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Environmental Outlook 1998: Firm Survey
President: Sue Sander
While the current flood of development projects in the Northwest may be overwhelming to some, Shapiro and Associates is in its element - and thriving, according to president Sue Sander.
Shapiro has been involved in a lengthy list of huge projects, including the Emerald Downs Racetrack, Sea-Tac International Airport's third runway, the Mariners' Stadium, not to mention its most recent high-profile accomplishment: the environmental impact statement for the Seahawks' stadium.
"We're delighted to have completed the stadium project," Sander said, "and that there has been no appeals."
According to marketing manager Barbara Erickson, Shapiro and Associates is taking a breath before it starts flying again through a whirlwind of projects.
Coming up next is the South Downtown Waterfront (Colman Dock) project, and, if the draft EIS for the Tacoma Narrows project is approved by local constituents, Shapiro will begin work on the final EIS for that development.
Business is also booming at Shapiro's Portland office which is working on a destination resort, and at the Boise office where the staff concentrates on transportation and mining projects.
Sander said she's thrilled with the area's economy and the amount of work it has brought to the 24-year-old company's doorstep. The only problem now, she said, is finding enough qualified people to handle the workload.
Shapiro's clients are equally split between public and private sectors. The transportation market, private-sector development and issues surrounding the Endangered Species Act keep the company on its toes, although water-resource studies and feasibility studies also bring in a steady stream of work.
Sander said habitat mitigation and ESA compliance have been key issues "from the get-go" for Shapiro, and the company is actively involved in task forces that establish policy for environmental protection and restoration.
Aside from environmental projects, Shapiro and Associates has politicized in taking a stance against I-200 - which took on a personal note for Sander, she said.
"As a disadvantaged, woman-owned business, I-200, which would end affirmative action as we know it, is a big issue," Sander said. "I personally think a real effort needs to be made as a corporation to take a negative stance on I-200."
Western division director: Dr. Ed Wilson heads offices in San Diego, Sacramento, Oakland, CA; Salem, OR. and Bremerton
Concurrent Technologies may give the video-game industry a run for its money once its virtual-reality technology is ready.
"We're doing some pretty cool stuff here," said Gary Frogner, environmental systems manager for Concurrent Technologies.
Frogner said when the virtual-reality program comes out next month, environmentalists and the public will be able to "enter" a watershed and see how contaminants move and interact with the marine environment.
Sounds like fun, but Concurrent Technologies is a serious player in helping industries use technology to become more enviromentally friendly.
Frogner describes the nonprofit corporation as a technology-transfer company. They develop new technologies that make manufacturing processes cleaner, more efficient, more cost effective and safer. The company demonstrates these technologies to other companies, and, if they work well, train employees how to use them.
Government projects constitute the bulk of Concurrent Technologies' contracts.
Currently, the U.S. Department of Defense has hired the group to eliminate hazardous materials, such as cadmium, from weapons. Concurrent Technologies is also working for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to address stormwater quality and ship-bilge water issues.
Working for the DOD is a natural partnership for the Pennsylvania-based company. Concurrent Technologies offices across the country currently operate the National Defense Center for Environmental Excellence - which focuses on transferring environmental tools and technologies to government facilities.
In addition to government work, Concurrent Technologies provides services to private Northwest companies including Boeing and Todd Shipyards.
Frogner expects its 48-member Bremerton staff will soon double in size. The company is seeking chemistry experts, technology buffs, wildlife and forestry experts and those with excellent group-facilitation skills.
"We're looking for a wide range of skills," Frogner said. "To really move forward takes a broad spectrum of professionals."
Frogner predicts that the company will soon delve deeper into solid waste management, establishing technology that remediates, treats and recycles types of waste.
"There is also an identified need for water quality in this area," Frogner said. "We do the most detailed water modeling in the Puget Sound, and that will increase with the looming salmon issue at hand. After all, every drop of water that falls from the Cascades to the Olympics effects salmon."
Regional manager: Ray Carden
Vironex, Inc. is a national company with clients around the globe, but its Northwest office in Kent is a "one-and-a-half" man show. Regional manager Ray Carden and a part-time employee are nurturing the fledging Northwest office into a competitive site-assessment firm.
The Kent office opened only a year ago, after Carden convinced headquarters that locating in Washington was a good idea. His motives, he admitted, were influenced by a personal interest in moving to the Northwest. But the area hasn't disappointed him - or Vironex.
Vironex zeros in on site-assessment work, as well as installing wells and remediation systems. As a national company, it is fairly easy to contract outside help, Carden said.
So far, the company has concentrated on small, mostly private jobs. Carden said he hopes that in the next year the company will snare some big government projects, such as Navy clean ups.
Carden also expects to go abroad soon. He is putting the final touches on a bid for a remediation system at Hong Kong's former airport which is slated for housing development.
