Hector Ortiz Sanchez grew up in Puerto Rico. He got pulled into the world of water treatment as a young adult, and hasn’t looked back. He spent years running plants in Puerto Rico. But a few years ago, he decided he couldn’t realize his ambitions on the island. He moved to Bloomington. Now he runs the water treatment plants for the City of Bloomington Utilities, and he’d like to make them among the best in the country. He’s inspiring the people he works with too.
We talk about a number of pretty serious things on this show – legacies of lynchings, the atomic bomb, family policing. I decided it’s time to have some more fun, too. So I started a new segment: Guilty Pleasures. I started with the person who got me thinking about my own relationship to guilty pleasures. Janna Ahrndt is a new media artist, and a connoisseur of guilty pleasures, including the early work of Jean Claude Van Damme.
Inner States is produced and edited by me, Alex Chambers, with support from Violet Baron, Eoban Binder, Jillian Blackburn, Mark Chilla, Avi Forrest, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Jay Upshaw, Payton Whaley, and Kayte Young. Our Executive Producer is Eric Bolstridge.
Our theme song is by Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar. We have additional music from the artists at Universal Production Music.
Special thanks this week to Vic Kelson for connecting me with Hector Ortiz Sanchez, to Hector himself and all the folks at the Dillman Wastewater Treatment, and to Janna Ahrndt.
