[DJC]

[Protecting the Environment]

1996 ENVIRONMENTAL SURVEY

Foster Wheeler Environmental

Aquatic Research

Environmental Connections

Hart Crowser

Dames & Moore

Directed Technologies Drilling, Inc.

Exploration Products

Geraghty & Miller, Inc.

Historical Research Associates

Jones & Stokes Associates, Inc.

North Creek Analytical

Pentec Environmental

Red Hawk Environmental

Golder Associates

Beak Consultants

Woodword & Clyde

Summit Envirosolutions

Sound Resource Management Group

Foster Wheeler Environmental
It has been a good year for Bellevue-based Foster Wheeler Environmental, which specializes in environmental consulting, engineering and construction for pulp and paper, petroleum, manufacturing, utility and government clients.

Projects in the last year include a $2.5 million remedial investigation for a private pulp mill and several large EISs for timber companies.

In the area of timber, the solutions often involve land-swapping.

"That's definitely an area we're expanding into," said Kathy Hanna, Foster Wheeler's director of industrial and regional programs. Hanna emphasized Foster Wheeler's ability to bring all of the parties together -- the U.S. Forest Service, timber companies and private parties.

The firm has been providing training in risk-based corrective action for people from state regulatory agencies and private industry. This approach involves considering the ultimate use of a site when deciding the extent and nature of its environmental cleanup. "The law's already written," Hanna said. "We're simply training them to apply it."

Another expanding market is remediation of sediments associated with port development. Foster Wheeler is using wider ranging applications of existing technology, Hanna said.

The number of Foster Wheeler employees in Washington has remained steady at about 200 people over the last year, although there have been some staff adjustments. Hanna said Foster Wheeler has been hiring key people to handle emerging markets.

Projected volume this year companywide is $1.1 billion, up from $800 million last year.

Aquatic Research
Aquatic Research of Seattle has maintained a viable business doing low detection-level water quality work and sediment laboratory analyses since 1981. "That's kind of amazing for a lab," said John Dunn, a chemist and client services specialist for Aquatic Research.

Dunn said several laboratories have folded within the past two years, including Alden, ETC and Pacific Northern Analytical. This has happened because of government downsizing, clients who are watching their purse strings and new technologies that require fewer samples to be collected.

Dunn mentioned immuno assay test kits as one example of a technology that has taken work away from many laboratories.

"In the olden days, test kits were more qualitative," Dunn said. "They would tell you, 'Is the contaminant there or is it not there?' Now they're quantitative. They actually tell you how much is there."

Despite relatively flat industry growth in recent years, Aquatic Research has managed to stay busy. The laboratory does most of its work for cities, public works departments and engineering firms.

Aquatic Research recently won a contract to do storm water outfall monitoring at Sea-Tac International Airport. The monitoring is required as part of the Port of Seattle's $2 million settlement with Waste Action Project.

Aquatic Research has had long-term contracts with the Seattle Water Department since 1990 and with the King County Department of Natural Resources Surface Water Management Division since 1989. The laboratory makes sure the city is in compliance with drinking water permits and handles surface water and ground water monitoring for the county.

"We also just did the sampling and lab analyses for the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station's industrial waste and wastewater," Dunn said.

Aquatic Research developed a rapid low-level method for the analysis of petroleum hydrocarbons and set up a mobile shipboard laboratory as a subcontractor for NOAA. The laboratory also participated in research funded by the Department of Ecology to improve detection of septic tank failure by using dye tracers and chemical and bacteriological analyses.

Environmental Connections
If Jim Rybock feels like it, he sometimes takes off and rides his bicycle right in the middle of a weekday.

That doesn't mean Rybock has been taking it easy since he started his own business out of his home. Actually, he says he works more hours now than he ever has before.

"This is much more demanding, but it's also much more rewarding," Rybock said of his new Seattle business, Environmental Connections. "It's not just a job. Everything you do reflects on you and your reputation and your business. ... Yes, I'm working more hours now, but it feels better. I like having control over my time."

Rybock is part of a growing group often dubbed "the alumni association" that consists of seasoned professionals deciding to go it alone after spending years working for large environmental firms.

Rybock has more than 20 years of experience with such firms. He started working as a staff biologist for Woodward-Clyde in Houston in the early '70s, doing a lot of EIS and environmental permitting work related to pipelines and nuclear power plants.

Most recently Rybock worked as director of technical services for Hart Crowser in Seattle.

Rybock described the emergence of small environmental businesses as a good thing.

"Clients get the same people with the same experience, but at a fraction of the price," said Rybock, past chairman of the Washington Environmental Industry Association. "It does take a certain mentality to do this. You've got to have a fair amount of experience and a whole lot of self-reliance."

