Encore Green Environmental wants you to know all there is to know about increasing all the benefits that come from applying cleaned industry by-product water to the arid land. So – we want you to meet our team of experts that are aligned with us.
Today, we hear from our owner, Darlene Nash.
EGE
Darlene, briefly describe your role at Encore Green Environmental.
DARLENE
I’m the owner of Encore Green Environmental, which I started with my husband Marvin in 2017. Being a startup, I tend to wear quite a number of hats, but I focus on keeping us heading in the right direction. That’s my main role. We have a great, but small team, and so I also just pitch in where needed. The other day, I made labels for jars of clean air.
EGE
Jars of air?
DARLENE
Right. It was to make a point in a meeting that when you grow things, the air gets more oxygen and less carbon. It was an attention getting joke. But if you’d like to purchase some jars of clean air, just give me a call.
EGE
Tell us a little of your background and what brought you to start the company?
DARLENE
I’ve been around animals most of my life, initially training animals for the circus and for movies, most famously training the horse for the movie, Pippi Longstocking.
When Marvin and I married, I then handled his bookings as a rodeo clown and then later, the two of us produced school programs about staying off drugs and the effects of bullying. A few years ago, I published my first book, Bullying Hurts, to give parents and others very practical help to deal with bullying.
The idea for Encore Green Environmental came when Marvin worked at a midstream company and we’d talk about options for what to do with the enormous amount of by-product water. Our son, Skeeter, worked with Marvin hauling water and he had some of the initial ideas surrounding it.
EGE
What has drawn you to your field of expertise? That is, what’s your motivation for your work day in and day out?
DARLENE
It kind of drives me crazy to think that we’re just throwing this by-product water away.
In one year, the oil industry has to deal with 890 million gallons of this water. And nearly all of that is literally tossed down the drain. Wyoming alone tosses 70 million gallons. And places like New Mexico have exponentially even more water to deal with. I guess if we had plenty of water to go around, that’d be one thing. But here in the West, we live on arid land. It’s just crazy to throw away water when it’s so scarce and valuable.
We are all smarter than this. And people are finally coming around to hearing it. That’s why our solution of Conservation By-Design has arrived at just the right time.
We can clean up that water – right there, near the oil wells that are sitting on arid land. Then, let’s increase conservation by growing things on that land. The soil is better, air is better, the aquifers aren’t being drained for other industry or ag, and it’s all because everything gets better when you just add water.
That’s why our company’s slogan and the name of our new initiative we’re doing is called ‘Just Add Water.’
EGE
Tell us more about the ‘Just Add Water’ Initiative.
DARLENE
It’s a coalition of ourselves, the Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association, Beneficial-Use Water Alliance, and the University of Wyoming’s Center of Excellence in Produced Water Management. We want to encourage all the stakeholders, from the oil companies to the landowners, to the environmentalists, to get on board cleaning this water and applying to the land.
EGE
What’s the one thing you’d like the reader to remember about you?
DARLENE
I guess that I’m a mother and grandmother trying to make a difference in this world.