<- Back to Life Member Roster
Albert M. Presgraves
Education
BS - Civil Engineering (1976, University of Virginia)
Engineering Career
I grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, and then had the very good fortune to attend the University of Virginia, which changed my life. While at UVA, I enjoyed and organized outdoor adventures including whitewater canoeing, rock climbing, hiking, camping and skiing, and I helped start the Hang Gliding Club, among other things. I graduated from the University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science in May, 1976.
My first engineering position was with a small surveying and engineering company in Calvert County, Maryland. Within a year I landed a position with McCrone Engineering in Annapolis, where I worked on a range of civil engineering and wastewater projects. In 1980, I passed the Professional Engineering exam, promptly quit my job, and sailed away in my 25 foot sailboat named Recycle for the Bahamas.
In 1981, I moved to Peaks Island (Maine) where some friends had started the STAR Foundation (for Sustainable Technology and Applied Research,) promoting alternative energy and appropriate resource use. That summer, I had the great experience of supervising a group of 12 young people on a project to build two passive solar greenhouse structures and start a community garden. The Foundation promoted recycling and did a few other good things before fading away. Years later in 1994, still living on Peaks Island and married with children, my wife and I helped start the Peaks Island Land Preserve which purchased the STAR property, and now owns or has conservation easements on over 170 acres on the island which has a total area of about 720 acres, and about 1,000 year-round residents.
I accepted an engineering position with SEA Consultants in Boston for a year, although most of that time I was the full-time Resident Engineer on a Headworks Replacement project at the WWTP in East Windsor, Connecticut. When that project was completed, I stayed with SEA Consultants, working in their office in Portland until 1985. A lot of my projects were Sewer System Evaluation Studies and related wastewater collection projects.
I married Jenny Yasi on Peaks Island in 1985, and we somehow arranged to go on our honeymoon for a year. Most of that time we lived in Jamaica (the country) and enjoyed many adventures and new friends learning about that culture. I have never counted that time as engineering experience, but I did meet a guy in the Blue Mountains who needed to have a concrete slab poured in his block house under construction. I assured him I could get it level, and he pulled together a good crew that mixed concrete by shovel in a pit on the ground, and we spent the day placing the mix by wheelbarrow. We left Jamaica for a summer in Boulder, Colorado, and had several weeks of culture shock.
We returned to Portland and Peaks Island in September 1986, and I re-started my engineering career at Woodard & Curran as a Design Engineer, leaving in 2002 as a Senior Project Manager. Much of my experience at W&C was in the solid waste management area, including a lot of landfill closure projects, most for relatively small municipalities. One particularly interesting project was the landfill closure on Vinalhaven Island in 2000, using an unconventional design of synthetic membrane covered with granite stone “riprap”. My article about the project was published in the September 2000 Public Works magazine with the title “Rocky Surface Smoothes Way to Landfill Closure.” In 2015, I visited the closed landfill and found it had survived well (with less maintenance than had been recommended.)
I loved my next career position as the Town Engineer for Freeport, Maine, where I was also the Solid Waste Director and Public Works Director, before retiring in 2016. As the first full-time person in the Town Engineer position, I was able to establish a good foundation for the role, doing a wide variety of projects and activities. I enjoyed the residents and features of Freeport so much that Jenny and I moved there in 2015. One of my last major projects in Freeport was the final phase of the municipal landfill closure, which I had first worked on in 1990 (at Woodard & Curran), 33 years earlier.
Professional Activities
I participated in ASCE meetings and events throughout my career. Other professional memberships included National Society of Professional Engineers, Solid Waste Association of North America, and American Public Works Association.
Funny Stories
In the late 90’s one of my clients was a public landfill organization in Aroostook County. In the middle of the summer, the Director called to say the whole top of the mostly closed landfill was covered in cannabis plants. He called the authorities, who enjoyed their task of performing a controlled burn. After some investigation, the most likely source of the seeds was the more interesting part of the story.
Because the older landfill area was scheduled to be closed, they were bringing it up to near the desired final grade by importing Construction and Demolition Debris, largely from out-of-state. The final surface of over 10 acres was covered with a temporary daily cover using the “bypass grit” from the PERC solid waste incinerator in Orrington. The material came from the initial screening of incoming waste and consisted of fine dirt and small pieces of plastic, mostly. The material also apparently included a substantial quantity of “seeds and stems” from the local community, including UMaine, Orono.
Hobbies
Sailing has been an important part of my life, and I retired “early” so that Jenny and I could sail our sailboat Magus south for the winter of 2016-17. We bought the 1971 motor-sailor Magus in Puerto Rico in 2008, and made enough repairs and upgrades to bring it to Maine in 2012. Since the internet was available by then, many of the adventures with Magus are available here.
I have many other interests including building (and repair,) organic gardening, the environment, social equality, community, politics, travelling, and that kind of thing. In recent years, I have taken a strong interest in the history of human beings, in all our diversions, confusions, expressions. It is amazing to realize that our history is composed of random actions/ occurrences that lead to the next thing that is “naturally” selected by peoples’ choices that they had to make based on all of their experience (and environment) to that point in time. And so it will continue into the future.