He said the "environmental connections" he's developed over the years allow him to organize and manage teams of professionals tailored to a particular job. He said he recently used this tactic to organize a team of four specialty firms and independent contractors to do consulting work on a proposed natural gas pipeline across the Tacoma Narrows.

Environmental Connections also has been hired as an independent consultant by Tidewater Barge Co., the business that currently transports gasoline and diesel fuel to Eastern Washington by means of tanker trucks and barges along the Columbia River.

Tidewater Barge helped start the Cascade Columbia Alliance, a group that is strongly opposed to Olympic Pipe Line Co.'s proposed 220-mile gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel pipeline that would stretch from Woodinville to Pasco.

Rybock said he may let his business grow to three or four key people in the not-too-distant future.

"But I don't want to get any bigger than that ever," he said. "Life's too short."

Hart Crowser
In recent years Hart Crowser has been focusing on four primary market areas: mining; contaminated sediments, ports and harbors; federal services; and industrial sites.

Three of those four areas are really starting to pay off. Hart Crowser is working on 20 mining projects in South America along with several other mining projects in Africa, Asia, Australia and the former Soviet Union.

"Sixty percent of our mining work is international," said John Crowser, CEO of Hart Crowser. "We're doing a full range of work in the mining industry. In the U.S., we're mainly working on mine closures. In other countries we're working on mine economics, economic due diligence, environmental due diligence and mine design."

Some of those U.S. closures include the closure and reclamation of Asamera Minerals' gold mine near Wenatchee and the closure of two coal mines in Illinois.

Most of the company's work with contaminated sediments, ports and harbors is done in the United States, with a new emphasis on East coast markets. Hart Crowser just opened a new office in Chicago within the last three months in order to focus on contaminated sediments in the Great Lakes area. The company also works with the Ports of New York and New Jersey.

Locally, Hart Crowser is working with the Port of Tacoma on Commencement Bay's Thea Foss Waterway, the state Department of Transportation's ferry system in Eagle Harbor and with the Ports of Portland.

Crowser said Hart Crowser recently won some lucrative federal contracts with the Department of Defense.

"We're seeing that as a growth area," Crowser said. "But within that marketplace, you have the 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' The 'haves' have contracts that are actually funded, and the 'have-nots' have contracts that don't have adequate funding."

He said Hart Crowser closed its Richland office within the past six months because its five Department of Energy contracts at Hanford were not proving to be profitable.

Hart Crowser's industrial market is the one market area that is somewhat flat at the moment, Crowser said. He said that while Hart Crowser will continue to maintain a strong interest in the remediation and redevelopment of contaminated properties, not very many remedial investigation feasibility study jobs are available at the moment.

"It's a phase of the environmental industry that's being completed or being rethought," he said.

Hart Crowser was established in 1974 in Seattle. The company has a total of 200 employees, about 125 to 150 of which work in the Seattle office. Other Hart Crowser offices are located in Anchorage, Portland, San Francisco, Long Beach, Denver, Chicago and Santiago, Chile.

"There really has to be an economic basis for the work we're doing," he said. "We're beyond the point of just studying issues for the sake of an environmental cause. ... There has to be some economic benefit as well as enviromental improvements."

Hart Crowser had an office in Mexico City that focused on municipal wastewater treatment. That office has been purchased by an East coast firm.

"Working in the international market is no different than working anywhere," Crowser said. "You have to be very focused, and you have to have a strong niche where you basically dominate, so your services are a crucial part of the completion of the work."

He said "general" remediation firms can find themselves competing with hundreds of other similar firms for overseas contracts. Hart Crowser has focused on highly specialized areas so that the company only has to compete with about a half-dozen firms worldwide for certain projects.

He said capable environmental firms are cropping up overseas that can offer services at lower costs. Also, environmental regulations often have more bite overseas (Elaborate on how plants can be shut down overnight in Mexico).

"You need to concentrate on markets where you can really dominate, and then that really travels well," he said.

Hart Crowser reported revenues of $27 million for the year ending June 30, 1996. Crowser said 15 percent growth is expected for the coming year in the company's mining, sediments, ports and harbors and federal markets.

Dames & Moore
Dames & Moore has been in Pac Man mode for several years now.

The firm has been expanding its range of services by gobbling up other businesses and incorporating them into the newly established Dames & Moore Group. These acquisitions are allowing Dames & Moore to shift away from an exclusively "environmental" label and move into the realm of total project management.

Businesses acquired within the last three years include:

  • Bovay Northwest, an engineering, environmental services and architectural firm;
  • Walk Haydel, a process engineering and project and construction management firm that services the petrochemical industry;
  • O'Brien Kreitzberg, the largest construction management company in the U.S.;
  • DecisionQuest, a firm that specializes in trial strategy and litigation support;
  • HYA, a wastewater and water design and engineering firm;
  • BRW, a transportation planning and engineering firm that was acquired about three months ago.

