Chris Lee

Chris Lee

After a long search, ITEP recently hired Chris Lee to serve as Manager of the TAMS Center in Las Vegas alongside EPA-TAMS Co-Director, Farshid Farsi. Chris, a member of the Dine Nation, comes to us from Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, South Dakota, where he served as an instructor and Site Director for NASA's Science, Engineering, Math, and Aerospace Academy.

Chris graduated from Northern Arizona University in 1999 in Environmental Science with an emphasis in Applied Geology. During his time at NAU he first experienced tribal environmental program work as an ITEP intern. During his internship, he was placed with the Pueblo of San Juan to assist them in their 103 air-program development; he also performed monitoring work with the All-Indian Pueblo Council. Over the years in his work with both the Navajo Nation and the Southern Ute tribe, Chris has been involved in PM and gaseous monitoring, Title V work, air-code development, grant-funding activities, and a host of other air-program efforts.

Chris says of his new role at TAMS, "I have the unique experience of having worked at the tribal program level, and now I'll be providing assistance to tribes, often on projects involving limited funding and limited technical knowledge. I think I'll be able to use my experience to assist tribes in these kinds of projects, and if it's not possible to take projects on in conventional ways then to look at alternative routes. That's been my experience; for example, the process of obtaining Title V delegation authority was a black and white, straightforward process, but the route to get there wasn't black and white at all. I believe with my experience, I'll be able to help tribes to get things done."

Chris can be reached by e-mail at Christopher.Lee@nau.edu.