ENID – After growing up in Moultrie in southern Georgia, Robert L. Stallings crossed the state line into Alabama to attend Auburn University.
Stallings was in college during the Vietnam War when the U.S. Selective Service System conducted lotteries to determine by birth date the order of call to military service in the draft. Potential draftees with low numbers were drafted for military service sooner than people with high numbers.
“I had a low number so I went into ROTC (Reserved Officers’ Training Corps),” he said.
His ROTC commitment included service in the military.
So after graduating from Auburn with a degree in aerospace engineering, Stallings served with the U.S. Air Force as a T-37 aircraft instructor pilot, an assignment that brought him to Oklahoma. He was assigned halfway across the country from Auburn and his native Georgia at Vance Air Force Base in Enid.
“I spent all six years of my time in the Air Force at Vance except for temporary assignments,” he said.
When he completed his military service in 1980, he stayed in Enid and started Dublin Petroleum, an energy company.
“We did OK but it was a hard time for the oil and gas industry,” Stallings said of the 1980s.
During the early 1990s environmental concerns increased for the oil and gas business, he said. So Stallings and a partner started a new business.
“I got a partner who was knowledgeable in civil and environmental engineering,” he said.
They started Envirotech Engineering & Consulting Inc. in Enid in 1992 primarily providing services for energy companies in northwest Oklahoma, but quickly expanded into other business areas.
“We started out doing environmental work for oil and gas companies then we started doing civil engineering,” he said. “As we went through the 1990s we continued to add side businesses.”
Envirotech started providing environmental services for confined animal feeding areas and engineering work for the city of Enid and other smaller communities in the area.
“We got involved with landfill building at Lone Mountain and started doing work in that industry,” he said. “That led into the nuclear industry and work in hazardous waste.”
Lone Mountain is a hazardous waste landfill in Major County.
When construction of golf courses was strong, Envirotech expanded into that area.
“We did quite a bit of environmental work for golf courses,” Stallings said. “They had to face a lot of issues with pesticides and contaminates.”
Clients include Augusta National Golf Club – site of the Masters golf tournament.
“We started working in Augusta in 1994,” he said.
Working with the well-known golf course has some fringe benefits for Stallings, who is CEO of Envirotech, and his son, Jimmy Stallings, vice president and project manager.
“Jimmy and I are allowed to come to the golf tournaments,” he said. “We spend the entire week there working in the environmental arena during the tournament.”