That's a funny thing, right? This question of how does the EOC and environmental concerns interrelate? Well, of course, we're an environmental consulting company, so you would think, oh, they they inter interrelate every day, and they do, but let me tell you the truth. A lot of environmental companies like ours, they look a lot like ours on the outside. You know, they wear their t-shirts, they're out in the field doing the work. The actual work details look a lot alike.
You probably look at both of those companies and say, "Well, I don't see any difference between that environmental company and this environmental company." However, here's where the paths diverge a little bit. Over the last decade, especially, we became kind of known for being concerned about how the environment impacts the community itself. you know, situations of environmental justice where the neighborhoods where uh poor uh or um urban communities are impacted by old industrial sites. Uh uh communities where um other towns where there are uh communities impacted by old industrial sites.
And of course, if you think about it, how how can Mandela Associates be paid for that kind of work? If if there's no one to pay the bill, we just can't go out and do free work for this. But we have taken on some of those projects with environmental justice that initially we thought we're just going to do this pro bono because we need to support that. And so there was one community in in southern Indiana that they came to us because they knew we had a reputation for being concerned about the community and they asked us to take take a look at this problem site and we did.
In fact, I found out that 40 years before it was one of the first contaminated sites I had looked at and I thought that at that time we had directed how cleanup was going to happen and they started it but the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency didn't follow through and so after 40 years the site was still contaminated. No one was looking at it. So to make a long story short, we went down, volunteered our time and uh took samples and did analysis and wrote a report for the community that says here's what needs to be done.
And that report went to the Environmental Protection Agency and it caused a massive change in addressing the town's concern. And so much so that a cleanup occurred finding the old owners of that problem and it um it reduced the risk to the community because uh the contamination had caused indoor air concerns for the residents and a lot of problems. And so the work we did in that respect became known as very well nationally. I mean, I was interviewed on CBS Good Morning and all kinds of publicity because of what we found in our our role in helping direct the EPA to do what was right.
So, that that's an example. Why did we do that? We did that because the EOC vision really has this concern not just for our clients who are bill payers, but also for the communities in which environmental impacts exist. And we've done that now on a number of of sites. In fact, we have gotten hired in the last several years just because we have this community concern. It's a new model that's starting to emerge that I think has been influenced by the EOC, which is maybe the com community should hire consultants to oversee what happens in their communities, make sure that the right thing is done. And so, so that's just one example.
