Jasper honors longtime safety committee member Mark Pierce

Mark Pierce’s decades of quiet safety work in Jasper’s wastewater department brought a public honor Friday, as the city presented him with the Charlie Schneider Safety First Award and pointed to the habits that help keep 16 departments and more than 300 employees moving safely.

Pierce has served the City of Jasper Wastewater Department for nearly 40 years and has sat on the safety committee since it was created in 1994. Charlie Schneider, Jasper’s first director of safety, personnel and loss control, presented the award and said Pierce’s integrity and steady commitment had made a difference over many years.

The recognition reached beyond one employee because Jasper’s Personnel/Safety/Loss Control department now oversees employment, safety and loss-control issues for the city as a whole. The department says its mission is to align city operations with Jasper’s strategic objectives, culture and citizens’ needs, which makes Pierce’s honor a reflection of citywide discipline rather than a single-department tribute.

That discipline has helped make Jasper a statewide outlier. Indiana Department of Labor materials say the city was the first Hoosier workplace to earn INSHARP certification, remains the longest-certified site in Indiana and is the only public-sector organization in the program. Jasper’s own materials note that of more than 150,000 eligible organizations in the state, only 40 have met INSHARP’s standards, and the city has now reached its 23rd consecutive year of recertification.

Schneider also placed the award in a longer historical frame, recalling a time before computers and the internet when safety staff relied on Indiana code books stored in large red binders. In that setting, Pierce’s role becomes easier to understand: he was part of the committee from its earliest years and helped keep the system working as Jasper moved from paper manuals to formal audits, training and recertification.

Pierce’s safety record already had a public footprint. In 2013, the wastewater department received the IWEA Award for the fourth year in a row, the Indiana Burke Award and the L.L. Larson Safety Award for Pierce after the plant scored 100% on a comprehensive safety inspection. For Jasper, the latest honor tied that history together, showing how careful procedures in the wastewater system help protect workers, maintain public service and preserve a safety standard few Indiana communities can match.