Dames & Moore and Dames & Moore Ventures also are considered part of the Dames & Moore Group.

Transportation planning and litigation support are two entirely new areas for Dames & Moore, which has offices in 136 cities in 26 different countries in Western and Eastern Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Russia.

Some of Dames & Moore's current and recently completed environmental jobs in the Puget Sound region include: a large contaminated soil cleanup at Fort Lewis for the Army Corps of Engineers; preparation of the Washington State Convention & Trade Center's expansion EIS; and preparation of the EIS for the proposed construction of a federal courthouse in downtown Seattle.

Dames & Moore also did the investigation and some spot cleanups for the Bonneville Power Administration Ross Complex in Vancouver, a site that was just removed from the National Priorities List.

"That's a success story because it's rare that a site gets taken off the Superfund list," said Roy Elliott, business manager of Dames & Moore's Geosciences Group.

Dames & Moore also has been called on to write several recent Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) applications. The company handled the applications for the Cowlitz Cogeneration Project at the Weyerhaeuser Longview Mill site; the Satsop Combustion Turbine Project; and the Chehalis Power Project at Chehalis Industrial Park.

Now Dames & Moore is handling the elaborate application process for Olympic Pipe Line Co.'s proposed 220-mile gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel pipeline that would stretch from Woodinville to Pasco. EFSEC hearings on the project will take place in 1997.

Elliott said the hazardous waste business has been relatively slow lately. He sees cleanup work at harbors and estuaries, the reengineering of industrial plants and the handling of water resource issues as emerging areas of opportunity.

"We're working on water reuse projects and water rights transfers," he said.

Katy Chaney, Dames & Moore's environmental services manager for the Pacific Northwest, pointed to the redevelopment of brownfields as another potential growth area.

The Dames & Moore Group reported total revenues of $645 million in 1995.

Directed Technologies Drilling, Inc.
A Kent firm with seven employees has installed almost half of the approximately 400 horizontal, directionally-drilled wells that exist in the United States.

Directed Technologies Drilling has operated since January 1996. Prior to that time, all seven DTD employees worked for FlowMole Environmental Services Corp., a joint venture firm established in 1994 and co-owned by Unocal and Utilx, a Seattle-based trenchless technology contractor.

DTD installs drills at environmental remediation sites for soil vapor extraction, ground water extraction, soil venting, air sparging, hot air or steam injection, free product recovery and other related applications.

Clean air is bubbled through the wells to strip contaminants from the ground water. The contaminants are then captured in the unsaturated zone and sent off to a treatment plant, said Mike Lubrecht, DTD's marketing manager.

DTD just completed a $500,000 job for the U.S. Department of Energy in Ohio that involved installing ground water extraction wells to remove trichloroethylene from a uranium reprocessing site.

DTD has installed horizontal wells with lengths approaching 1,000 feet, depths of more than 30 feet and well diameters of up to 12 inches. Lubrecht said DTD often gets hired as a subcontractor for designers or consulting firms.

"But we're getting more and more work from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense," he said. "And we're proposing our technology for use at Hanford. ... We've been seeing more requests for proposals pertaining to government sites than commercial sites."

He said the federal government contracts have been worth $300,000 to $500,000, while the commercial contracts have been falling in the $60,000 range.

Lubrecht described some of the benefits of horizontal wells.

"Previously, you had no way to get to some contaminants," he said. "If contaminants extended under a building, there was no way to get to it. Now you can chase contaminants beneath surface structures. A big advantage is that you can go under a gas station and keep that gas station in business while you're cleaning up their site."

DTD should have revenues of approximately $3 million in 1996, Lubrecht said. "And next year we'd love to double that," he said. "We're very enthusiastic about what we're doing."

Exploration Products
They've built small cities in Kazakhstan and provided shelter in the jungles of New Guinea. They've helped with military and relief operations overseas and played crucial roles in the latest Jurassic Park and Star Trek movies.

They are the eight employees of Spokane-based Exploration Products, a firm renowned for providing life support services and supplies in remote areas of the planet.

The company provides clothing, shelter, electricity, cooking facilities, vehicles, sewage disposal systems, survival gear, specialized equipment -- anything a group of people might need when they're very, very far away from a 7-11.

"If you need to go live in the Amazon Basin, or you need to spend some time in Siberia, you call us," said Dennis Medina, marketing manager for Exploration Products. "We're logistics managers. We solve people's field-oriented problems."

Medina said most of Exploration Products' clients are oil, gas and mineral exploration companies, construction companies and film crews. The United Nations and different branches of the U.S. military also rely on Exploration Products' services at sites all over the globe.

The company also has done a considerable amount of work for environmental contractors at remediation sites. These sites have been as close to home as the deserts of central Washington and as far away as the Komi River near Archangel'sk in the northernmost regions of Russia.

