp mills and paper mills. So, the differences in regulations that we’re encountering are not at the governmental level, but at the customer level.”

Pro-Vac is adapting to them and continuing to grow.

Read more about Pro-Vac in the June 2024 issue of Cleaner magazine.