For Wastewater Operator Billie Jean Stallings, maintaining Fulton’s wastewater plant serves as a way to help people and the environment.
Billie Jean oversees plant inspections, checking oil levels and alarms, and ensuring everything runs smoothly. Most people don’t think about what happens after they flush the toilet. However, that’s where her work begins.
“I went to school for environmental health and safety and took a wastewater class,” she said. “I just kind of fell in love with the idea of helping the environment and people at the same time. That’s where I felt like I can be beneficial to this earth. I know it’s kind of weird and strange, but that’s kind of where my mind is on it.”
While her job involves making sure the machines that process the city’s wastewater are running properly, Billie Jean also spends time inspecting samples to ensure everything works on a molecular level.
“I enjoy looking at the microscopic buggies and understanding how the different ages will determine what’s going on in your sludge – if you have old sludge or new sludge. You have to have an even keel, like right in the middle, for it to function properly,” she said. “It’s one big, working organism. If the beginning isn’t working, then the end isn’t going to be right. If the end isn’t working, we aren’t sending out what we’re supposed to. It all has to be functioning up to par in order to be beneficial.”
Billie Jean has two boys – one recently graduated the Air Force after four years of service, and another is a skater who is sponsored by a Poplar Bluff group – along with two dogs and three cats. In her free time, she enjoys mushroom hunting. She’s married to Chad, an Army Veteran.
More information about Fulton and what we have to offer is available at fultonmo.org/human-resources/join-our-team/