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1997 DJC environmental industry survey
Laura T. Coffey
Was 1996 really the worst year ever for the U.S. environmental industry?
The year is described as "grim" and "the worst year on record" by Environmental Business International, a San Diego-based research, consulting and publishing company that tracks the health of the environmental industry and reports its findings each month in Environmental Business Journal (EBJ).
EBJ based its industry overview for 1996 on revenue surveys of more than 1,300 environmental firms across the country. EBJ's research revealed that the industry experienced revenue growth of only 1.2 percent in 1996, as opposed to 4.2 percent in 1995 and 4.9 percent in 1994.
The low growth rate can be attributed to declines in five major industry segments: resource recovery (down 15 percent); hazardous-waste management (down 3.5 percent); analytical services (down 2.5 percent); consulting and engineering (down 1.9 percent); and remediation and industrial services (down 0.3 percent).
EBJ says two fundamental changes are needed in order for the environmental industry to recover:
Some things did not change substantially in 1996. The wastewater treatment segment and solid-waste management segment continued to experience modest gains, an indication that firms specializing in infrastructure-related work are still poised for growth.
The equipment segments of the industry also did well this year, thanks mostly to exports, EBJ says. In fact, 60 percent of the industry's overall $2.1 billion revenue gain resulted in exports in 1996 -- a sign that it's a good idea for U.S. companies to look to international markets for work opportunities.
The industry overview also reported that environmental firms in Washington state earned $4 billion of the overall U.S. environmental industry's $181.1 billion in revenues last year. Of that $4 billion, $232.4 million came from exports of products and services.
Washington's environmental industry employs 29,644 people, who work for 2,268 companies across the state, EBJ says.
How are local environmental firms coping with changes in the industry? What projects are they working on, and what trends are they observing in the Pacific Northwest?
To help answer these questions on a local level, the staff of the Daily Journal of Commerce has profiled 18 environmental firms in Washington. We hope the profiles and accompanying charts are useful to those of you who work in the environmental industry.
Randy Sweet and John Edwards of the former Kelso-based geological firm Sweet, Edwards and Associates helped maintain drinking water and groundwater deposits throughout Washington for 20 years before their small business was purchased by the burgeoning environmental conglomerate known as Emcon.
The year was 1986. Sweet and Edwards, satisfied with the deal Emcon offered, enthusiastically jumped aboard, hoping the national environmental firm would take their small company to levels virtually impossible prior to the merger.
Now, more than a decade later, the two Washington geologists control one of Emcon's four powerful arms as the company continues to acquire environmental, analytical and construction firms across the country.
With 40 offices and about 950 employees nationwide, Emcon is a major facilitator of environmental management in both the private and public sectors.
Emcon was founded in 1971 as a solid waste management firm, specializing in the design of solid waste facilities. Since then, the company has progressed from remedial investigation and design, especially in the defense and petroleum industries, to its current diversification program, which includes full-service environmental capabilities and strategic geographical expansion.
Soon after purchasing Sweet and Edwards' company in 1986, Emcon acquired Columbia Analytical Services Inc. so it could manage its own laboratory analysis projects. In that same year, the company became publicly held and soon swallowed up firms in Alaska, Texas, Georgia and Florida, ultimately forming a link from the West to the Southeast.
In 1994, the company entered into a joint venture with Turner Construction. The arrangement provided Turner with ongoing consultancy for design and construction services, while complementing Emcon's environmental-engineering arsenal.
According to marketing manager Jennifer Burnett, Emcon's services are divided into three categories. First, the solid-waste division focuses on landfill design, closure and post-closure services, as well as household hazardous waste management. Its site restoration services division includes cleanup, remediation and air-quality services. And its facility services division offers spill prevention plans, pollution prevention services, environmental auditing and regulatory compliance consulting.
Dan Balbiani, Emcon's Washington-area operations manager, said his region is using innovative techniques to recondition previously contracted remediation systems. By reworking and modifying existing cleanup systems, Emcon has saved companies and government agencies thousands of dollars in remediation costs.
"At the Tacoma D Street site, for instance, we reduced operation and maintenance costs and increased the amount of oil out of the subsurface," Balbiani said.
A total of 175 employees are staffed in the company's six Northwest offices in Bothell, Spokane, Anchorage, Portland, Eugene and Medford, Ore. Now led by John Edwards, the Northwest offices are heavily involved in the pulp, paper and forest-products industry. Emcon also does a great deal of work for the petroleum industry, manufacturing plants, agricultural operations and the electronics industry, including semiconductor manufacturers.
While the Northwest offices work mainly with private and publicly-held companies, they also have several ongoing contracts with public agencies, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Navy.
In 1996 the company's net revenues reached $117.7 million, up from the previous year's $104.3 million. The company attributes the increase to its 1996 acquisition of Organic Waste Technologies, a solid-waste construction, operations and maintenance company. Without that acquisition, the company would have seen a drop in revenues to $97.1 million, a 6.9 percent reduction. Emcon attributes the reduction to weakening markets in Alaska, Washington and the Southeast.
