Surveys -- Environmental Outlook 2003 -- Seattle DJC.COM

Hart Crowser

Specialty: Environmental engineering
President: John Crowser
Fiscal 2003 (just finished) revenues: $30 million
Fiscal 2004 projection: $30 million

Crowser
Crowser

Several forces were in play in 2002, affecting Hart Crowser’s business. Because 30 percent of the environmental engineering firm’s business comes from federal projects, much work was on hold as Congress forged the federal budget last fall, according to President and CEO John Crowser.

The lag time between approval of the budget and actually doing the appropriated projects “can be really tough on our organization,” he said.

A second force has been the lagging economy, which may be slowly turning around. “As the economy moves ahead, people develop new projects — such as remediation cleanup of brownfield sites,” Crowser said. “That increases our business. We’re hopeful the economy has hit the bottom, but still uncertain.”

Thea Foss Waterway
Photos courtesy of Hart Crowser

Hart Crowser provided design and habitat restoration services for contaminated sediment cleanup in the Thea Foss.

Another driver is the regulatory climate, and the Bush administration has not “pushed toward enforcement of existing standards,” he said. In general, he said the environmental cleanup market has matured — including work on Superfund sites and underground storage tank cleanup. “There’s a lot of competition, because that’s a real commodity market,” he said. “It’s less and less an active part of our business.”

Hart Crowser has been active in the area of restoration of waterways, including port dredging and treatment of contaminated sediments. The firm is working on such projects on the East Coast, and in Tacoma on the Thea Foss Waterway cleanup. “The ecological restoration of the rivers and streams within the Northwest and around the country are a big issue,” Crowser said.

Hart Crowser is one of several environmental firms working on the Thea Foss waterway.

An emerging area is remediation of abandoned mines. “It’s earmarked (in the federal budget) for fairly significant funding,” he said. Abandoned mine issues include the downstream effects of heavy metals on water life. “There’s a real upstream need of waterway cleanup. It’s nice to see it is becoming a high priority.”

Hart Crowser is involved in mine remediation projects in Wenatchee and Czechoslovakia.

Such work is the natural progression in the environmental cleanup process. “We’re looking at issues farther upstream, and working our way through the environmental chain and learning how past practice issues have had an impact on waterways,” he said.