Lee Daigle started in the solid waste industry as an intern at a local landfill in upstate New York in 2002. His primary responsibility was the maintenance and operation of the landfill gas collection system. He has always said that once you are in this industry, you never seem to leave. That has certainly been true for Lee. Since graduating in 2006 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Environmental Engineering, he has traveled across the United States working on challenging landfill gas design, engineering, and construction projects – often being called into the project when others faced difficulties they could not overcome.

​

After moving to Wisconsin in 2016, Lee expanded his skillset from being a landfill gas expert into a broader range of topics, including municipal solid waste permitting, cell/closure design and construction, and operational aspects of waste placement.

​

Lee is now a client manager for Tetra Tech’s largest municipal solid waste client in their Central Region and has a select group of other clients who he manages from a technical and business direction. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Texas, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

​

Lee has been heavily involved in SWANA over the years, including presenting at numerous national and local conferences, serving as Chair of the Landfill Gas and Biogas Technical Division Extraction and Control Committee (since 2018), serving as a trainer for the SWANA Young Professional Leadership Academy, and as a trainer for the Landfill Gas O&M Training at SOAR 2022. Additionally, he is an instructor for the University of Wisconsin Solid Waste Design Short Course, focusing primarily on landfill liquid management and landfill gas.

​

Lee looks forward to lending his experience, expertise and involvement with SWANA National to the SWANA WI Badger Chapter Board of Directors.

Benjamin Hintz has 13 years of experience in the solid waste industry and is currently the Landfill Manager for the Brown County Port & Resource Recovery Department’s South Landfill. Mr. Hintz’s work history consists of three years as a landfill technician for Brown County, nine years as a project scientist with Cornerstone Environmental Group (now Tetra Tech), and an internship with Brown County. He received his bachelor’s degree for Environmental Policy and Planning from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay. His solid waste experience includes: landfill operation and management, environmental and regulatory compliance monitoring and reporting, landfill cell and gas system construction design and oversite, landfill gas sampling including Tier II sampling, landfill gas system operation and troubleshooting, landfill plan of operation development, landfill phase and fill planning, and landfill gas pipe purging under NFPA 56.

Abby Lichtscheidl has been an active member on the SWANA WI YP Committee since 2017 and the Safety Committee since 2019. She is looking to be even more involved with SWANA and this is the right opportunity. Abby currently works for Portage County Solid Waste as the Site Coordinator. Some of her job duties are taking in household hazardous waste, environmental monitoring at our closed landfill and working with our contractors to make sure daily operations run smoothly. Abby has 5 years of experience in the public sector. Previously, she worked as an operator at Marathon County’s Landfill. Abby being enthusiastic about garbage would be an understatement. She believes managing waste is one of the most important things in a society which makes this industry and organization that more important. She loves promoting waste reduction strategies and ways to make managing waste more efficient. With her love of the industry and having worked at a transfer facility, clean sweep location, an active and closed landfill makes her qualified and able to provide value to the board.

Mr. Torresani, PE is a Wisconsin based solid waste and remediation engineer with more than 33 years of experience including landfill design, permitting, construction, operations, landfill gas utilization and remediation projects. He is a University of Wisconsin Madison graduate with degrees in Civil Engineering and Geology and is a licensed professional engineer in WI.  He has worked with both private and municipal landfill owners and has worked closely with regulatory agencies throughout the United States and abroad.  Mr. Torresani has been a fixture in the solid waste industry in Wisconsin for the last 30 years; presenting at various Wisconsin Integrated Resource Management Conferences and Solid Waste Association of North America events. Mr. Torresani teaches annually in the UW-Madison continuing education short course on solid waste design operations and construction. Mr. Torresani has a long history in working with regulatory agencies to allow innovative technologies to be adapted at landfills. He often lobbies on behalf of his clients to enable new technology to be included in operating or construction plans.

John Welch is the Director of the Dane County Department of Waste & Renewables. He has a BS from UW Madison in Civil & Environmental Engineering and is a registered PE in Wisconsin. John oversees operations of: one active and two closed landfills; a C&D MRF; a year-round HHW facility; and landfill gas-to-energy and RNG facilities. John has served on the SWANA Badger Chapter Board since 2010 and he has been our Chapter’s representative on the SWANA International Board/Advisory Board since 2011. He has been involved in numerous chapter-level and national SWANA committees and efforts to advance SWANA’s mission and our industry. John served on the International YP Steering Team for 8 years, and he is the current Badger Chapter President.

If re-elected to serve on the Chapter Board, John writes, “I hope to help implement the new strategic plan and assist with development of new leaders in our Chapter.”