The 12-year-old firm won its first environmental contract four years ago with Westinghouse-Hanford Co. at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Exploration Products provided custom portable shop buildings for use during remote field drilling operations, Medina said.

"Everything we provide is very, very portable," Medina said. "It's very lightweight and compact, so it allows you to go places that are extremely difficult to get to. ... Our buildings are significantly less expensive than purchasing a modular unit like a trailer."

Other environmental projects tackled by Exploration Products include:

  • Rebuilding of State Route 504 by Golder Associates, the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Transportation after the eruption of Mount St. Helens;

  • An Environmental Protection Agency cleanup project in northern Alaska;

  • A demonstration project being done by Houston-based Groundwater Services for Shell Oil Co.;

  • Cleanup of a major oil spill on the Komi River that was conducted by AES Hartech, an environmental firm with offices in Cyprus, Australia and Moscow.

"We often go to places that are very environmentally sensitive," Medina said. "We have to be aware of the impact we have on those environments. ... Of course, 30 years ago, nobody really thought of that."

Exploration Products also provides equipment to shield the environment from damaging impacts, such as: fabric berm systems with secondary containment that can hold up to 26,500 gallons of wastewater, fuel or chemicals; temporary decontamination and wash-down systems that automatically recycle water; and lined radial-hoop tanks that can hold up to 2 million gallons of potable water, wastewater, fuel or hazardous wastes.

Exploration Products had more than $4 million in sales last year.

Geraghty & Miller, Inc.
Geraghty & Miller began in Plainview, N.Y., in 1956 as a ground water and hydrogeology firm. Heidemij started doing the same thing in the Netherlands back in 1888.

In 1991, the Dutch firm acquired Geraghty & Miller, and now the two giants of the environmental industry are making beautiful infrastructure together.

Geraghty & Miller has a total of 1,400 employees in the United States, with 30 people working in two Northwest offices in Redmond and Portland. Heidemij now has about 6,000 employees worldwide.

Heidemij has purchased 25 more businesses around the world in the last two years and had overall revenues of more than $560 million in 1995.

Because of the acquisition of so many new services, both Heidemij and Geraghty & Miller are shifting away from a purely "environmental" label. Mary Gearhart, vice president and regional manager of Geraghty & Miller's Northwest region, said about 50 percent of the company's business focuses on risk assessment and the other 50 percent involves design and construction of infrastructure projects.

Some examples of local Geraghty & Miller projects include:

  • Remedial investigation and preparation of a feasibility study for Arco at the Harbor Island Superfund site;

  • Construction for ground water cleanup at a Superfund site in Bozeman, Mont., for McFarland Cascade Co., a subsidiary of Idaho Pole Co.

"We have no government contracts here," Gearhart said. "We're only working with commercial clients."

Gearhart said Geraghty & Miller is pursuing work related to ports and harbors, brownfields, underground storage tanks and the telecommunications industry. Geraghty & Miller recently purchased Piedmont Olsen Hensley, an engineering company based in South Carolina that builds telecommunications towers.

"We're going to help them do the design and build the towers into existing structures," Gearhart said.

Revealing a push into overseas markets, Geraghty & Miller may acquire two more firms in Chile and Brazil by the end of this year, Gearhart said.

"Overall, the market is tight in the U.S.," Gearhart said. "I think that about halfway through 1997 we'll see a shakeout with the Big 8 or Big 10 environmental firms left along with a lot of very specialized local firms."

Historical Research Associates
"I can't believe people pay us to do this," said Gail Thompson, vice president of Historical Research Associates Inc. (HRA), as she described how interesting, fun and intellectually engaging she and fellow HRA employees find their work.

Thompson, who has a doctorate in anthropology and has worked at HRA's Seattle office since it opened seven years ago, talked enthusiastically about her experiences interacting with tribal elders and tracking down culturally significant sites and artifacts.

"It's such a privilege," she said. "You could never pay for experiences like that."

Established 22 years ago in Missoula, Mont., HRA has a total of 30 employees, with six people in the Seattle office and one person in Washington, D.C.

HRA specializes in three main areas: cultural resource management; court cases involving Indian treaty rights to land and resources; and hazardous waste sites.

In the realm of hazardous waste sites, HRA is often hired by law firms to examine the history of contaminated sites and track down any potentially liable parties or potentially responsible parties who should contribute to the cleanup costs.

Much of the firm's efforts are directed toward preserving cultural and natural resources at major project sites. HRA has a contract with Dames & Moore, the environmental firm hired by Olympic Pipe Line Co. to write its Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) application and acquire permits for its proposed cross-Cascades pipeline.