Vironex will be staffing up in the near future, to take on large jobs. Carden said that while a background in science is important, he's looking more for attitude.
"It's not so much the skills as the work ethics and attitude of an individual," he said. "We hire people right out of college with degrees in chemistry or geology. We also hire directly out of the military, those who have mechanical skills."
Competition is no joke in the Northwest, Carden said. There are plenty of environment companies offering high quality at competitive prices. He is confident, however, that Vironex's Kent office will be an example of "the little company that could," growing to capture a sizable share of the environmental market.
"We fill a niche market pretty well, using a direct-push sampling method for collecting material," Carden said. "In a nutshell, that method is better, faster, more economical and more environment-friendly."
CEO: Terry Rahe
Recycling isn't just for your pop bottles and newspapers anymore. For industries that discharge huge amounts of waste water or solid waste, recycling is becoming increasingly attractive.
That's one reason why Dan Burgard, senior project manager for Cascade Earth Sciences in the firm's Spokane office, thinks his company will continue to show strong growth in the upcoming year.
Regulations which limit or prohibit dumping waste water back into water sources, coupled by hot political issues such as salmon-habitat restoration and preservation, keep Cascade's client list long, he said.
"Half of the work we do is helping clients comply with changing regulations," Burgard said. "If there were no regulations, there would be no need for us."
Based in Albany, Ore., Cascade Earth Sciences has focused for the past 20 years on recycling waste water to irrigate nearby crops. It has also helped food processing plant operators reuse solid waste as ground fertilizer.
Jerry Schrock, spokesman for Cascade Earth Sciences, said the company has "more land application of waste water projects under their belt" than any other company in the Northwest.
Cascade Earth Sciences generally serves six client categories: food processing, pulp and paper mills, mining, forest products, local municipalities and federal agencies.
The company has seven offices in the Northwest, including its headquarters in Albany, Ore., and has plans to go global in the near future, opening offices in Ireland, Egypt and the Republic of Georgia.
The largest current project for the Spokane office is creating a waste water land application system for the Port of Moses Lake.
Aside from land application of waste water projects, Cascade Earth Sciences conducts hazardous waste site cleanup investigations - an area that has gained more attention in the company over the last five or six years.
Business, according to Burgard, is "very, very good," and getting better as more companies either become more environmentally aware or simply try to stay in compliance with constantly evolving laws.
So are they hiring? Yes, but there are no major recruiting efforts under way yet. The company looks for geologists and engineers who can create a customized system based on each client's needs.
CEO: Waite Dalrymple
If working on projects ranging from wastewater management to transportation doesn't qualify Parametrix as well rounded, its recent merger with the Tacoma architectural firm Merritt + Pardini does.
The two companies formally merged this spring, creating a win-win situation for both. Merritt + Pardini now has a foot in the door at SoundTransit, and Parametrix can incorporate architectural expertise into its transportation division.
Working on the environmental impact statement for SoundTransit's Link light-rail system has brought other changes as well, according to Colleen Gants, senior marketing coordinator for Parametrix, Inc.
"It's no secret that were actively recruiting staff in the transportation area," Gants said. "We're hiring many junior and senior engineers and planners.
Heading up the project will be Jeff Heilman, a regional expert in rail planning who recently wrapped up a Parametrix contract in Oregon for the South/North LRT EIS. Parametrix partnered with CH2M Hill for the SoundTransit EIS.
The firm is also working on the Trans-Lake Washington traffic study, which aims to identify several transportation improvements including crossing alternatives, such as a tunnel or another bridge. Parametrix is also working with Metro to study water quality in the Duwamish River.
Parametrix indirectly increased its staff by forging a partnership with Herrera Enviromental Consultants of Seattle to help address habitat conservation planning, according to Gants.
"Herrera complements our work in the environmental industry as we deal with the Endangered Species Act," Gants said.
Marketing manager Daryl Wendle said about one-eighth of Parametrix's projects fall into the natural-science category. Wastewater management and transportation projects make up the bulk of the firm's work.
The company is also keeping on top of industry shifts, reflected by the recent opening of the Parametrix Alaska office in Anchorage. Wendle said attention there has turned from forest products companies to the oil and gas industry, thus Parametrix has switched its focus to address a developing need.
President: Terry Horn
Armed with machines called microenfractionators and masticators, H&H Eco Systems has two unique tools for performing ex-situ soil remediation.
Terry Horn, CEO and president of North Bonneville-based H&H Eco Systems, said the microenfractionator uses a patented process to remediate contaminated soil. It mixes the soil and fractures it to expose contaminates that are locked into soil particles. The machine works on soils that contain rocks up to 2 inches in diameter.
The masticator, or clay-rock separator, removes larger rocks from wet, sticky clay. The patented machine is rugged enough to extract rocks weighing 500 and 600 pounds. Horn uses it in conjunction with the microenfractionator to remediate sites containing large rocks.
