In Memoriam: William Hinkley

William Hinkley

William “Bill” Hinkley, chief of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), passed away Sept. 12 in Tallahassee, Fla. He was 60.

Hinkley worked nearly 30 years at the Florida DEP. He was passionate about his work and dedicated to the belief that reason and good science can solve most environmental problems. Bill was well known as a champion of environmental protection. He was the architect of Florida’s Recycling and Solid Waste Management Plan, the special projects manager for the acid rain initiative, and the research team leader of the initiative to eliminate the use of arsenic in pressure-treated wood. He drafted the legislation to create the Florida Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste Management.

“Bill was a very good friend for many years,” says Tom Roberts, a Florida C&D recycler who is immediate past president of the Construction Materials Recycling Association (CMRA) and the Florida Recyclers Coalition. “He will be greatly missed by his family, friends and colleagues. Bill was a tremendous supporter of the recycling industry and paved the way for many advances in all types of recycling, especially C&D.”

“Bill was everything you could want in a regulator,” says William Turley, executive director, CMRA. “He was intelligent, fair, and always wanted to do the right thing for the environment. Indeed, after he spoke at our 2003 Annual Meeting in Fort Lauderdale and described his philosophies, several of the CMRA members there wanted to know if they could clone him and put him in charge of their state’s environmental agency.”