HRA has been called on to help Olympic executives develop good relations with the leaders of affected Indian tribes. The firm is doing a survey of much of the 220-mile proposed pipeline route on foot, scouting out any prehistoric or historic archaeological sites along the way, Thompson said.

"They can usually complete about 2 to 6 miles a day," she said.

HRA also is studying the historical significance of buildings and structures at hydroelectric projects coming up for relicensing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, like the Snoqualmie Falls Project, the Cowlitz River Project in Tacoma and the Powerdale Hydroelectric Project in northern Oregon.

"We work under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 a lot," Thompson explained.

Other sites currently being studied by HRA include two proposed wind power project sites near Goldendale, Burlington Northern Railroad's railroad yard in Auburn and the new University of Washington campus in Bothell.

The firm did similar work at the Wyckoff/Eagle Harbor Superfund site on Bainbridge Island, where the buildings at the former Wyckoff Co. wood treatment plant were photographed and preserved in the Library of Congress.

HRA historians are writing books on the history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' work in Alaska and the U.S. Forest Service's wildlife policies. HRA wrote a book for the Army Corps in 1994 called "Saving the Salmon: A History of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Efforts to Protect Anadromous Fish on the Columbia and Snake Rivers."

Thompson said HRA's Seattle office is staying busy but has no immediate plans to expand.

"Our work is tied to the economy of the Northwest and the Northern Rockies," she said. "Consulting is very much tied to the rest of the business community."

HRA's annual revenues have been in the $1 million to $2 million range since 1992. Thompson said 1995 was a boom year, with revenues approaching $2.5 million.

"We don't expect to exceed that this year," she said. "We'll probably earn between $1.5 million and $2 million in 1996."

Jones & Stokes Associates, Inc.
When people need to have an environmental impact statement whipped up, they often turn to Jones & Stokes.

The firm's Bellevue office has produced scores of EISs over the years, not to mention hundreds of pages of environmental assessments, watershed assessments, transportation studies and aesthetics and visual impact assessments.

Jones & Stokes has been hired by the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council to review Olympic Pipe Line Co.'s application for a proposed 220-mile cross-Casades pipeline and to write the joint NEPA/SEPA EIS for the project.

The firm also is working on two major roadway EIS projects. One involves rebuilding a Northeast Eighth Avenue intersection in downtown Bellevue, and the other involves a bypass at Sprague Avenue in Spokane.

Jones & Stokes won several contracts over the past three months with the National Guard and the Bonneville Power Administration. The National Guard has asked that environmental assessments be done in Washington and Oregon, and BPA has requested that a wildlife mitigation EIS and a watershed EIS be written for the Northwest Power Planning Council's entire multi-state region.

Jones & Stokes also has an open-ended contract to do work for the U.S. Forest Service.

"Wetlands is one of our major areas of activities," said Grant Bailey, managing principal of Jones & Stokes' Bellevue office. "We're seeing a shift away from permitting a lot of small wetland projects and a move toward much larger projects ... like wetlands planning, mitigation banking and multi-agency arrangements on how wetlands can be permitted."

Established 25 years ago, Jones & Stokes has about 200 employees in four U.S. offices. Its headquarters are in Sacramento, Calif. The Bellevue office has 20 employees.

Bailey said 1996 revenues for the Bellevue office will exceed 1995 earnings.

North Creek Analytical
At a time when many environmental laboratories around the country are going out of business or getting bought out by competitors, North Creek Analytical's revenues have been growing by 45 percent every year since 1992.

North Creek President Scot Cocanour predicted that the Bothell-based company's astronomical growth rate soon will taper off at about 15 percent. He described the seven-year-old company as a "strong medium-sized," full-service environmental laboratory.

North Creek has 95 employees and offices in Bothell, Spokane and Portland. The laboratories do a great deal of work for national petroleum companies.

"For the last eight years or so, oil companies have been cleaning up their retail stations, but ... many of the worst sites have been remediated," Cocanour said. "Now they're focusing on their terminals, distribution points and pipelines -- the next level prior to the retail sale of petroleum."

North Creek analyzes samples from many of such terminals throughout the Puget Sound region and from the oil refineries in the Bellingham/Anacortes area, Cocanour said.

North Creek also gets hired by many consulting and engineering firms and federal agencies to analyze samples for Pacific Northwest projects. The laboratory helps water purveyors around the state meet the testing requirements for safe drinking water as set out in the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Cocanour pointed to the redevelopment of brownfields as another potential growth area for laboratories.

He explained that laboratory industry grew rapidly in the '80s and early '90s.

"Now we're seeing a large shakeout," Cocanour said. "A lot of firms have closed, merged, changed names. But clearly there is still a strong need for laboratory services."

He said North Creek has managed to maintain strong growth by focusing on four main areas: rigorous data quality; competitive rates; prompt turnaround of results; and the development of strong relationships with clients.