"I can see a huge market for the masticator," Horn said. In addition to remediation, the new machine can be used to clear rocks from clay-ridden construction sites. Horn plans to step up marketing efforts in both the environmental and construction industries.
Only one masticator is now in use, in Canada. Horn said the firm used a masticator in a homeowner's yard in Vancouver, Wash., which was laden with glacial rock deposits. He said enough rocks were removed to fill 40 10-yard dump trucks.
Both masticators and microenfractionators are made by an outside company for H&H. Horn said they are having another masticator put together and are building an eighth microenfractionator. The masticators cost between $85,000 and $250,000, depending upon capacity. Microenfractionators can cost up to $350,000 for a fully-loaded unit.
In addition to its remediation equipment, H&H specializes in ex-situ materials handling, solid state chemical oxidation, reductive chemistry, fixation stabilization and bio-remediation.
H&H was formed out of an organic fish fertilizer business started by Horn. He initially sold the fertilizer for lawns and gardens, but changed his focus after a California company discovered the fertilizer made bacteria grow a lot faster in the remediation process, causing hydrocarbons in contaminated soil to break down faster.
Using the nutrients, along with the microenfractionator, reduces soil remediation time by 25 to 50 percent, Horn said, and "You don't have to buy new dirt, or move dirt."
Four years ago in Olympia, the first site was cleaned up using the nutrients and a microenfractionator. Horn said a member of the state Department of Ecology involved with the process determined the soil was so clean he took some home for his personal garden.
Within the U.S., H&H has been doing a lot of business in the Midwest, including a test project on dredge spoils for the Army Corps of Engineers in Duluth, Minn. For that project, H&H is using a microenfractionator and solid state chemical oxidation to reduce carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (cPAH) in the spoils.
In Minneapolis, the company is cleaning up a site where telephone poles and railroad ties are treated with creosote and pentachlorophenol (PCP). H&H took 1,180 cubic yards of PCP-and creosote-contaminated soil and reduced the concentration of PCP from 160 to 24 parts per million by using reductive chemistry. That process took 30 days.
H&H also used solid state chemical oxidation at the Minneapolis site to reduce cPAHs in the soil from 260 ppm to 56 ppm in 44 hours.
"It takes us longer to get the analytical results back than it takes us to clean up the site," Horn said about reducing cPAHs.
Horn doesn't plan to open any other offices beyond the seven-person office in North Bonneville. Instead, he plans to sell franchise rights to companies outside the country, where business is growing quicker.
Horn is doing a lot of business in Canada because that country is more progressive than the U.S. in accepting new technologies, he said. Engineering firms there are using new technology to speed up remediation procedures.
"Up in Canada we have been able to show them how much faster we can do the work," Horn said.
H&H is also bidding on work in Europe, Nigeria, Mexico and New Zealand.
"A lot of this stuff would be clean in a 100 to 200 years (through natural processes)," Horn said, "but we want to be good stewards for the environment."
President: Ann Bailey
Many people think chemists belong in a laboratory, so EcoChem several years ago developed the slogan: "We are not a lab."
President Ann Bailey said her 10 chemists do a limited amount of fieldwork, but they primarily work with paper and databases. "We don't see anything but paper," she said.
EcoChem is one of only a few firms in the country that specialize in quality assurance and data validation in support of environmental investigations. Bailey said the company bridges the gap between environmental scientists and engineers and laboratory personnel.
About 70 percent of EcoChem's jobs are outside the Puget Sound region, stretching across the nation from Alaska to California to Washington D.C. Some jobs have even gone outside the country, to Guam and Japan.
With all those remote sites, one might think EcoChem workers do a lot of traveling. But, that's not the case because most of the site data is mailed or sent electronically to them. Bailey said only an occasional kickoff meeting or laboratory audit will draw a worker to the field.
Federal cleanup programs figure largely in EcoChem's business mix, with over 60 percent of the company's work concentrated in that field. Bailey said they get a lot of work cleaning up Army and Air Force bases.
"Consistent support of federal environmental programs is important to our business," Bailey said.
EcoChem is currently working on a big project in Wisconsin for RETEC and that state's Department of Natural Resources. It involves historical data review, database development, data management and data validation for a remedial investigation/feasibility study of the Fox River.
Working with large databases requires EcoChem to use the latest technology, including the Internet to transmit and receive files and information.
"Keeping up with all the updates on software and hardware is an ongoing challenge," Bailey said. At the same time, she said they need to stay focused on keeping up with all the analytical chemistry protocols. "We need to have feet planted in both worlds," she said.
Bailey started doing environmental consulting in 1983 and incorporated two years later as EcoChem Inc. In 1992, she merged her business with Linda Bohannon's. Bailey said the merger was beneficial because both were doing a lot of data evaluation and were small firms. The merger created a firm with more depth - Bohannon specializes in quality assurance while Bailey's expertise is in environmental chemistry.
