The Watershed Co.

Specialty: Evaluation and restoration design for streams, wetlands, rivers and lakeshores
President: Bill Way
2002 revenue: $1 million
Projected 2003 revenue: $1 million

Way

The economy has had a rough ride for the past couple of years, but business has been steady for the Watershed Co., which studies and designs mitigation and restoration projects for wetlands, shorelines and water bodies.

“We have been sort of cruising for quite a few years,” says President Bill Way, who founded the firm in 1982. Public-sector work has grown to 70 percent of the firm’s business, reflecting a falloff in private-sector work associated with the recession.

Not surprisingly, many of the Watershed Co.’s biggest projects lately have been for public-sector clients such as Puget Sound Energy and Pierce County.

Photo courtesy of the Watershed Co. The Cascade Land Conservancy gave a conservation award to Rowley Enterprises for work on the Tibbetts Greenway Project in Issaquah. The Watershed Co. designed the project, which helped reduce flooding and improve fish habitat.

Puget Sound Energy is planning a transmission line that will run from Redmond to Duvall, including a new substation for Novelty Hill. The Watershed Co. has been identifying wetlands and springs along the route, and planning the mitigation work.

The firm is also involved in a 10-year post-construction monitoring program for the 65-acre Pierce County landfill wetland mitigation site, for which construction was completed last year.

A new branch office in Wenatchee has allowed the Kirkland-based firm to take on projects along the Wenatchee waterfront, Lake Chelan and Clover Island in Kennewick, which the Port of Kennewick is seeking to develop for commercial and residential use.

Photo courtesy of the Port of Kennewick The Watershed Co.’s new Wenatchee office has enabled it to pursue projects in Eastern Washington, including a large study for the Port of Kennewick’s proposed development of Clover Island.

The Endangered Species Act has led the Watershed Co. to conduct more biological studies than it has in the past, accounting for much of its work on the Eastside, including studies along Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish.

Looking ahead, Way says he’d like to add to his 13-member staff, but he’ll wait first to see what the economy does.

“Things are really cranking at this point,” Way says. “A week or two after the Iraq war was declared, things really bounced back.”