Although it is a regional laboratory, North Creek can offer expanded analytical capacity anywhere in the United States because of arrangements with affiliated laboratories based in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Arizona, Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Pentec Environmental
Pentec Environmental of Edmonds just broke into the international market for the very first time when employees conducted underwater video surveys of coral reefs and seagrass around Babeldaob Island.

Where's Babeldaob Island, you ask? It's in the Republic of Palau. And where's Palau? Well, it's kind of near Guam.

Pentec normally does business in Washington and Alaska, but last month Pentec President Mike McDowell traveled to Palau along with Pentec's Director of Asia and Pacific Operations Bill Brewer, who is helping Pentec ferret out overseas work opportunities in that part of the world.

While in Palau, they used the Sea-All, Pentec's underwater video surveying and mapping system that can do precision mapping at depths impractical for scuba divers.

Other proprietary technologies developed by Pentec in recent years include: the MudMole, a sediment core sampling system; and the Tracker, an acoustic fish tracking system that is being used to track the behavior of steelhead returning to Lake Washington through the Ballard Locks.

The environmental consulting firm was started seven years ago by McDowell, current chairman of the Washington Environmental Industry Association and a former employee of Dames & Moore. The company now has 30 employees.

This year Pentec expects to increase its revenues by 7 percent over its 1995 revenues of $2.5 million, said Susan Rittle, marketing director for Pentec.

Pentec does work for ports, timber and mining companies, private developers, government agencies and regional development banks.

Some recent and ongoing Pentec projects include:

  • Wetlands assessments, assistance with storm water detention and treatment design, and wetland and storm water monitoring at SuperMall of the Great Northwest in Auburn;

  • Use of the MudMole to take more than 200 sediment samples at the Port of Seattle Terminal 18 redevelopment project;

  • Preparation of a SEPA EIS and sediment studies for the Port of Everett South Terminal;

  • Permitting assistance, computer modeling and wetland design for the city of Des Moines' Barnes Creek Regional Detention Facility.

Pentec has had a contract with NOAA for the past five years to do long-term recovery monitoring in Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Marketing director Rittle commented on how important it is for environmental firms to understand their clients' needs in the '90s.

"You have to understand their bottom line," Rittle said. "You have to understand how an environmental project fits into the rest of their business."

Red Hawk Environmental
Red Hawk Environmental's founders have made contaminated coatings their niche.

The Richland-based business officially opened about a year ago. It was started by Greg and Marc Azure, two brothers who were born in the Tri-Cities area and who worked in management positions at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation for many years.

When Hanford began downsizing, Greg Azure decided to accept a voluntary layoff so he could get involved with the business on a full-time basis.

"I saw the handwriting on the wall," said Azure, who left Hanford in February 1995. "It's an interesting transition, seeing people around here leaving their stable jobs and starting their own businesses."

His brother Marc began devoting his energy to Red Hawk on a full-time basis in the fall of 1994.

Now the Azures, who are members of the Santee Sioux Tribe, are directing much of their attention to lead abatement. New federal regulations have created an emerging market for the safe removal of lead-based paint, Greg Azure said.

The regulations draw attention to the effects of lead-based paint on children who live in homes built before 1978 and on workers who have to remove the paint in industrial settings. For years, such paint removal was done by means of sandblasting, a method that removes paint well but that creates tons of contaminated sand and exposes workers to airborne lead particles, Azure said.

"We knew that a new solution was needed," Azure said.

After considering research on new paint-stripping technologies done at Battelle's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Azures decided to use a technology called the Xenon Flash Lamp System manufactured by Polygon Industries in San Francisco.

"It uses high-intesity light in bursts," Azure said. "It instantly turns the paint surface to ash, and it simultaneously has a vacuum that pulls the ash into an environmentally-contained catch system. It's a safer way to remove lead-based paint."

He added that the system drives overall project costs down because containment of contaminated sand is no longer an issue.

"Containment can cost 70 percent of the total cost of a lead abatement job," he explained.

In addition to lead-based paint, Red Hawk is focusing on all kinds of contaminated coatings, including radioactively-contaminated paint found in abundance at a place like Hanford.

"Radioactive contamination is a surface phenomenon," Azure said. "So, for the most part, we achieve a decontaminating effect when we remove the paint."

Azure said he and his brother are very optimistic about Red Hawk's chances of being selected to do work at Hanford, particularly when the time comes to decommission reactors along the Columbia River.

Right now Red Hawk has five employees and a network of at least 15 other environmental specialists. Like many start-up companies in the Tri-Cities area, Red Hawk received financial support from a Department of Energy grant designed to help diversify the region's economy. The grant money is being disbursed by local community economic development agencies.

Azure estimated that Red Hawk will grow to 17 full-time employees within the next fiscal year and more than 30 employees the following year. He said the company should bring in revenues of $3 million to $3.5 million in fiscal year 1997.

