A chat with Tom McNabb

By DEVIN WEEKS

Staff Writer

If Tom McNabb doesn't know how to do something, he finds a way to figure it out.

The Coeur CEO actually has fun troubleshooting and finding new ways to do things. That's one of the reasons he got into helping people manage problems with invasive species and cleaning up waterways through his business, Clean Lakes, Inc.

"It’s a monster of a market," he said, relaxing on a couch in the Innovation Den in Coeur d'Alene last Thursday. “I just figured I’d roll with it. It’s fun."

Solving problems, thinking outside the box, innovating. Challenges are not as much challenges for the 62-year-old Coeur d'Alene resident as they are opportunities.

And a big opportunity ahead of him is the future of sustainability.

"Nobody really knows what 'sustainable' is. What is it?" he asked. "I guess it’s trying to look down the road and say, ‘What can we do to reduce our impact and environmental impact so we’re not wasting resources?'"

McNabb's work restoring and maintaining aquatic ecosystems with Clean Lakes has taken him all around the world. He has extensive experience with countries in the Pacific Rim and Africa, providing solutions for troubles brought on by pollution, manufacturing other causes.

He understands international business and trade tactics and he's fostered relationships with prominent people in the American government. He became close friends with the late Ron Brown, who served as the secretary of commerce under President Bill Clinton. McNabb even made an impression on the former president when they met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Indonesia in 1994. McNabb said Clinton encouraged him to open the conference with his speech.

“In the auditorium, we’ve got every president and their cabinet from Chile to New Zealand. I had the first 15 minutes talking about how these other countries have these environmental problems and the U.S. has solutions and it’s more of a technology exchange to start helping each other to improve our environments," he said. "That was kind of fun, actually. I was a little nervous."

McNabb, who studied fisheries and wildlife at Michigan State University and holds a business management degree from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., developed Coeur, a sustainable resource company, to prepare North Idaho for sustainability issues before they truly arise.

Coeur Greens, which grows fresh, local produce through vertical farming — growing in layers rather than spread out — is already marketing to local businesses. Coeur Solar, Coeur Power and Coeur Water are in the works and will be based at a solar-powered facility at Hayden Avenue and Huetter Road in Hayden, where McNabb and his colleagues plan to build sustainable houses and a water-bottling plant.

And McNabb will be visiting the Innovation Den, 418 E. Lakeside Ave., for a fireside chat at 6 p.m. Wednesday so the public can ask questions and find out a little more about his forward-thinking plans.

"My motive is more to create some opportunities here for not only my kids in the future, but other people," he said. “You have two options — retire and spend all your money, sit around and be unhappy and slow down, or take what you have and leverage it to the point where you create something else.

"And we don't know everything, but we can learn."