But according to Balbiani, Emcon's Washington-area region is rebounding and experiencing substantial growth this year, hiring four new employees. He said he expects that growth to continue in the coming year with the likely addition of at least two more employees.
Shapiro and Associates Inc. of Seattle is involved with many of the region's biggest development projects.
Maintaining a high profile on big-budget, controversial projects has been a key to the company's success, says Shapiro President Sue Sander. The company's roster of projects includes both the Seahawks' and Mariners' stadiums, the Emerald Downs Racetrack and Sea-Tac International Airport's third runway.
Sander and her partner Vice President Marc Boule purchased Shapiro and Associates from its original owners in 1984, 10 years after the company was founded. Having worked for the company since its second year in operation, Sander had an understanding of the needs and constraints of profitable business management.
With seven employees and one office at the time she purchased the company, Sander quickly focused her efforts on growth. Today the company employs more 60 people with headquarters in Seattle and offices in Portland and Boise, Idaho. While growth is still an important ingredient in Sander's business recipe, she said at this point she has no immediate plans to expand out of the Northwest.
"We have been in business in the Northwest for 24 years and that in itself says we're committed to this area," she said. "Our experience here allows us to create solutions that are specific to this area. I don't think our competition can say that."
The bulk of Shapiro's contracts are for environmental impact statements. While the company's services have been put to work for some of the area's biggest companies, including Boeing and Hyundai, Shapiro's biggest client group remains government agencies, such as the Port of Seattle and the Washington State Department of Transportation.
Recently the company completed an EIS for the State Route 16/Tacoma Narrows Bridge project. Sander said her company is especially proud of that project because it incorporates the state's first-ever public/private transportation initiative.
The company's work on the EIS for the Emerald Downs Racetrack was another tough job because of the strict permitting requirements, but Shapiro managed to present an EIS that ushered the project from early stages of development to its ultimate completion.
In addition to EIS work, Shapiro also specializes in regulatory compliance and permitting, environmental assessments and feasibility studies, water resource studies, ecological-science studies and habitat mitigation.
"We offer a much broader base of services to more clients than the original (Shapiro and Associates) did," Sander said. "There are very few major projects this company hasn't touched."
Roy F. Weston Inc. is a national environmental consulting firm that aims to provide one-stop shopping for clients in private industry and local and federal governments.
Frank Monahan, Weston vice president for the West Coast, said the firm was launched in 1957 but now has 50 offices in the United States and about 2,000 employees.
Three of those offices are in the Northwest -- in Seattle, Richland and Portland -- with the Seattle office being the largest. Two more offices are located in California. The West Coast offices employ about 85 people.
"We are a full-service environmental consulting firm," Monahan said. "We cover the whole range of activities as long as they are environmental."
The company also does strong business in information management, in which it sets up computer systems for database management or other purposes. That component, however, still falls under the banner of environmental consulting.
"We do a lot of information-management services for state and local government," Monahan said. "We did some work for the Seattle Water Department -- put them on a GIS system -- and the state Department of Transportation.
"We help you design your information-management system. But we're not Microsoft."
Weston did about $11 million in business last year in the Pacific Northwest. The company plans to hire about six new people soon, reflecting its healthy growth. But Monahan said the industry overall is "going through an adjustment."
In other words, it's shrinking a bit. Monahan said the big growth spurt in the industry came between 1984 and 1994, after Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and CERCLA, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act -- otherwise known as Superfund.
But now, even though Congress is proposing several billion dollars for Superfund next year, it is a smaller amount than in previous years. And at the same time, a lot of contaminated sites by now have gone through the investigation stage.
"That's why Weston has focused on remediation," Monahan said.
In the Northwest, Weston has done work on contaminated marine sediments, hazardous-waste cleanups and industrial waste. Clients include Boeing, Pacific Power & Light and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Monahan said the firm just finished a two-year contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for work done at the Army's Yakima Training Center, and Weston's Richland office is just starting a $3.2 million contract with Bechtel Hanford for radioactive-waste cleanup.
Weston has also picked up some national contracts that will be handled by the firm's home office in Omaha, but which will have some spillover here. They include the rapid-response contract for the Corps of Engineers, and the NEPA support contract for the Department of Energy.
For the Edmonds environmental consulting firm Landau Associates Inc., the recent series of lean years in the industry has created opportunities.
Principal Dan Ballbach said the 65-person firm, which has branch offices in Tacoma and Spokane, has benefited from conservative and cautious management, leaving it in a good position to grow into new markets or add expertise through acquisitions.
At the same time, the market for consulting services is stronger than it has been in several years. John Baker, Landau's director of client services, explained that regulatory agencies used to be the primary engines of the industry, but budget cuts reduced their impact and hence the amount of work available for consultants. But now the economy has become strong enough for private industry to seek out consultants on their own.
"Clients used to be calling us in a defensive position," Baker said. "Now, it's more like they are optimistic, or (pursuing projects that) allow them to make more money."
Baker and Ballbach see that as a long-term change, with promising prospects for the future. It is sufficiently confidence-inspiring to justify investments.