Bailey said she expects EcoChem to add two employees in the next year, but plans to keep the firm at about 20 employees in order to focus on its specialized niche.
Pacific International Engineering
President: Harry Hosey
"We're in an environment now where the federal and state agencies are far more active in pursuing the identification and implementation of policy, whereas historically they have played a regulatory role," said Harry Hosey, president of Pacific International Engineering (PIE).
Hosey said the net effect of that is the regulatory agencies have a lot more presence and influence in how projects are put together and structured. That can be a good thing, Hosey said, if the agencies' agenda is environmental protection and not political control.
Hosey attributes the changing role of the agencies to an era of budget tightening along with an expansion of environmental involvement. Such conditions generally lead to stalemates because agencies have no money to proceed with investigations. "That results in a log jam that requires political involvement to resolve," he said.
Hosey said it would be much better to solve problems with technical solutions, but there is not enough money around to do that.
Edmonds-based PIE has a focus on coastal engineering, natural resources, river hydraulics and project management. Locally, it is working on a solution for an eroding shoreline in Ocean Shores and identifying causes and solutions of flooding in the I-5 corridor and the cities of Centralia and Chehalis.
About 15 percent of the company's business is overseas. Hosey sees that segment expanding, but has no plans to open foreign offices.
The company did open a branch office in Wenatchee last year. That was done to attract Glenn Grette, who has a longstanding reputation in fisheries issues throughout the state. "He wouldn't move, so we had to build an office around him," Hosey explained.
"Physical location is becoming less significant to the way we do business," Hosey said. "We have some people that don't have office space."
Hosey said most of the company's employees can log on from their home computers or laptops. When people who work at home need to come to headquarters, there are two offices set up with computers they can use.
Before PIE formed, Hosey headed up Hosey & Associates Engineering Co., a firm that specialized in hydroelectric projects. Seven years ago, he sold it to Harza of Chicago and signed a five-year non-compete agreement. (The firm now operates under the name Harza Northwest.)
After the five-year non-compete period ended, Hosey was approached by two engineers to form PIE.
The company now has 33 employees and plans to grow to as many as 45 over the next year or so. Hosey said he wants to keep the company below 45 people and work primarily as a subconsultant. Jobs usually come through relationships with other engineering companies.
Growth areas for the company are in offshore coastal engineering and the environmental sector.
President: Dudley Reiser
Proposed salmon listings under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have the attention of R2 President Dudley Reiser.
"It seems like there's a real emphasis being placed right now on the ESA listings," Reiser said. "We see the listings of salmon and steelhead stocks in Puget Sound will result in work for environmental firms such as ours."
The work Reiser is referring to is habitat conservation plans (HCPs). Reiser expects the plans to become more commonplace over the next decade as private industry - along with cities, local municipalities and utilities - seek incidental-take permits so that their operations comply with the mandates of ESA.
"HCPs will provide certainty to their operations by ensuring protection of the listed and proposed listed species," Reiser said.
An HCP outlines the applicant's operations and potential impacts to listed species, both threatened and endangered. It also presents mitigation and enhancement or restoration measures for the environment.
One of R2's current projects involves putting together an HCP for the city of Tacoma's Green River watershed.
Reiser said another growth area for the environmental industry is the use of geographic information system (GIS) applications, which can be used for highly detailed mapping and as a data/analytical tool. Reiser said GIS technology has been around for some time, but is becoming more popular because its cost has dropped and today's computers are more powerful.
Reiser said the Internet and e-mail have also become big support tools for the analytical needs of environmental firms.
R2 was founded Reiser and Mike Ramey. Both men worked for another environmental consulting firm before deciding to form their own company. Ramey is a hydraulic engineer and has expertise in aquatic science, while Reiser's speciality is fisheries and aquatic ecology.
"The thought was, by bringing the two disciplines together, we would be able to offer our clients a broad range of expertise," Reiser said.
After six years in business, the Redmond-based firm now employs about 20 workers. It recently added a fish biologist and a geomorphologist who specializes in channel form and river processes. Reiser said they have considered opening another office, but that is not on the horizon right now.
One of R2's bigger projects in the state includes a habitat survey for the city of Seattle's Boundary Hydroelectric Project on the Pend Oreille River that includes surveying bull trout, a threatened species. Now in its third year, the study will continue until 2000. Reiser said they also are doing similar work on the Skagit River.
Northwest manager: Hans Ewoldsen
"We see a slow, but steady increase (in the environmental sector)," said Hans Ewoldsen, Northwest manager for AGRA Earth & Environmental Inc.
Schools and stores being renovated will need to have asbestos, lead paint and PCBs abated. "We are seeing a significant market in the human environment sector," he said.
