Dr. Alison Adams, PhD, PE, a Principal Hydrologist at INTERA Incorporated (INTERA), has been selected to receive the
Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies’ (AMWA’s) Donald R. Boyd Award. Her efforts to incorporate climate change into both operational planning and long-term water supply activities during her tenure as Chief Technical Officer for Tampa Bay Water, the largest wholesale public water supplier in Florida, is just one example of why Dr. Adams was selected for the award. AMWA is the United States’ only policy-making organization that focuses solely on the metropolitan water drinking suppliers that provide more than 140 million Americans with safe drinking water. The Donald R. Boyd award, named for one of AMWA’s founding members, acknowledges extraordinary personal service in the drinking water quality field.
Dr. Adams will be presented with her Donald R. Boyd Award on Monday, October 16, at the Awards Luncheon in
St. Simons, Georgia.
Accounting for Uncertainty in Groundwater Sustainability Modeling
Dr. Abhishek Singh, a Senior Environmental Scientist and Manager of INTERA’s California operations, was recently featured in Western Water’s Summer 2017 edition in an article entitled, “Now Comes the Hard Part: Building Sustainable Groundwater Management in California.” California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), enacted in 2014, establishes a new structure for managing California’s groundwater resources at a local level. In the article, Dr. Singh discusses the importance of planning for uncertainty in groundwater sustainability modeling stating, “Planning with certainty is a rare thing. Planning under uncertainty is a necessity. You can account for uncertainty or just ignore it.” Western Water also captured Dr. Singh’s emphasis on the importance of creating conceptual water budgets for basins as part of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) development process. These budgets identify what is known and unknown about a basin, and characterize the basin through data acquisition. The full Western Water article is available here.
Continue ReadingINTERA Ranks No. 181 on ENR’s 2017 List of Top 200 Environmental Firms
INTERA is included in the Engineering News Record’s (ENR) list of the top 200 environmental firms for the second consecutive year. INTERA ranked 181 on the 2017 list—up 11 spots from the 2016 rank of 192. INTERA’s President and CEO, Dr. Marsh Lavenue, said “Congratulations goes to every INTERA employee. This is excellent news and recognizes the hard work of our team.” The ENR Top 200 Environmental Firm survey ranks the top firms in the dynamic environmental services sector based on participants’ 2016 global revenue from market segments that include hazardous waste, nuclear waste, air, water, wastewater treatment, environmental management, and environmental sciences.
Continue ReadingINTERA Coastal Engineering Project Presented with National Award of Merit by Design-Build Institute of America
INTERA served as a consultant on the Sisters Creek Bridge Replacement Design-Build Project (Project), which just received the Design-Build Institute of America’s (DBIA) National Award of Merit. The Project is one of four winners in the Transportation category for the year 2017.
The Project’s goal was to replace the existing bascule bridge with a new, high-level fixed span structure. DBIA has recognized the Project’s success for overcoming “numerous project challenges, such as poor soils, pedestrian safety concerns and a constrained project site to deliver solutions in ways that were never thought possible.” Project construction spanned 34 months with a budget of $43.7 million.
Led by INTERA’s Senior Coastal Engineer, Phil Dompe, PE, our contributions to the Project included: (1) bridge hydraulic analysis – simulating hydraulic conditions that the new bridge would withstand at 50-, 100-, and 500-year intervals; (2) bridge scour analysis – computing general, aggradation/degradation, and local scour at the bridge piers; (3) wave analysis – developing a 100-year wave model; and (4) abutment and wall protection design – developing recommendations for the proposed abutment and wall protection scheme to withstand projected wave and hydraulic conditions for the next 100 years. More details about INTERA’s solutions for shore protection, transportation infrastructure, inlets and waterways, flood risk management, and coastal resources management are available on our Coastal Engineering page.
National Award of Merit winners are eligible to win one of three Awards of Excellence in the areas of design, process, and teaming. The winners of these awards will be announced at the 2017 Design-Build Conference & Expo in Philadelphia, PA on November 8, 2017.
Continue ReadingINTERA’s Patrick Williamson Presents Short Course on “International Best Practices for Environmental Management of Mines” in Mexico
Principal Hydrogeochemist Patrick Williamson recently presented a one-day short course on “International Best Practices for Environmental Management of Mines” at the Forum Internacional de Capacitación y Educación Minera (FICEMIN) in Zacatecas, Mexico. The course provided students with an overview of best management practices for mine environmental management, with a focus on the two topics that present the greatest long-term risk to a mine, waste management and water quality/supply. This was the third year that Patrick has participated in the 3-day FICEMIN training event, which provides a selection of one-day training courses in Spanish to Mexican mining professionals, covering a range of topics in mining engineering, environmental management, metallurgy, geology, health & safety and maintenance. The previous two years, Patrick lectured on geochemical characterization and management of mine waste.
Mr. Williamson received his Bachelor’s Degree in Geology from the Colorado College and a Master’s Degree in Aqueous Geochemistry from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a Professional Geologist (CA) and a Qualified Person (MMSA). His 30- year career has focused on environmental geochemistry and hydrogeology, starting in the late 1980s on Superfund remedial investigations and feasibility studies, and evolving over time to focus on regional water resources, mine waste rock characterization and management, social license for mine impacts on water quality and availability, and mine waste management. He speaks fluent Spanish, having lived in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Mexico, and managed international mining consulting practices in Mexico.
Continue ReadingDr. Bryn Kimball Joins INTERA
Bryn Kimball, PhD, has joined INTERA’s Southwest Mining and Water Resources Division in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bryn is a geochemist with expertise and interests focused on solving geochemistry problems associated with mining operations. She brings to INTERA her expertise in designing and implementing geochemical field sampling programs, analytical techniques, and the design and application of geochemical models.
Her project experience includes conducting field studies in Au-Cu-As deposits in Chile and Peru to determine whether native microorganisms can be used to improve metal recovery and/or optimally bioremediate mine waste for safer long-term storage, and evaluating trace metal speciation and mobility in mine waste environments, with an emphasis on the influence of secondary minerals on metal speciation.
Prior to joining INTERA, Bryn was a Visiting Professor of Geology at Whitman College, completed post-doctoral research at Queens University, and conducted research on trace-metal speciation and mobility in mine waste environments as a Mendenhall Fellow at the United States Geological Survey. Her research has been published in Environmental Science and Technology, Applied Geochemistry, and Geochimica et Cosmochimca Acta.
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