"In about four years, I could see this being a $30 million a year business," Azure said. "We feel we have the potential to grow into a national-level company."

Golder Associates
Environmental consulting firms are consolidating and downsizing, reducing the variety of services they offer and focusing on a few specialized ones, according to Kent Angelos, office manager for Golder Associates in Redmond.

This trend is occurring because of government budget pressures, which have resulted in weakened enforcement of environmental regulations, Angelos said.

"We are in a wait-and-see mode," he explained.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Golder Associates is an engineering and environmental consulting company with 150 employees at the Redmond office, 700 in the U.S. and 1,700 worldwide. The company specializes in applying earth sciences and engineering to environmental and natural resources, Angelos said.

Some recent major projects for Golder include engineering for a barrier wall at the Queen City Farms Superfund site in Maple Valley and conducting a large-scale environmental investigation for the Port of Vancouver, Wash., mostly involving petroleum-related contaminants.

Angelos said a growth area for the industry is assisting clients in clean management practices by increasing environmental awareness through employee training and other methods. Hopefully this will help reduce the number of environmental disasters such as toxic spills, he said.

New technologies are being developed to assist in environmental cleanup efforts. Angelos cited in situ sediment treatment as one example.

Angelos sees steady growth at Golder, particularly in the mining and consumer products industries. The Redmond office reported revenues of $21 million in 1995.

Beak Consultants
Beak Consultants is a 28-year-old firm that specializes in natural resource management with an emphasis in marine and aquatic sciences.

Beak's Kirkland office employs more than 50 people and is one of six Beak offices in the United States. The company also has four offices in Canada and two in Asia.

Beak recently finished a series of channel assessment surveys for Port Blakely Tree Farms and is currently working on the EIS for the Du Pont Golf Course, an outfall analysis for McNeil Island and the Mid-Columbian Habitat Conservation Plan.

Ron Campbell, president of Beak, said business has remained steady during 1996. "We haven't been severely affected by the downturn in the consultant business, but are aware and cautiously optimistic," he said.

Campbell said Beak's revenue was $4.5 million last year, and 1996 has shown a 10 percent increase to date.

Beak spokeswoman Ginny Brewer said the firm's business comes from several different areas. The marine division has kept busy since February and can be "almost overwhelming" at times, Brewer said. She added that this is a mixed blessing, as projects for that division are generally damage assessments of ocean oil spills.

Brewer said Beak's wildlife division also has had steady work all summer. The division has conducted several species surveys for threatened animals such as the spotted owl.

Beak merged with the fisheries engineering firm FishPro last year. This has added a new dimension to Beak's services, allowing the company to do more fishery and hatchery design work.

Brewer said the Internet has helped Beak become more efficient and profitable. She explained that the Internet has become a staple resource for project research, with the dozens of academic and governmental resources available. Although Beak has yet to create its own web site, Brewer said the company should have something up on the Internet within the next year.

Woodword & Clyde
In the good old days of the 1980s, Metro would have had five or six big jobs going and every major consultant in town could have one. But today Metro has just one major job going, the $130 million Denny Combined Sewer Outflow, "and we're all pouncing on it," says Phyllis Brunner, vice presidnet of Woodword & Clyde's Seattle office.

It's the same story for all public projects, Brunner said: few jobs and lots of competition. Firms who a few years ago "wouldn't have spoken to each other" are now teaming up to get the jump on other competitors. In addition to having fewer projects, public agencies are also doing more of the work in-house to keep their employees busy.

Work on the private side slowed as both the regulatory climate and the commercial real estate market softened. A lot of industrial cleanup has been put on hold as businesses have gotten the message that regulators no longer wield a big hammer. For this reason the "air business" hasn't become what consultants were expecting, Brunner said.

Brunner thinks public work will remain tight for a number of years because it will take time to develop creative financing approaches to meet infrastructure needs and also because Seattle is a popular market. National firms will continue to open offices here and keep competition fierce.

There is hope on the private side as construction and development increase, especially in marginal areas which require a lot of engineering.

"It's a little better," said Keith Jones, vice president involved with private work, "but it's not a boom like 10 years ago because it is a mature market and because there is so much competition."

Woodword Clyde's staffing levels have grown in the past three years from 28 to 60 today. Brunner said the firm billed $9 million in 1995. Nationally, the Denver-based company has 2,500 employees. Brunner said the firm has stayed healthy by being diversified, splitting the business equally between federal government, local government and private jobs.

Brunner thinks over the next five years water will be a big area of focus for the firm, as will pollution prevention. The industry will continue its shake out, with firms becoming boutiques or consolidating into larger organizations, she said. Over the last five years, there has been a 20 percent decline in the number of firms, but Jones said the industry is not yet at equilibrium.