With the U.S. environmental market stabilizing, Ewoldsen said there is more growth potential in the international sector. AGRA is now pursuing opportunities in Russia and Eastern Europe, and will be targeting the mining industry in Peru. Ewoldsen said every major mining company is now looking at cleanup projects.
Ewoldsen said the international cleanup market is being fueled by multinational firms based in the U.S. and Europe that are now placing stricter standards on their operations in Third World and developing countries.
"They want to be viewed as good stewards of the environment in their international project work," he said.
In the U.S., due diligence for property transfer - checking out sites for potential environmental liability - has become a strong area.
AGRA has seen growth in natural resource protection - making sure development projects consider biological and ecological factors.
Ewoldsen said the firm is planning to hire more staff and start a marketing effort for that field. Right now, the company has 80 employees at its Northwest Division office in Kirkland. The Northwest Division is one of 47 offices of Calgary-based AGRA, which employs a total of 1,600 workers.
During the 1970s and 1980s, AGRA grew through acquisitions of other firms in the U.S. and Canada. Expansion in the U.S. was through the acquisition of three firms: Rittenhouse Zeman in Seattle, Moore & Tabor in Anaheim, Calif., and SHB in the Southwest.
Ewoldsen said the environmental industry is currently seeing a shortage of workers in the ecological and socioeconomic fields, but a surplus of remediation engineers.
He doesn't see any drastic changes in the regulatory environment, but says it will become gradually stricter because of society's demands for cleaner air and water.
"We, as a society need to be more proactive to avoid the environmental mistakes and do a better job of front-end planning."
President: Dave Buecker, managing principal, Bellevue office.
The environmental consulting business is changing in a number of ways, according to Dave Buecker, managing principal of ERM West's Bellevue office.
Because of consolidation, there are fewer firms, and ERM is a prime example: it recently acquired the assets of Union Pacific Railroad's remediation company, Terranext located in Denver.
UP's sale of Terranext points up another trend, says Buecker. U.S. businesses are outsourcing environmental service functions such as water pollution controls.
Another change is the shift away from government regulation by command control to voluntary compliance, says Buecker.
"It makes more sense because it provides businesses with more options, more flexibility and limits costs." An example, says Buecker is petroleum-contaminated soil. There are now options to digging it all up and burying it elsewhere, such as "natural attenuation" where soil is left in place and monitored.
These days there are fewer large-scale Superfund-type cleanups so the emphasis at ERM West is more on pollution prevention programs for large clients such as Nike, Motorola or FMC Corp.'s chemical plants.
Other ERM clients include Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad and the Air National Guard where ERM West has done remedial sitework in Seattle, Everett, Spokane and Portland.
ERM West, with seven offices, is headquartered in Walnut Creek, Calif. offices. The Bellevue office has 15 employees.
Parent company Environmental Services Management is based in Pennsylvania and has 2,400 employees in 110 offices worldwide.
Buecker says ERM West is always looking for skilled employees, especially in remedial, environmental and civil engineering. President: Jim Falco.
The cost of making environmental site assessments will drop dramatically over the next few years because of new high-tech methods and products, says Charles Hostettler, vice president and copartner of Columbia Environmental Sciences of Kennewick.
For example, site testing rods manufactured by Geoprobe Systems can be driven into the ground by one person with a small electric drill. "You don't need a large drill rig anymore," says Hostettler. The result is that testing costs are decreased from $10 to $15 a foot to $1 a foot.
More savings can be found in analyzing soil samples. "Lots of what we used to send out to an analytical lab can now be done with your own equipment," says Hostettler. "Instead of $100 a sample, you can do it for $20."
Hostettler and partner Jim Falco started Columbia Environmental Sciences in 1994. Hostettler, with a Ph.D. in geochemistry, had been working for Pacific Northwest Laboratories, a Hanford contractor and subsidiary of Battelle Memorial Institute. He headed a 100-person section responsible for sampling soils and ground water.
The economy had been flat due to reduced federal spending at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. But Hostettler and Falco anticipated that the Tri-Cities would eventually diversify and attract industry because of an abundance of cheap land, skilled work force and attractive living environment.
They were right. The young company began doing site investigations for port and irrigation districts who had plenty of land to offer industry. Banks needed environmental consultants to perform the due diligence work often required when land changed ownership, and a company that repairs diesel engines needed help in complying with hazardous waste rules. "We started them on an oil recycling program," said Hostettler.
The environmental consulting business had suffered for a number of years because of confusing and contradictory rules, says Hostettler. But after standards were established by the American Society of Testing & Materials (AST), he says companies began to feel more comfortable complying with them.
The environmental consulting market in Eastern Washington is very strong, says Hostettler and fairly strong in Western Washington.
Redevelopment of former industrial sites such as those found in Seattle's Duwamish corridor presents lots of opportunities for the future, says Hostettler. "Developers are interested if it can be established what the environmental risks are." He is considering buying former gas station sites and cleaning them up himself.
