McADOO ASSOCIATES

We were living in McAdoo around the time McAdoo Associates became active in he mid 70s. I was working at the Purolator Oil Filter plant outside Ringtown.  I had been hired to be trained as second shift quality supervisor but as it turned out only had to spend occasional time on a second shift, when we were building aircraft oil filters, which as you might suspect, were made to much tighter standards than the equivalent auto filter.

My boss, the quality manager, had decided to resign and move back to Iowa, where he had come from when that plant had been shuttered.  I essentially did his job and mine for over a year, and never had gotten any complaints.  But in that time we had acquired a new division quality director, and when he was ready to fill the quality manager position, I was told I would not be considered.  I saw that as the same as telling me that I could not advance where I was at. 

Prior to the above phone call by several months, I had acquired a portable water testing kit, and had been doing some ad hoc testing for McAdoo Associates.  Since I had been given the message that I would help train the quality manager replacement and that he would be over me, I convinced the owner of McAdoo Associates he needed me full time.  As you will see in subsequent entries, most of the time want I did was only related to testing by the slimmest of threads, but it paid a little better than Purolator and it was only about 3 miles from home so that helped.

What they were attempting to do there was to come up with a way to dispose of the myriad kinds of industrial waste discharge by many different companies both local and out of the area.  We tried to burn a lot of the stuff we got in, because there were a lot of organics in them that burned easily, but unfortunately we were told to dump a lot out on the ground or take it to another property the owner owned in town and put it into a tank that formerly held fuel oil and had been partially dug up and had holes punch in the bottom.  I remember the owner being ticked that the slop we put into the tank wasn’t running out fast enough. 

There is  a lot more I could add, but I would have to write  a book to fully explain what went on there and its part in helping me formulate my attitude about industrial waste disposal.  Anyone who cares to hear more can write me at drjekyll@hazleton.net or call me.  I am in the book in Weatherly, Pa.