Accordingly, Landau plans to add staff and is open to opportunities to acquire other firms. And it is looking at a consulting project for a manufacturing plant in Asia -- which would be the first international venture for the firm.
"So far it has passed every question we have asked," Ballbach said. "If it develops, it would be a real interesting venture for us and a real education. But a company our size has to be pretty careful on how it is spending money."
Landau's involvement in the project would consist of technical consulting for wastewater-treatment facilities. It's the type of thing Landau does routinely, along with geotechnical engineering, remediation and cleanup of hazardous-waste sites, litigation support, permitting for environmental projects, design engineering, sediment studies and cleanup, and creating environmental management systems.
Ballbach said the firm also advises companies who are buying or selling other ones, and he himself mediates disputes over environmental issues.
"It's a mixed bag that was spawned out of a hazardous-substances type of practice," he said.
Some typical projects include soil-stability studies in slide-prone areas, brownfields redevelopments -- (the firm is just finishing a project at the old Union Station site in Seattle) -- and ongoing work at the Western Processing Superfund site in Kent. Other work is in progress with Boeing and the ports of Olympia and Bellingham.
"We are well positioned to be in a growth mode," Ballbach said. "We will add people and services in the water resources area, and add a senior-level person in the Spokane office. We'll also expand design-build. We're in a growth frame of mind; it looks like the market has improved rather significantly."
But Landau isn't always going to go it alone. Ballbach said the firm has entered into strategic alliances with four other environmental consulting firms, for the purpose of sharing marketing, client information and expertise.
"By working together, we hope to improve efficiencies," he said. That could affect purchases of equipment, handling charges or even sharing employees.
The alliances are based on written agreements, which Ballbach stressed are not mergers and are not exclusive. They only mean that parties to the alliance are the first choice for sharing the work.
"If we were to decide to go with somebody else, I would have to call up (the others) and say why," Ballbach said.
Uncertainty over changing government regulations is causing clients to postpone environmental work, says Harlan Borow, manager of environmental management and remediation for the Seattle office of Clayton Environmental Consultants.
As an example, Borow pointed to the state's changing TPH (total petroleum hydrocarbons) policy, which affects cleanup of gas station sites and other petroleum-contaminated land.
In fact, all the revisions being made to the state's Model Toxics Control Act are prompting a wait-and-see attitude on the part of clients, Borow says.
Borow says there will be minimal growth this year for Clayton Environmental, which specializes in environmental assessment and remediation as well as industrial hygiene, health and safety. But there will be some new hires at the local office at 4636 East Marginal Way S.
Clayton Environmental Consultants was founded more than 40 years ago and entered the Seattle-area market two years ago. Headquartered in Novi, Mich., the nationwide company reported $40 million in sales last year. Locally, the company reported $600,000 in sales. About 70 percent of the company's business is in the private sector.
Some of the firm's local projects include industrial-hygiene services for The Boeing Co., compliance auditing for a metal-finishing firm, soil and groundwater remediation of chlorinated solvents for a local land developer, and asbestos and lead paint assessment, removal and oversight for the Seattle School District.
Columbia Analytical Services Inc. (CAS) recently gained its independence with a newly-instituted employee stock ownership plan. A former Emcon subsidiary, Columbia was purchased by its employees last April.
"We wanted to have direct control over what we do in the future," said Anne O'Connor, corporate business development director for Columbia. "We knew we could do a good job on our own, and we wanted to be able to work with our former parent company's competitors."
O'Connor added that the employees wanted to feel more involved in decision-making "so the future depends on them and they aren't just tagging along the parent company."
"Now we feel like we're captains of our own ship," said marketing coordinator Dee O'Neill.
Despite the buyout, the firm will continue to provide analytical services to its former parent company. According to O'Connor, the split was friendly: "Emcon blessed the whole thing."
Founded in Longview in 1986 by Columbia Analytical President Steve Vincent and fellow ex-Weyerhaeuser employee Mike Shelton, the company hit a wall in its infancy. "We ran out of money before we ran out of vision," Vincent said. "We merged with Emcon in 1988. They allowed us to operate the company independently."
Steady growth in both number of employees and annual revenues has helped make Columbia one of the largest laboratories in the Northwest. With 250 employees and 10 locations nationwide, the company's annual revenues are at $22 million.
Vincent said he expects 3 to 5 percent growth over the next five years, "not counting mergers and acquisitions."
CAS' areas of specialization include environmental and chemical testing, non-environmental analytical measurements, process testing, and trace and low-level analyses of organic and inorganic compounds. The company has worked with the aerospace and pulp and paper industries, city and county governments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Ecology.
"We take pride in producing quality data in a timely fashion so our clients can rely on us to help them make important decisions," O'Neill said. "We help to identify problems and find ways to control pollution."
CAS owns exclusive rights to a unique test of dioxins and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Called the P450 Reporter Gene System (RGS), the test looks at the way human cancer cells react to pollutants.
"The cells have been bioengineered with firefly enzymes, so when the cells are in the presence of contaminants, luminescence is given off," O'Neill said. "That's how we can tell if the contaminants are present."