When hiring, Columbia Environmental Sciences looks for graduates in environmental sciences. Hostettler will also soon be looking for another partner since Jim Falco will be retiring soon.
President: Lawrence Molloy
Largest current project: Acquiring process for purifying drinking water
"Cross-cultural skills are very important in this line of work," says Lawrence Molloy, executive officer of The Crestwood Group, an environmental technology company located in Seattle's Pioneer Square district.
Much of the company's work is done for overseas clients. The largest is Ebara Corp. of Tokyo, Japan, a company with $5.5 billion in annual revenues which manufactures water treatment plants, sold waste handling facilities and other products for Japan's growing environmental protection industry.
The Crestwood Group also does work for the United Nations Development Program whose goal is to improve living standards in Third World countries.
Molloy is so in tune with Japanese sensibilities that he refers to himself as executive officer rather than president because, he says, "In Japan there are no presidents."
Molloy holds a graduate degree in environmental engineering from Stanford University. His varied background includes time spent with the Peace Corps and working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He also worked for the Royal Dutch Shell petroleum company and as a Wall Street analyst for a Swiss-Italian investment firm.
Molloy estimates that he normally spends about one-third of his time traveling, some of it attending environmental conferences in Asia, Europe and the U.S.
Crestwood is currently trying to acquire the rights to a new drinking water purification process for Ebara - which, says Molloy, is one of the few Japanese companies which hasn't lost value in the current Asian economic downturn.
Japan is still about ten years behind the U.S. in tackling environmental issues, says Molloy.
He predicts that there will be less "downstream" pollution to deal with in the future because of greater energy efficiencies and leaner production methods. For example, hazardous-waste emissions from coal-fired power plants can now be taken out and mixed with ammonia to produce fertilizer.
President: John Butts heads URS; Gary Dupuy is operations manager for Woodward Clyde
URS Greiner acquired Woodward Clyde on Nov. 1 of 1997, and will complete the merger by Nov. 1 of this year. The combined company has about 235 employees in its Seattle offices, out of a total of 6,000 nationwide.
Both companies work nationally, but Woodward Clyde also does projects outside the U.S.
Gary Dupuy, operations manager for the Seattle office of Woodward Clyde, explained that each branch of the company has distinct skills and strengths. Woodward Clyde is an environmental engineering firm with roots in geotechnical work. URS is an architecture and engineering firm, specializing in water and wastewater, while Greiner specializes in transportation.
"We don't anticipate losing staff," Dupuy said. "We see synergy happening between the two organizations."
In the Northwest, URS is a federal contractor. Woodward Clyde splits its work between government - local, state and federal - and commercial clients. Some of its projects are confidential, but Dupuy said the firm is engaged in solid waste and hazardous waste work for King County, and in stormwater studies for Pierce and Snohomish counties.
The firm is also doing hazardous-waste investigations for International Paper, Weyerhaeuser, Shell Oil and Boeing.
"The business climate is quite good right now," Dupuy said. "The hazardous-waste part of the business has strengthened this year. Everybody has a little more money now, with healthier budgets, so they're trying to get things cleaned up."
Infrastructure also is a good business, as major projects like Sound Transit and King County's wastewater initiative gather steam. Water, wastewater, hazardous waste and solid waste are the firm's core business in the Northwest.
Dupuy said he wants to hire another half-dozen midlevel engineers in wastewater, chemical engineering, CAD design, hazardous waste and solid waste.
"It's really easy to find people in hazardous waste right now," he said. "In general engineering and infrastructure, it's real tough right now. I think Boeing has really increased their staff; a lot of engineering talent has gone that direction."
Overall, Dupuy thinks the industry is on a healthy course. It has turned around from the wave of consolidation that struck a year ago.
"The economy has been strong and everybody is busy," he said. "There's still consolidation and merger mania going on, but it looks good for the next two or three years. Everybody I talk to seems pretty positive."
Owners: Laura Southard, Kim Mathey
Healthy Environments was started late last year as a means to provide businesses and homeowners some simple solutions to everyday environmental problems like allergens, water filtration and secondhand smoke.
Laura Southard, one of the firm's two owners, said the inspiration for the venture was a New Jersey program called Safe Home. That program provided information and assistance to persons who wanted to reduce their exposure to a range of indoor contaminants - including everything from mildew to building supplies.
Southard's background is in nonprofit management, having worked for several years in environmental organizations. She found that people often contacted the organizations looking for ways to make their immediate surroundings cleaner or safer.
So she teamed up with technology whiz Kim Mathey to market such services over the Internet.
The company now provides educational resources, conducts free on-site assessments and makes recommendations on products or strategies to use. The emphasis is on allergies and chemical sensitivities.
The company is not unique. Southard said there are a lot of mail-order catalog companies that cater to allergy and asthma sufferers, and others that provide services. But most of them are more specialized or in other parts of the country.
