Specialty: Watersheds
President: Anthony Donigian
1999 revenues at its Northwest offices: $400,000
Projected revenues 2000: $400,000
Location of HQ: Mountain View, Calif.
Anthony Donigian knows computer modeling, especially the sort used to track and forecast water quality changes. He helped write a leading program for modeling, known as HSPF, around which Donigian and three partners have built their company.
Each partner is based in a different part of the country, so Aqua Terra Consultants operates in those four areas. Donigian leads the headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. John Imhoff heads the Ouray, Colo., operation. John Kittle has the Atlanta office, and Doug Buyerlein leads the Northwest operations, which consist of two Everett offices and one in Olympia.
The offices total 15 employees.
"Most of our work has to do with land-use impacts on flooding-type problems," said Buyerlein. "If you cut 100 acres of forest and replace it with housing, how's that going to impact downstream flooding?" For Snohomish and Thurston counties, Aqua Terra is analyzing specific watersheds and projecting what problems would arise from different intensities of development.
For the state Department of Ecology, Aqua Terra is writing software to create models of how different-sized storm water detention ponds affect down-stream damage from surges of run-off water. The results are to go in a new storm water manual.
"We're working on quite a few changes," Buyerlein said. "The current method that is required by the state underestimates the size a pond needs to be."
For the city of Shoreline, the firm is creating models for managing rain water that flows into Ronald Bog at the top of Thornton Creek to reduce down-creek damage when water levels surge. Possible remedies include vaults under the streets to catch runoff water before it flows into the bog and modifying the way water flows out of the bog, currently through a culvert. Aqua Terra works as a subconsultant to Otak on this job.
Revenues company-wide are "up considerably," Buyerlein said, "because there are more problems, primarily from growth, and more restrictions. We're doing more business for the private development community because they're required to do more-sophisticated analysis than in the past."
The modeling software is called HSPF. The Environmental Protection Agency distributes HSPF for free, with Aqua Terra holding the sole contract to update the software. "Tony's responsible particularly for the water quality part of the model," Buyerlein said.
The listing of local salmon as endangered hasn't generated a lot of work for Aqua Terra yet, but Buyerlein sees it coming.
"I think we're just getting started here," he said. "It's going to require more-sophisticated modeling to better understand the problems we've had and how to fix them."