Graham Simmerman is Regional Waste Compliance and Permitting Manager for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Valley Regional Office in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He has been with the Virginia DEQ since 2003. He leads a team in a diverse program that includes the permitting of solid waste facilities and inspection of solid and hazardous waste facilities. He has twenty years of experience in engineering geology, civil engineering, hydrogeology, and environmental science. Graham was in environmental consulting practice for fifteen years and has worked in diverse projects on more than eighty landfill, hazardous waste, and superfund sites in ten eastern states. His career has moved progressively from the siting, monitoring, and remediating waste facilities toward the design and installation of complex landfill systems including liners, closure covers, and environmental controls, and into daily landfill operations. He has been involved in the design and permitting of several leachate recirculation and landfill gas extraction. Graham formerly served as a board member and established the technical committee in SWANA's North Carolina Chapter and served on SWANA's Landfill Division Steering Committee where he was involved in early efforts to bring bioreactor landfills to the forefront of solid waste management technology. Since 2004, Graham has been an active member of the ITRC Alternative Landfill Technologies team. He earned a bachelor's degree in geology from Radford University in Radford, Virginia in 1983 and earned a master's degree in geology from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1986. He is a licensed professional geologist in Virginia and North Carolina.