"Our concept is a little broader," Southard said. From testing basement walls for moisture intrusion, to marketing nontoxic cleaners, paints, adhesives and caulks, Healthy Environments is trying to cover a full range of things that can affect a home or business.
"People buy the nontoxic cleaning supplies," Southard said. "Once they find out we have paints and stains, they say, `Cool!' "
Marketing of the company so far has been traditional, emphasizing the Web site and making personal contacts through business networking. Southard and Mathey financed it all on their own.
"It's a small enterprise," Southard said. "But our desire is to grow and make sure this concept catches on. We're not trying to make a million bucks right off the bat; we want to make a living and educate people."
Partners: Gary Raemhild, Steve Jaasund
Kent-based Geo Energy International is in the business of supplying air-pollution-control equipment to manufacturing industries. Its products use proprietary technology in devices that are manufactured for Geo Energy by shops around the country.
Steve Jaasund, president, said the company sells its equipment worldwide, although the domestic U.S. market is by far the largest. The business is unpredictable, with one quarter's performance never a good indicator of what another's might be.
Geo Energy sells a range of equipment for dealing with air pollutants, including electrostatic precipitators, thermal oxidizers, wet scrubbers and biofilters.
"Most of our business up 'til now is in the panel board industry, the wood products industry - plywood, particle board and oriented-strand board," Jaasund said. The company's clients include Louisiana-Pacific, Boise Cascade, Weyerhaeuser, Georgia Pacific and Willamette Industries.
Jaasund said most of the firm's 23 employees (in five offices) are engineers; he's a chemical engineer, and partner Gary Raemhild is a mechanical engineer.
So far the company has completed over 100 projects around the world. About 95 of them have been in the U.S., with two in New Zealand and two in Germany.
"We have quotes out for Taiwan and Chile," Jaasund said. Ongoing projects include a thermal oxidizer installation for a wastewater treatment plant in Atlanta; another for a packaging company in Cincinnati; and a precipitator installation in New Jersey.
President: Rob Wilson
Emission Technologies of Burlington has carved a niche for itself in monitoring emissions from power plants and manufacturing centers.
"Just about anything that has a stack, we test," says spokeswoman Valerie Alpin. That includes refineries, asphalt plants, power plants, cogeneration units and computer chip manufacturers.
The company builds "continuous emissions monitors," or CEMs, that generate a constant flow of data on a plant's emissions. Proprietary software reduces the data to a usable form for the client.
Alpin said Emissions Technologies focuses its marketing on the Pacific Rim. The company has an office on Guam, and often does business in China.
"We have been growing," Alpin said. "We've doubled our revenues over the last three years."
Current projects include installation of $1 million worth of CEMs and data acquisition systems for the Guam Power Authority; another CEM installation for a North Slope oil company; and regular emissions testing for a local refinery.
Emission Technology also does a lot of work for consultants, who hire the company to do testing for specific projects they are working on. The company uses local people wherever possible to cut costs; airfare to Guam, for example, is over $2,000.
"We are generally less expensive than a lot of companies," Alpin said.
The company has a core group of five employees, but will bring in engineers or consultants as needed. The working group could reach 20 people or more.
President: William Ross
Ross & Associates Environmental Consulting of Seattle occupies a unique niche in the consulting industry. Founder William Ross says his firm "supports government as it approaches and/or changes the way it addresses environmental issues - in a more effective manner than it has in the past."
But that does not mean that the company does routine environmental impact statements or site-specific projects. Rather, the firm's forte is strategic planning, policy development, organizational management, facilitation and mediation.
"Our base is working for the state [of Washington]," Ross said. "The firm does a lot of work where the state, as a unit, interacts with the federal government, as a unit."
Ross & Associates splits its time between regional issues and national ones. One large current project is to assist the U.S. and Canada in their efforts to reduce the levels of toxics like mercury, dioxin and PCBs in the Great Lakes .
In the West, the firm is working to provide "administrative flexibility in implementation of the Clean Air Act in exchange for demonstrable reductions in pollution emissions."
And in the Northwest, Ross & Associates has just completed a project to help the EPA's Region 10, and Western Environment Canada, develop indicators for the health of salmon populations.
"We have a very interesting practice," Ross said.
The market for the firm's services is strong, based on what Ross describes as a continuing desire by government to improve its approaches and service delivery.
"The government is engaged in a lot of good-faith efforts to try to change and improve," he said.
Though demand is good, Ross said there are no plans to expand. The 25-person firm is going to stay at that size, though some routine turnover does occur.
When a position opens up, the company makes a great effort to find people who are a good fit with the organization. Most of the staff have graduate degrees, particularly in public administration or business; a third of them have previous government experience. A few have technical training, but Ross emphasized that it is not a technical-services firm.
Ross's focus now is to absorb the growth that has already occurred while maintaining a high level of service.
