March 24th-March 28th

     This week wasn't too busy or exciting but I did learn a lot of useful info. Capt B. had told me the previous week that he was going to make me the Environmental Compliance Officer for the Rear D, and presumably the detachment when they got back from Egypt. The training was a week long 0900-1600. I still did PT with the Rear D, but after that I went to the training on the other side of base in a tiny little shed.
    I waited to long to post this to remember everything that happened each day so this will be a brief summary of the entire week of class. What the Environmental Compliance Officer (ECO) is basically responsible for is enforcing federal, state, and Fort Hood environmental regulations in the unit to keep them from getting thousands of dollars in fines levied against them. These fines are mainly levied against units that have dirty or unorganized motor pools and units that trash the training areas on base. Besides the usual things like trash problems, recycling issues and spills of oil etc., the ECO also has to make sure there unit does not destroy significant cultural and environmental landmarks through out the training area.
     I thought the training would be the typical Army training. Death by Power Point for hours on end with a 10 min break every hour. While this was true for part of the training the rest was actually pretty interesting. The instructor Mrs. H was a retired MSG so she knew she had to keep us all engaged or we'd just zone out and wouldn't learn a thing. She made sure to bring in plenty of other people to instruct us on the different aspects of the things we were responsible for. One of the most interesting to me was an instructor who came to talk to us about protecting cultural artifacts on base. He brought in some examples of the random stuff they'd found all over the training area of base, including arrowheads, musket balls and weapons. I even got to hold an 1862 Colt revolver from the Civil War that had been dug up on one of the ranges. That definitely was a highlight of my time here so far. I'm going to try and look into going to the center on base that does all the archeology sites on base and see if I can learn more.
     Besides that we went to a few different locations on base that are designed to keep Ft Hood from being fined. The recycling center here employs about 80 people and will recycle basically anything. They sell all of the products to different vendors, using the money to pay all the employees and then they use the rest of the money to provide soldiers with entertainment. They pay for NFL league pass and the UFC fights/boxing matches at the NCO club. Also during the budget crises last summer, Ft hood was the only base in the U.S. to have a fireworks show, at the cost of 49,000 dollars, all paid for by profits of the recycling center. This definitely made me reevaluate my thoughts towards recycling.
     Overall, the training was very useful, and it gave me plenty of things to look for to help improve my units motor pool and compliance with all the different regulations. It was also a nice way to get away from the unit for a week and experience something new.