Screening tests using the P450 RGS cost about $150, as opposed to $600 to $700 for typical dioxin tests alone, O'Neill said.
CAS was voted the number two analytical laboratory in the country in the Reader's Choice Awards, which were published in the May/June 1996 edition of the magazine Environmental Technology.
Kennedy/Jenks Consultants began nearly 80 years ago as a small, family-owned environmental engineering firm. Founded in 1919, Kennedy/Jenks was the brainchild of sanitary-engineering expert Clyde C. Kennedy.
Clyde Kennedy implemented many of the West Coast's first wastewater cleanup programs. His grandson, David Kennedy, continues to lead the company today in solid and hazardous waste management consulting and engineering.
Kennedy/Jenks does work for both private companies and government agencies. As a full-service, multi-disciplinary environmental consulting firm, the company specializes in water and wastewater engineering, stormwater-management design, industrial-wastewater treatment, spill prevention and control, analytical-laboratory testing and industrial-facility design.
"We're a longtime presence here in the Northwest, so we know about local conditions and regulations," said Ed Kistner, vice president and manager of the Pacific Northwest region.
With clients such as Boeing, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and the Port of Seattle, Kennedy/Jenks is working with some of the Northwest's largest companies and agencies.
An employee-owned firm headquartered in San Francisco, Kennedy/Jenks employs a total 300 people in its 15 West Coast offices. Its Northwest headquarters are located in Federal Way, with additional Northwest offices in Portland and Great Falls, Mont.
The company's Northwest region earns 75 percent of its revenues from the private sector, while the company as a whole garners 60 percent of its revenues from private industry. Some of the company's regional projects include industrial-wastewater engineering at Sea-Tac Airport and the design of fueling facilities for Burlington Northern.
Boeing recently decided to reduce the number of environmental firms it contracted with in order to develop stronger partnerships, Kistner said. The aviation giant whittled a list of 400 firms down to just eight. Kennedy/Jenks remained on that short list and was finally selected as special consultant for industrial-wastewater treatment and process engineering.
In 1996 the company earned $32 million in revenues, and its Northwest region brought in about $10 million of that total amount. The company's growth has been slow and steady, Kistner said, which reflects its operating style of long-term vision and stability.
"We're continuing to grow at about a 15-percent-a-year clip," he said. "We have a number of projects keeping us busy. We've been trying to manage a slow and steady type of growth."
Chemical analysis can be a tedious process, but that doesn't stop the three partners who own Sound Analytical Services from getting their hands dirty.
Thomas Boyden, Brent Hepner and Stan Palmquist were the entire staff of their newborn environmental-testing outfit back in 1985. Today, the trio works with a staff of 38 employees on just about every level of the analytical process.
"We try to make a point of being on hand at the job site or in the lab as much as possible," Boyden said. "When we first started, we were doing all the lab work ourselves. That's what our background is. Having the owners working alongside the employees is a morale booster, and with this kind of analysis every detail is important, so we have to be there."
From its office in Tacoma, Sound Analytical provides environmental-testing services to government, industry, environmental contractors and environmental consultants. The laboratory tests volatiles, semivolatiles, metals, PCBs, total petroleum hydrocarbons and drinking water. The company also deals with water, air, oil and sludge, and it performs both chemical and microbiological analyses.
"We do just about every kind of analysis in the book," Boyden said. "We have the instrumentation to provide the most reliable data available."
The company often works with the U.S. Department of Defense during cleanups of military bases. After completing work for a three-year cleanup effort at the Fort Lewis Army Base, the company now provides on-call environmental laboratory services for the base. Samples stem from activities such as groundwater monitoring, drinking-water analysis and hazardous-waste characterization.
While the majority of Sound Analytical's individual contracts come from private companies, public sector projects such as a long-term contract with the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii account for most of the company's revenues. The bulk of the analysis performed to date at Pearl Harbor has been related to waste characterization, often for unknown contaminants found on Navy ships.
With 38 employees and revenues between $3 million and $4 million expected for this year, the company recently reduced its operations. Last year it employed 50 people and brought in some $5 million. Boyden said the downsizing was a result of increased competition within the market.
"The work that is available is down," he said, "and the price of the individual jobs has reduced 30 to 40 percent from what we used to get. All of a sudden there's less work to go around and more companies to do it."
Despite the difficult market conditions, Boyden said he is optimistic that his company will do well at its current size. After making necessary adjustments, Sound Analytical continues to turn a profit, he said. Now the company is focused on continuing that productivity without making any more reductions.
Parametrix Inc. expanded its operations this year, opening an office in Sydney, Australia. Its work in that country, and in Hong Kong, focuses on risk assessments for water-quality projects.
The Sydney office is being run by Ramon A. Beluche, one of the company's principals. "We primarily moved there because one of our scientists was picking up a lot of work in the area," said Ann Costanza, marketing manager for the company.
At home, Parametrix is expanding into providing landscape architecture services related to its transportation and environmental projects. To achieve this, the company hired two local landscape-designers: Tom Atkins, a former principal of Jones and Jones Inc., who is now heading up the landscape architecture group for Parametrix; and Curt Warber, a former employee of Jones & Jones, who is doing landscape design and planning work.
