In 1993, Joel Jones had a wildlife biology degree from Clemson, a new fiancée, a pickup truck, and a dream of spending his life in the woods. Then real life happened and he took a night-shift job at a sewer plant.
Most people would call that giving up the dream. Joel just moved the dream indoors. He kept a baited hand line strung off the plant’s bridge over the Reedy River. He stocked hundreds of fish in a flooded basement that looked like a giant baptismal pool. And one year, when the plant drained lagoons that had sat still for two decades, the campus revealed what it had quietly become: home to thousands of turtles, crawling out in such numbers that you couldn’t drive the roads. They called it the Year of the Turtle.
This is a story about wastewater, yes. But it’s really about what happens when you keep paying attention in a place nobody else is looking. Joel spent thirty-two years at ReWa, night-shift trainee to CEO, proving that a treatment plant can be a sanctuary, a river can come back, and the water can leave better than it came.
If you’ve ever wondered whether the job you took is the life you wanted, listen to this one.
Two key takeaways:
- Wildlife doesn’t wait for an invitation. Left alone for twenty years, still lagoons became a turtle sanctuary numbering in the thousands.
- Careers rarely move in straight lines. Joel’s advice after thirty-two years: don’t look for comfort … it’ll lead you into a rut.
