Civil Engineers rack up awards

  • Published
  • By Jake Shaw
  • 482nd Fighter Wing Public Affairs
HOMESTEAD ARB, Fla. --  Civil Engineers from Homestead Air Reserve Base recently received several prestigious Air Force Reserve Command awards.

The awards honor outstanding performance in several unit categories. Among the flights that received unit awards: the base fire department and environmental flight.

The base fire department won the highest honor for an Air Force Reserve Command fire unit; the Ralph E. Sanborn Award. This annual award honors Chief Sanborn, who dedicated his 44-year career from 1943 to 1987 to improving Air Force fire-protection capabilities.

Homestead's fire department received the award for achieving the highest degree of excellence in base mission support and fire protection management, superior customer service and outreach efforts, innovativeness, quality management and quality of life initiatives.

The fire department will compete at higher levels of competition in the near future, with the chance to represent the Air Force and the Department of Defense as the best fire department of the year.

The Civil Engineering Squadron Environmental Flight was also recognized with two awards; the General Thomas D. White Restoration Award and the General Thomas D. White Pollution Prevention Award for Team Excellence. Both awards are heavily focused on cleaning up or preventing pollution of Air Force property and surrounding communities.

Specifically, the Restoration Award recognizes the installation conducting the best or most improved environmental restoration program during the previous and current fiscal year. Part of the restoration award reads, "Superior negotiation with regulatory agencies developed cost-effective land use controls and saved an estimated $1.7 million."

The Pollution Prevention Award recognizes the team who contributed the most to the Air Force's pollution prevention effort during the previous and current fiscal year. Key factors in the unit winning this award were its' innovative use of storm water filtration devices which protect Biscayne National Park, material reuse and hazardous waste reduction, aggressive recycling and an excellent training program.

These awards are only the most recent received by the members of the environmental flight and fire department. Both units have been recognized at the command level and national levels in the past.