President: Dan Ballbach
Largest current projects: Edmonds Woodway High School, Union Station
As one of the oldest and largest of the local environmental and geotechnical engineering firms, Landau Associates of Edmonds is a well-known presence in the industry. But, like everyone else, the company has to be savvy about marketing its services.
Susan Kemp, marketing manager for Landau, said the 70-person firm has been busy - but the market is changing.
"In general, there's the same amount of work but in smaller projects," she said. "The huge Superfund projects are a thing of the past. Environmental companies have to do more marketing perhaps than they used to.
"But in geotech the market is absolutely booming, so there's a lot of work. The economy's booming, with a lot of development happening."
Kemp says the good business climate started with the bad storms of early 1997, which were followed by landslides and a surge in development activity. All brought in work - especially geotechnical studies.
"In environmental work, we just have to be smart," Kemp said. "Our direction is supporting development, instead of being regulatory driven."
Providing service in that arena requires detailed knowledge of regulations and government processes, so that the consultant can add to the client's bottom line.
Among Landau's clients are The Boeing Co., Puget Sound Energy, law firms Perkins Coie and Marten & Brown, and various ports and municipalities.
"We concentrate on doing the kind of work that keeps clients coming back," Kemp said. "We get a fair amount of repeat business."
Landau is adding staff, and will move to more spacious quarters near downtown Edmonds at Soundview Plaza, 130 Second Ave.
President: Robert Wallace
Despite the fact that Redmond testing laboratory On-Site Environmental sees its business growing, partner Blair Goodrow says the company plans to add only one more person in the coming year. There are now 12 people on staff.
"All we do is analyze samples," Goodrow said. "We're having a good year this year; every year we've increased our revenues."
Most of the samples the lab tests come from sites that have potential hazardous waste or contamination from underground storage tanks. The company also provides its services to cleanup, remediation and monitoring programs for properties with known contamination, and to buyers and sellers of potentially contaminated sites.
At the moment, On-Site Environmental is completing a waste characterization study for a company called Ecology and Environment under an EPA response contract.
Goodrow said the lab tests for pesticides, PCBs and heavy metals, among other things, with most of its customers coming from within the state of Washington. A few come from other Northwest states and Alaska.
"We have no plans to go overseas or national," Goodrow said. "We're just a couple of hometown guys who started a lab. We plan on keeping it that way."
Regional principal: Gordon Robilliard
Gordon Robilliard, founder and principal of Entrix Environmental Consultants, likes to tell prospective clients that "we can do the same thing the last 400 consultants told you they could do."
He's only half joking. The company, started in 1995, has grown to 255 people in 13 offices nationwide, plus three offices in Latin America. Entrix headquarters are in Houston, with other major offices in Walnut Creek, Calif., Dallas, Chicago and Wilmington, Del.
Robilliard says his company provides a full range of environmental consulting services to industrial clients, particularly in the oil and gas industries. Its strongest business segment is in natural resource damage assessments, or NRDAs, for oil spills.
Entrix also provides environmental risk assessment and risk management; liability management for companies; and, in the Northwest, habitat conservation plans and biological assessments related to threatened and endangered species.
The Entrix presence in this region consists of two one-man offices: Robilliard, at his home in Gig Harbor, and Greg Reub in Olympia. But, with the advent of electronic communications networks, it is possible to tap all the staff and resources of the company for any given assignment.
"Entrix operates as a single profit center," Robilliard said. "I've been doing this since 1971 ... so I have a lot of contacts with prime or subcontractors.
"That is the future of environmental consulting. Either companies will get very large, and do it all in-house, or they will form alliances or associations of consulting groups - so they have all the capabilities together but don't have to keep them all on staff."
Robilliard says there is a cycle in the environmental consulting industry that proceeds as follows: Consolidation creates a smaller number of bigger firms, which then become bureaucratic and may suffer a decline in the quality of their work and in the level of personal service they provide to clients. Smaller groups split off to form their own companies, which, if successful, get bigger - starting the cycle anew.
"This business is built on relationships," Robilliard said. "It becomes harder and harder to maintain those relationships when you get big."
The other choice is not to get bigger, but to specialize. Then, however, it is harder to stay in business.
Though the Entrix presence in the Northwest is small, Robilliard plans to grow the business here. He hopes to transform the two one-person offices into larger enterprises with several employees, just the way the company is growing elsewhere.
These days most of that growth is occurring in Latin America and Africa, as Entrix follows its clients into those markets. Robilliard believes that approach is a much more cost-effective way to get into overseas markets than trying to build up a business there from scratch.
In his native Northwest, to which Robilliard has recently returned, Entrix will be working extensively on salmon issues.
"For me, I'm interested in doing things to get fishing back, so I can go fishing," Robilliard said. "Greg (Reub) is the person to call on salmon. I just catch 'em."
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