Cory Greer.
New Expertise at UPI: A Conversation With Cory Greer
U
PI Aquatics is an agrichemical manufacturing company with over 3,000 employees worldwide. It is perhaps best known to irrigators for its aquatic chemicals Cascade and Teton. In October of this year, Cory Greer joined UPI as an account representative with responsibility for all or part of nine western states. In this interview with Irrigation Leader Managing Editor Joshua Dill, Mr. Greer discusses his extensive prior experience, which includes working for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the South Columbia Basin Irrigation District; the skills he brings to UPI; and what he hopes to accomplish in his new position. Joshua Dill: Please tell us about your personal and professional background and how it brought you to your new position.
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IRRIGATION LEADER
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ROBYN SANDERS.
Cory Greer: I was working in marketing and going to trade school here in the Tri-Cities in Washington State, but I didn’t like the work very much, so I applied for a grant to go back to school. While I was studying for my bachelor’s in environmental science at Washington State University (WSU), I started working with the biological systems engineering department as an undergraduate
researcher, and they offered me a position to continue on with my master’s. I got my master’s in biological systems engineering, or ag engineering for short. My focus was on hydrology, specifically winter soil erosion. After that, I worked for the NRCS, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in Oregon and then in North Dakota. In Oregon, I spent most of my time working with irrigation districts on systems improvement, grant writing, compliance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policy mandates, and things like that. Additionally, I worked with individual landowners—ranchers and farmers—on system upgrades to meet federal and state guidelines related to environmental issues. They would apply for grants through the NRCS and I would be, essentially, a free compliance officer and engineer. I did that in Oregon for 4 or 5 years, and then I moved on to North Dakota and worked there for just 2 years, again with the NRCS. While I was there, North Dakota had two of the top five floods in its history, so I started working in what they called emergency watershed protection. I worked on dam rehabilitation and dam monitoring. North Dakota has thousands of watershed dams just for flood retention. That was right when the housing market crashed, so I wasn’t able to move my family out. I moved back to Idaho