Costanza sees the company continuing to be heavily involved in the remediation field. "Our forte is in the aquatic area, and there is a lot of work at the ports," she said.
She also expects to see continued consolidation in the environmental industry, as large corporate clients hire environmental consultants rather than keep in-house staff. "They would rather go to one firm to have all the work done," she said.
Parametrix should continue with annual revenues in the $25 million to $30 million range, unless the company obtains a large contract, perhaps connected with the Regional Transportation Authority project, Costanza said.
Agra works in three principal areas: industrial materials testing, geotechnical engineering and environmental. The environmental side constitutes about 40 percent of the company's work.
Agra recently updated a wastewater discharge permit and wrote a pollution prevention plan for Overlake Hospital in Bellevue. The plan covers the dangerous wastes generated by the hospital, principally solvents from tissue preservation and waste fluid from X-ray machines, according to Alan Jones, marketing manager for the company. The plan includes a commitment by the hospital to look for ways to reduce waste by using new technologies which require fewer dangerous substances.
Agra also recently completed remediation work at Lynnwood Dodge, a site that was plagued with solvent, TCE and petroleum contamination. Another project was installation of a vapor-extraction system to eliminate gasoline contamination in Wenatchee. The site was cleaned in one season, due to both the system design and favorable geology.
The company may soon look for other areas of concentration, as the number of sites needing remediation continues to drop. "Companies will have to refocus efforts away from remediation if they are to survive," Jones said.
For 1998, however, the company expects to obtain a number of projects dealing with underground storage tank replacement as new regulations go into effect. Recent legislation that limits liability for brownfield contamination will also have a major impact over the next few years, he said.
HDR Engineering Inc. has 42 offices across the country. The environmental efforts of the company's Bellevue office focus on the "paper end of the industry," according to Mike Stimac, manager of licenses and environmental services.
The majority of HDR's work is public, such as a current project to study the effects of building Pipeline No. 5 for the city of Tacoma Public Utilities Department. Stimac also predicts HDR will be teamed with other consultants to work on the Tolt pipeline project.
"It is a pretty benign project since it will be built in an existing right-of-way," Stimac said. "We will be primarily concerned with the immediate effects of construction such as traffic mitigation where the pipeline crosses roadways."
A stickier project is under way at the Port of Kennewick, which plans to place fill in the Columbia River to make improvements to Clover Island.
HDR moved away from site remediation projects in the late 1980s when it was purchased by a French company. Now it is employee-owned, but it will not move back into remediation work heavily, Stimac said.
Stimac expects to see a lot of work in infrastructure improvement over the next few years. Locally, work on the Regional Transportation Authority and water-supply projects are expected to be plentiful, he said.
Dirty dirt and water are Remedco's specialties.
The 5-year-old Seattle firm is located on East Marginal Way near the Hat & Boots site. Remedco is outfitted with two treatment systems: a thermal desorption soil-treatment plant that cleans petroleum-contaminated soils; and an "Oil Trap" water-treatment system that cleans oily water so its petroleum content drops to 5 parts per million.
Once they're treated, both the soil and the water can be reused.
"We recycle and reuse everything here," said Darren Pickering, president of Remedco Inc. "People can take their dirt back for free and use it again as fill. ... We give you a certificate of remediation for treating that soil so it doesn't become a liability issue down the road."
To eliminate dust, Pickering uses the treated water to rehydrate the clean soil after it's been heated to 650 degrees.
"So we've eliminated the need to buy potable water from the city," Pickering said. "We're not discharging any of the water we treat. We have no waste streams leaving this site."
Manufactured by Astec Inc. in Chattanooga, Tenn., the soil-treatment plant can treat 50 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil an hour. (Remedco does not handle dangerous or hazardous wastes.) The water-treatment system can treat 5,000 to 10,000 gallons of oily water and bilge water a day.
He says treating petroleum-contaminated soil costs the same as landfilling it -- about $30 to $40 a ton. That price goes down for clients who need to treat higher volumes of dirt, Pickering said.
Pickering gets visibly frustrated at the thought of contaminated soil being landfilled rather than treated -- especially for public projects. He says the landfilled soil could come back to haunt public agencies with liability nightmares years down the road.
"Then who will pay for that? Taxpayers," he said. "Public projects landfill dirt 90 percent of the time. ... I'm trying to make a difference."
Remedco recently treated 5,000 tons of contaminated soil for the Port of Seattle during the cleanup of the Lockheed Shipyard site at Terminal 5. Another project was on-site treatment of soils for Kenworth Northwest Inc. in SeaTac.
Remedco has won contracts with the city of Seattle, King County and the U.S. Navy. Remedco is treating contaminated soil shipped over from the Whidbey Island Naval Station.
Remedco also pulls underground storage tanks and offers excavation, grading and trucking services.
Pickering started Remedco in his home town of Issaquah in 1992. He moved the company to Seattle in January 1996. He comes to work each day with his Bernese mountain dog, Baker, who is monster-sized although he is still just a puppy.