International work makes up 20 percent of Woodword & Clyde's business. While Brunner sees that as a legitimate market for the next few years, she believes foreign firms will become quite competent at handling enviromental work in a relatively short time.

"Who needs Phyllis and Keith in Seattle?" Brunner said. "It won't make up for the revenue we're all struggling for in our own backyard."

Not only will foreign firms be competent, they'll also be cheaper. Jones said already Woodword & Clyde's Philippines office can do work cheaper than its U.S. offices. He sees professional firms taking a cue from tennis shoe manufacturers, doing environmental design work offshore and importing it back into the U.S.

Summit Envirosolutions
Billings for 1995 at Summit Envirosolutions' Bellevue office were between $5 million and $7 million and are anticipated to be at or a little below that level for 1996, according to project manager Jeff Thompson.

Thompson said the six-year-old Minneapolis-based firm has about 85 employees in the local office, which focuses on design and installation of soil and groundwater remediation projects. Private work makes up about 75 percent of the firm's work.

Like almost everyone else in environmental services, Summit Envirosolutions is feeling the effect of increasing competition. Thompson said the layoffs and downsizing at large companies has created a wave of small firms staffed with senior technical people who can work out of their homes or a small office and undercut much of their competition on price.

"It makes it really hard for the large firms to compete. Those people have found their niche. We're not one of the big boys but we still feel it," Thompson said.

Summit has managed to keep its work levels stable by looking into new services such as cultural and natural resource assessments and teaming up with contractors to design and install gas stations.

People in the Seattle office work as far south as northern California and as far east as Montana. Thompson said the firm would like to work in Canada but faces stiff fees and taxes for bringing people and equipmemnt over the border. "Ironically, Canadian companies don't seem to have that problem, but that's another issue."

Out of the Seattle office, Summit is pursuing site characterization and cleanup work in Korea, Thailand and other Asian countries. Thompson said the firm hasn't gotten any jobs overseas yet but the effort is a long-term one, requiring a lot of marketing and business development effort. Summit won't set up an Asian office for now. Seattle will be the base for Asian work, Thompson said.

Thompson sees reform of the Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA) as promising for the environmental consulting business. He thinks having site-specific cleanup standards will result in more cleanup work being done, as would adopting a program to help reimburse property owners for cleanup costs. Clients from states with such programs ask when Washington will "get in step with everyone else," Thompson said.

Thompson is also encouraged by the pioneering work the state is doing on brownfields but, as with MTCA revisions, he said work resulting from such reforms won't come overnight.

"Ecology says it is revising cleanup requirements but (for now) MTCA is still MTCA."

Sound Resource Management Group
Sound Resource Management Group executives don't mind doing a little "dumpster diving" every once in a while, especially if it's for a good cause.

Typically, that good cause involves reducing the amount of waste taken to a landfill and saving clients significant amounts of money.

"You can learn a whole lot by diving into someone's dumpster," said Jim Jensen, vice president of Sound Resource Management in Seattle. "For instance, you can see how they can recycle more of their materials."

Sound Resource Management has been offering consulting services for waste reduction, recycling and composting since 1987. While most clients have been government agencies, more and more private businesses are turning to Sound Resource Management for help with cutting down their waste hauling bills.

"We either get paid as consultants, or we get paid out of the savings we generate for the company," Jensen said. "That takes the risk off the business, and it really motivates us to go out and find a lot of savings for them."

Sound Resource Management recently prepared a guide called "Prevent Packaging Waste" and conducted a Packaging Waste Prevention Project for the Snohomish County Solid Waste Management Division. The project resulted in a savings of $443,000 and hundreds of tons of waste in one year for the 26 businesses that participated.

One of the businesses, Alpine Windows of Bothell, saved almost $265,000 in one year by substituting wood crates with a sling system for transporting glass. The company is saving an additional $150 a month in disposal costs by recycling its shrink wrap.

Other projects underway at Sound Resource Management include the development of new markets for recycled organic materials and the preparation of a five-year forecast of prices for recycled materials, which will be released this fall and will be updated on a quarterly basis.

Over the years, Sound Resource Management has helped scores of local governments establish recycling and composting programs and then promote those programs. The company also offers similar services to businesses and non-profit organizations, along with training and public education programs and economic and market analyses.

Now that government budgets are being scaled back, Sound Resource Management is making an effort to work with private businesses directly. Jeffrey Morris, president of Sound Resource Management, provides both economic forecasting and recycling advice to Seattle Filmworks.

"I forecast how many rolls of film customers are going to send in for processing," said Morris, who has a doctorate in economics. "And they're one of our direct recycling clients. We get paid based on how much money we save them."

Sound Resource Management has the equivalent of five full-time employees. Morris said the company should bring in revenues of $1 million in 1997.

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