Picente Appoints New Water Quality & Pollution Control Commissioner

Oneida County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. announced today that he has appointed long-time area engineer Karl Schrantz as Commissioner of the Department of Water Quality Control and Water Pollution.

“Karl Schrantz is a highly-respected engineer who has worked in this community for a number of years and played a key role in several major municipal water and wastewater projects that have been executed throughout Oneida County,” Picente said. “His extensive expertise, impressive experience and unparalleled professionalism helped form a great working relationship with county government, and I know those things will serve him well as he now leads our Department of Water Quality Control and Water Pollution into a new era.”

Schrantz assumed the commissioner position on Jan. 25.

He spent the past eight years working for O’Brien & Gere Engineers/Ramboll as a Senior Project Manager, and led the efforts to establish the firm’s new engineering office in Utica. He was also responsible for developing new business opportunities, increasing staff, coordinating among governmental agencies and managing projects with a focus on municipal engineering services.

Prior to that, he was employed for a decade at Shumaker Consulting Engineering in Utica where he managed the firm’s water and wastewater engineering services; worked three years as a supervising civil engineer at Montgomery Watson Harza in Utica and served multiple engineering and project management roles over a 13 year-span at Harza Engineering Co. in Utica

Schrantz earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Clarkson University and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the State University of New York Fredonia. He holds professional engineering licenses in the states of New York and Pennsylvania.

“I truly appreciate the opportunity that County Executive Picente has given me,” Schrantz said. “Recently retired Commissioner Steve Devan has left a legacy that I will need to live up to, but I’m looking forward to the challenge of completing the New York State DEC consent order compliance construction program and all of the other duties and responsibilities this position will bring.”

Schrantz, a native of Dunkirk, NY, lives in Whitesboro with his wife Diane and their three children.

He replaces Devan who retired in January after serving as Commissioner of the Department of Water Quality Control and Water Pollution since 1996 and dedicated nearly 30 years in total to the county.