The company has five employees. Pickering estimates Remedco will earn revenues of $1 million in the coming year.
"We're still a small business," he said. "But we're growing."
In Western Washington, one of Brown and Caldwell's biggest claims to fame is its successful cleanup of Lake Washington -- an effort that began more than 40 years ago and took 12 years to complete.
In the mid-1950s, raw sewage was being discharged directly into Lake Washington. The ailing lake was plagued with algae blooms and bacterial contamination.
In 1956, the city of Seattle hired Brown and Caldwell to conduct engineering studies and propose a long-range drainage-improvement program. This ultimately led to the elimination of sewage discharge into Lake Washington, the creation of the Metropolitan Council, and the call for construction of two massive secondary treatment plants in Renton and West Point.
Brown and Caldwell got to design the original Renton wastewater treatment plant in the 1960s. Garr Jones, Brown and Caldwell's senior vice president of design, still remembers the project well. He served as a junior engineer during construction of the Renton plant.
"My parents moved to the shores of Lake Washington in 1941," Jones said. "I saw the lake go sour. That was one of the things that influenced me to get into this business."
Brown and Caldwell has designed various upgrades of the Renton treatment plant since the 1960s. They include the plant's Phase 2 expansion in the early 1980s and its Phase 3 expansion, which is under way right now and is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.
The Phase 2 expansion in the '80s included several innovative energy-conservation features.
"For our designs, we try to minimize the amount of energy used in these facilities, because they're very energy-intensive," said David Parry, vice president of Brown and Caldwell in Seattle.
One such energy-efficient feature was Parry's brainchild: methane gas generated from the digestion process is scrubbed to pipeline quality and sold to Puget Sound Energy -- a transaction that saves King County several hundred thousand dollars each year.
Brown and Caldwell is celebrating its 50-year anniversary this year. Based in Walnut Creek, Calif., the employee-owned company is still shaping the future of wastewater treatment for the Puget Sound region.
Brown and Caldwell is King County's prime consultant for the Regional Wastewater Services Plan, which will guide the Puget Sound region's wastewater system for the next 30 years. The plan could involve construction of a third treatment plant in North King County or South Snohomish County.
While Brown and Caldwell specializes in treatment of drinking water, wastewater and stormwater, the company also offers construction-management, solid-waste, laboratory, energy and air-quality services.
The company has 50 employees in Seattle and about 750 nationwide. Its Washington revenues are about $9.2 million, while overall revenues are just under $100 million. Most of the company's work is done in the U.S., although Brown and Caldwell is working on projects in Canada, Argentina, Taiwan and Australia.
The company offers training workshops for people who work in treatment plants throughout the region -- an effort made easier because Brown and Caldwell acquired the Corvallis, Ore., firm Engineering Training Corp. last year.
Here are some other projects Brown and Caldwell is working on in the Northwest:
"We're dealing with issues that improve our standard of living," Parry said. "We need drinking water that's safe to drink, recreational water that's safe to play in. ... It gives purpose to our careers."
Since its Seattle office opened in 1986, Retec has become a force to be reckoned with in the Puget Sound region.
Retec is part of the Waltham, Mass.-based Thermo Electron group of environmental companies, which Retec Vice President John Ryan described as "probably the largest environmental firm in the world." Thermo Electron earns about $1 billion a year in environmentally-related sales alone, Ryan said.
Thermo Electron is the parent of more than 200 companies that specialize in the environmental, biomedical and health fields. With such strong financial backing, as well as access to personnel, equipment and expertise from so many different Thermo Electron companies, Retec is poised to keep on growing.
"What distinguishes us is that we act like a small company, providing high-quality service to our clients, but we have the financial backing and strength of a Fortune 500 company," Ryan said. "Thermo Electron is very good at raising money."
In Washington state, Retec employs 40 people and brings in annual revenues of about $5 million, Ryan said. Nationwide, Retec's 16 U.S. offices are expected to experience 20 percent growth in the coming year, Ryan said.
Retec specializes in hands-on remediation work and environmental compliance systems.
"We have a field remediation staff that builds and operates remediation systems around the country," Ryan said. "They do a lot of treatment of organic chemicals using biological treatment and thermal treatment."
Retec does environmental audits and strategic planning for clients. The company is expanding its focus on environmental management information systems, which use software and information technology to help businesses stay in compliance with environmental regulations, Ryan said.
"We're looking at acquisitions in that area," Ryan said. "It's a target area for us for growth."
But Retec's biggest area of concentration is brownfield redevelopment -- not just cleaning up contaminated industrial sites, but also providing financing for brownfield projects.
"We have so much depth of experience with brownfields. I think that's been our distinguishing mark," Ryan said. "We are actively looking to purchase properties, or partner with the owners of the property. We would clean up the property, then obtain our fees once the property is redeveloped. ...
"We'll do everything -- the investing, the cleanup, the financing. The only part we won't do is erect the buildings."
So far, Retec has not purchased any contaminated industrial sites in the Northwest. The company has bought about four or five brownfield sites around the country and has kept them for Thermo Electron's own use.
