July 16, 2002

Environmental Watch: New principals at Hart Crowser

SEATTLE -- Hart Crowser has promoted two members of the firm to principal.

Barry Chen is a geotechnical engineer whose projects have ranged from high-rise buildings to industrial and transportation facilities. He has worked substantially abroad, but recently he has managed projects closer to home, such as the Immunex Helix development, which will consolidate all of the Immunex staff onto a 29-acre high-tech campus at Pier 88 in Seattle. Chen is also Hart Crowser’s project manager for the new Seattle Central Library and the Geotechnical On-Call Service Agreement with Washington State Department of Transportation.

Carl Einberger’s focus includes water rights evaluations, water supply development, contaminated groundwater investigations, stormwater management, and mine site remediation. He also manages Hart Crowser’s Water Resources Division in Seattle.

Hart Crowser, with 250 employees, has offices in Anchorage, Portland, California, Colorado, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The firm is headquartered in Seattle.

Landau adds seven

EDMONDS -- Landau Associates has made a number of new hires at its Edmonds headquarters and at its offices in Portland and Spokane.

In Edmonds, Diane Brewster has joined the firm as a senior wetlands ecologist. Craig Batchelor has been hired as a senior CADD Operator/Illustrator. Paul Glenn joins as a staff hydrogeologist, Nate Joyce as a technician and Rachel Evans as marketing coordinator.

In Portland, Landau added Randi Wexler, a senior scientist and environmental management systems specialist.

In Spokane, Landau hired Seneca Peterson, a senior staff scientist specializing in environmental health and safety, indoor air quality, and lead and asbestos abatement, to its Spokane office.

Landau Associates also announced a number of promotions. They include: geologist Brian Butler, P.G., and remediation engineer Jerry Ninteman, P. E., to senior associate, and Chip Halbert, P. E., who obtained his professional engineering license in June, to senior project engineer; all are located in the firm’s Edmonds office.

Eric Weber, P.G., a hydrogeologist, and Ed Heavey, P. E., a geotechnical engineer both in the firm’s Tacoma office, were also promoted to associate. Additional staff promotions in Edmonds include Sean Cool, geotechnical engineer, to senior staff engineer and Ken Reid, geologist, to senior staff geologist.

Water policy shift draws cool reaction

KENNEWICK (AP) -- An effort by state Ecology Director Tom Fitzsimmons to ask Columbia River water users for cooperation has been rebuffed by irrigators.

Hours after Fitzsimmons met with a Tri-Cities economic development group last week, irrigators released a letter accusing him of spouting "pure nonsense at best, or a gross mischaracterization of reality."

Fitzsimmons told Mid-Columbia water users and power producers that economic development will be considered in seeking creative solutions to gridlock that has gripped water management efforts for the past year.

Hundreds of water rights applications are pending, but have been delayed because of fish concerns, Ecology staff and budget shortages and claims for more water than is available.

Under its Columbia River Regional Initiative, Ecology wants to develop an integrated state program that will allow access to the river's water while providing adequate protection for endangered salmon.

The initiative has been tied up in litigation, including lawsuits by the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association.

Pig hunters wanted

TACOMA (AP) -- Hunters are once again being invited, in fact almost urged, to turn their sights on wild pigs on Washington state's Olympic Peninsula.

It's open season, no license, no limit and no restriction on weapons as long as they're otherwise legal.

Unregulated hunting "might be the best way to keep their numbers low," said Jack Smith, a regional program manager for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

"We want to get rid of them. We don't want them to become a permanent population that we have to deal with all the time," Smith said.

Most of the feral pigs, described as resembling Russian wild boars with thick, coarse dark hair and tusks on the adults, have been seen in Grays Harbor and Mason counties in the southern part of the peninsula.

Theories of their origins include boars traded by Russian explorers to area tribes for salmon in the 1800s, domestic animals that escaped from farms and boars imported from eastern Europe by a turn-of-the-century wild game farm.

Using their tusked snouts, the voracious pigs root up plants, bulbs, seeds, insects and grubs, threatening fragile landscapes, competing with native wildlife and threatening rare plant species.

State officials issued a call to arms last year and about 80 feral pigs were taken, mainly in the summer and fall.

Wildfires impact rivers

DURANGO, Colo. (AP) -- Runoff ash and other debris charred by the Missionary Ridge fire have fouled water in streams and ditches in southwestern Colorado.

Rivers in the area, at record lows for early summer, have turned black with fire runoff as scattered monsoon rains push the material into streams. The mucky water is flowing from the Pine River and Vallecito Reservoir to residential and agricultural users.

It's a double-whammy that has water-supply managers anxious. But most say they have plans to deal with the combined effects of the worst drought in history and the stream-choking debris from 70,000 acres of fire-ravaged forest surrounding three main rivers and two key reservoirs.

Federal, state and local water managers agree that another nearly snowless winter would mean disaster here. Without heavy monsoon rains, the water outlook could be bleak as early as summer's end, they say. But the rains could also be a curse.

Flash floods, rock and landslides and thick black runoff are predicted in the three river drainages charred by the fire: the Animas, Florida and Pine.

Fire-singed, drought-diminished Vallecito Reservoir has supplied millions of gallons of water to fight the Missionary Ridge blaze. It also provides drinking water to the town of Bayfield and the Southern Ute Tribe. The tribe, in turn, supplies the town of Ignacio out of its water rights -- one-sixth the water in the reservoir.