"It's been relatively slow," Ryan said. "There are not a lot of sellers out there, actually. There is still a lot of uncertainty about comprehensive liability resolution. People worry, 'How do I stop this property from coming back on me?"'
Retec has landed some major environmental contracts in the Puget Sound area, including:
Retec has access to thermal-desorption treatment centers in Tacoma and Portland for treatment of petroleum-contaminated soils. Those treatment centers are operated by another Thermo Electron company.
Retec also installs on-site treatment systems for petroleum refineries and petrochemical companies around the country.
GeoEngineers' latest expansion is into Seattle, where it just opened an office.
The 150-employee firm is based in Redmond. Six people will work in the new Seattle office, which will allow easier access for engineers who are working on Seattle projects.
GeoEngineers Inc. recently completed an interesting remediation project in Vancouver, Wash. The client prefers not to have its name used, but the site is located at the Port of Vancouver.
After construction was under way, the contractor found polluted soils, according to senior project manager Jerry Parks. The site contained a hodgepodge of pollutants, including smelly purple soil, which turned out to be contaminated with high quantities of pesticides.
In order for construction to continue on schedule, GeoEngineers had to identify all the contaminants quickly and arrange for their removal and disposal at an appropriate site. About 60,000 cubic yards of soil were removed from the site. Experts from the main GeoEngineers office reviewed the procedures to make sure they met state cleanup standards, while personnel in the Portland office arranged to have the work done because of their familiarity with local contractors.
GeoEngineers expects a lot of work to be generated by new cleanup standards which use site-specific analysis to determine the level and method of cleanup, said Julie Wilson, a principal with the company's Portland office. Wilson is on the committee that is working with the Legislature to develop the new standards. A written policy should be completed by the end of the year.
Consolidation is the big news this year at Wilder Environmental. After four years in Bellevue, the division of Wilder Construction moved with its Bellingham-based parent in April to a new location in Everett.
Business development manager Jerry Thayer said the move allows the company to be more efficient by trading people and equipment back and forth. That especially will benefit the environmental division because many of its jobs have a heavy civil aspect.
The move appears to be perfect timing for the company.
"This year we have the biggest backlog we have ever had," Thayer said. "There is so much construction going on due to the (strong) economy in the Northwest."
Thayer estimates Wilder will generate more than $140 million in volume this year. That compares favorably to 1996's $120 million. (The company usually does between $120 million and $140 million a year, with about $10 million to $30 million coming from the environmental division.)
"There seems to be more opportunity in environmental construction today than in the last couple of years," Thayer said. Those opportunities, according to Thayer, are lower-cost solutions, such as capping sites instead of using traditional soil treatments.
Wilder Construction is 86 years old and has nearly 500 employees. Most of the company's civil jobs are for public agencies. Environmental jobs are about half public and half private sector. Work is performed in Washington, Alaska, Oregon and Idaho, with about half of all jobs being done in Alaska.
Wilder Environmental specializes in material-handling and excavations. "If you can handle material efficiently, you have a leg up on competitors who don't have a construction background," Thayer said.
Wilder's local projects include the Wyckoff/Eagle Harbor Superfund site on Bainbridge Island and a landfill at Olympic View in Kitsap County for U.S.A. Waste. Wilder also is rebuilding a wastewater treatment lagoon for the Port of Seattle at Sea-Tac Airport.
The Eagle Harbor project includes capping a landfill, installing an intercept trench along a trail and removing hot spots under a pier. All material being removed is going to a confined-disposal facility being built on about one acre of the site.
At Olympic View, the company is closing a cell, putting in a new cell and rebuilding a lagoon.
Longtime construction professional Mark Robison started RCI Environmental Inc. seven years ago because he wanted to do something very few of his competitors in the construction industry were doing.
That decision to move into environmental remediation and construction work paid off: Sumner-based RCIE is now the fourth-largest environmental firm in Washington, bringing in annual revenues of $35 million to $40 million a year.
Those revenues make up about 40 percent of the overall annual revenues of Robison Construction Group, Robison said. RCIE is a division of Robison Construction Group, which has been in business locally for 20 years.
RCIE landed some of its very first remediation contracts at Boeing.
"We had done a lot of clean work for Boeing, putting in pipelines and sewers and grading," Robison said. "They had voiced a need for a Northwest-based heavy-remediation contractor who was trained health- and safety-wise."
To respond to that need, Robison hired a couple of environmental engineers and an environmental health and safety specialist -- a move that marked the birth of RCIE.
Since that time, RCIE has tackled major cleanup projects for the Port of Seattle at Sea-Tac Airport and the Port of Tacoma in Commencement Bay.
"What we sell is heavy-equipment safety, as well as a commercial attitude toward environmental remediation," Robison said. "We have a heavy-contractor mentality. We can produce more work at a more competitive price."
A major key to Robison's success is his unwillingness to become complacent or get into a rut.
"Four years ago, I felt like we needed to make a jump with the environmental company again," Robison said. "So, we opened an office in Hawaii."
A Seattle native, Robison happens to be part Hawaiian. He's a 1978 graduate of the University of Hawaii.
"I learned how to surf," he said of his college years. "I had a ball."
Now he's returned to Hawaii to provide a service greatly needed there: cleanup of petroleum-contaminated soils. RCIE runs a plant in Hawaii that thermally remediates 40,000 tons of soil each year.
In Hawaii, the company does about 50 percent of its work for private industries, such as refineries, and 50 percent of its work for government agencies, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Navy. RCIE recently won a $15 million contract to do cleanup work at Pearl Harbor for the Navy.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, about 80 percent of RCIE's work comes from government contracts, while 20 percent are for private industry.
One of the company's biggest coups was the $7 million, seven-year contract it won to transport low-level radioactive materials to the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF), a landfill at Hanford. Thanks to that contract and another $4.64 million Hanford contract for excavation and containerization of low-level radioactive soil, RCIE now employes about 35 to 40 people at its Hanford office.
"We look to Hanford to be a continuing source of work for us," Robison said. "I think we've made a heck of a good name for ourselves there."
Robison predicts another area of growth will stem from the redevelopment of contaminated industrial sites in the Duwamish Corridor, on Harbor Island and on a variety of parcels of land owned by the ports of Seattle and Tacoma.
"These dirty properties are best-suited for industrial businesses because of their location," he said. "If we don't clean them up, they will continue to sit there and leach into the water. We're poisoning ourselves. ... Morally, it's the right thing to do to clean those up."
Robison said contaminated military bases around the U.S. are another good source of work for his company. Locally, RCIE is doing a dredging and solidifying project at Pier D of the Bremerton Naval Base.
Robison also is starting to look overseas for work opportunities.
"For our next little jump, we've been looking at Australia," Robison said. Although RCIE has not yet started any projects in Australia, the company has entered into a joint-venture partnership with an Australian industrial firm that manufactures steel, Robison said.
RCIE employs about 80 of Robison Construction Group's 330 employees. Peter Wold is vice president and operations manager of RCIE. RCIE's Pacific-area manager is Bret Stephens, and the company's Hanford manager is Benson Krull. John Ware is the company's corporate health and safety officer.
"We brought in the best kind of people we could recruit and meshed them with our civil people," Robison said. "We've cross-trained a lot of people who were already working in construction so they also could work in contaminated environments. ... It's more challenging, but it's much more rewarding monetarily. It's high-risk, high-reward work."
Over the past 20 years, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) has contributed to some of the biggest cleanup efforts in the country, including Three Mile Island and Prince William Sound.
Founded by Dr. J.R. Beyster and a small group of scientists in 1969, SAIC is the largest employee-owned science and engineering firm in the United States. The San Diego-based company has more than 24,000 employees in 150 cities worldwide, including seven locations in Washington state.
SAIC's revenues for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31 were $2.4 billion -- 85 percent of which came from government contracts and 11 to 12 percent of which came from environmental engineering, safety and health projects.
SAIC's other areas of specialization include transportation, telecommunications, information technology, national and international security, energy and space missions. The company provided technical expertise for the Hubble Space Telescope and Voyager space missions.
"The environmental side of our company is steady, with maybe slight growth," said Ceil McCloy, a corporate vice president for SAIC. "Our real growth is coming from true information technologies and telecommunications."
In Washington, SAIC does a great deal of work for the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency, Army Corps of Engineers and Department of Energy, McCloy said.
The Bothell, Olympia and Richland offices of SAIC report to McCloy, who is based in San Francisco. Other SAIC offices are located in downtown Seattle, Poulsbo, Everett and Bremerton.
As a subcontractor to British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., SAIC is trying to solve complicated tank-waste problems at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, focusing on spent nuclear fuel in the K-Basin area.
For the EPA and the Corps of Engineers, SAIC is working on a "dredged materials program" in various waterways around Western Washington, including Eagle Harbor off Bainbridge Island.
"We look at what happens to dredged spoils as they're moved from one portion of the harbor to another," McCloy said.
As a subcontractor to URS Consultant, SAIC is characterizing all the contaminants at Navy sites in the Northwest and Alaska. Once everything has been identified in the next two to three years, Foster Wheeler will do the actual cleanup work, McCloy said.
One potential area of growth for SAIC in the environmental market is the merging of information technologies with environmental cleanups and monitoring projects, McCloy said.
"There are software and hardware products that integrate all the information you need, and also allow you to do remote monitoring of sites," McCloy said. "You can just walk away from that plant ... and check in with your facility wherever you have a phone line. You can just call up your site and ask it how it's doing."
McCloy said SAIC is working with oil refineries and utilities on environmental software products that help them sort out and display the environmental data they collect in a coherent fashion.
McCloy predicted the environmental industry will continue to experience consolidation and flattening, particularly because the industry is so influenced by state and federal regulatory agencies.
"Environmental work is an overhead activity for private companies," McCloy said. "People want to reduce their overhead, so they carefully review their environmental budget. ... However, a lot of private industry is looking at pollution prevention and source reduction. SAIC gets a lot of work in process controls, to limit what you have to dispose of."
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