Michael Newland Receives SCA’s 2020 Presidential Award In recognition of his participation and co-leadership of the extensive volunteer efforts to reunite families with the cremains of their loved ones after the devastating California fire seasons starting in 2017, Michael Newland has been awarded the 2020 President’s Award by the Society for California Archaeology (SCA). Read More »

Gauges and Boilers: Georgetown Steam Plant Artifact Inventory “When I got the call from Seattle City Light (City Light) about the Georgetown Steam Plant project, I knew it would be the project of a lifetime. It would put my 16 years of experience cataloging museum objects, inventorying cramped basements, and handling irreplaceable objects to the ultimate test at one of Seattle’s oldest and most iconic buildings.” Read More »

ESA Welcomes Jon Ambrose as Principal Associate in Seattle Environmental Science Associates (ESA), a leading community planning and environmental consulting firm, welcomes Jon Ambrose to its Northwest team as Principal Associate in the firm’s Environmental Hydrology and Design team. Read More »

Join ESA at the Restore America’s Estuaries 2020 Summit Join a few of ESA’s habitat restoration experts―Doug Robison, PWS, Tom Ries, and John Bourgeois―as they present or serve as panelists at the annual RAE Summit. Read More »

ESA Airports Specialists Host Online Course at UC Davis Join ESA’s Steve Alverson, Senior Vice President, and Chris Jones, Principal Associate, at their online course through the University of California at Davis that focuses on airport land use compatibility and how it affects local land use planning. Read More »

ESA Promotes Chris Lockwood to Cultural Resources Business Group Director A key member of the ESA Cultural Resources team since joining in 2012, Chris Lockwood, PhD, RPA, has been promoted to the role of Business Group Director for the Northwest Region. Read More »

We Made the List!
ENR Ranks ESA in Top 30 All-Environmental Firms According to the July 2020 release from Engineering News Record, ESA ranks as number 21 of the Top 30 All-Environmental Firms. Read More »

How California Plans to Address Its Housing Crisis As the State of California works to address a multitude of challenges facing the economy and its residents’ quality of life, there is broad agreement that the state’s astonishing cost of living and accelerating homeless problem is exacerbated by a shortage of housing, specifically housing attainable to residents at lower income levels. The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has been developing policies in response to California’s current housing challenges. ESA is on the forefront of these efforts. Read More »

CEQ’s Final Rule Modernizing Its NEPA Implementing Regulations For the first time in 40 years, the federal government—via the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)—has revised the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Read More »

More People, Limited Resources: How Florida Is Proactively Managing Public Drinking Water Supply In addition to traffic congestion and the need for improved roadways, population growth in Florida has driven increased demand for drinking water. Learn how ESA is balancing the availability of freshwater supplies with the needs of people and the natural environment. Read More »

Seawall Height in Broward County: The Long and Short of It Most of the developed waterfronts in this part of the country have seawalls to protect the adjacent man-made infrastructure and transition from land to water. However, seawalls are vulnerable to water intrusion and have limited life spans. Many were built in the late 1960s and early 1970s and are in need of replacement. Read about Broward County’s approach to sea-level rise. Read More »

World Landscape Architecture Month ESA’s landscape architecture team has been combining design, planning, and natural resources—rooted in science—to create, enrich, and build the places we love to be. We want to take this moment to celebrate some of our talented team members and their award-winning projects. Read More »

President’s Letter On April 22, we all celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Day while staying in place. Though we missed the camaraderie of getting together to volunteer time and effort within our communities, ESA took the time to reflect on what being a good citizen on this planet looks like. Read More »

Serving Our Clients During COVID-19 A message from our President and CEO, Leslie Moulton-Post, about our field safety measures, approach to using technology to help our clients, and how we are taking care of our employee-owners. Read More »

New Air Quality Regulations for Vessels At-Berth in California Ports New air quality regulations are now being implemented that will have major impacts on how ports and shipping companies do business in California, including an existing air toxics control measure currently in play and a new regulation with a proposed expansion of emissions reductions at ports. Read the full summary here. Read More »

Using the Friant Ranch Decision to Improve Your EIR While the California Supreme Court’s decision in Sierra Club v. County of Fresno was published on Christmas Eve 2018, agencies will be grappling with how to apply its conclusions to their Environmental Impact Reports (EIR) for development projects for quite some time. Read More »

What You Otter Know About Spatial Epidemiology A pertinent topic for another group of mammals. Read More »

Two ESA California Restoration Projects Featured in Estuary News Two prominent ESA projects are featured in articles in the latest issue of Estuary News, a 25-year-old regional magazine of the San Francisco Estuary Partnership and its partners. We hope you have a chance to read the stories in full―some good news in the realm of restoration projects. Read More »

ESA’s Response
to COVID-19 As our communities enter a unique and challenging period due to the coronavirus (COVID-19), we at ESA want to reach out to extend our best thoughts to you, your family, and your colleagues, and to let you know how ESA is responding. Read More »

What Is Blue Carbon, Anyway? The term “blue carbon” refers to the carbon sequestered and stored by coastal habitats, such as seagrass meadows, salt marsh, and mangrove forests. Read more to find out about how restoring and preserving these environments can increase our blue carbon sequestration. Read More »

Leslie Moulton-Post Joins Water Education Foundation’s Board Moulton-Post joins the Foundation’s board alongside four other new members: former Natural Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman, Association of CA Water Agencies’ Executive Director Dave Eggerton, Kronick’s Eric Robinson, the Water and Power Group’s John Bezdek, and GEI Consultants’ Erica Bishop. Read More »

Engineers Week During National Engineers Week—which was founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers in 1951 to ensure a diverse and well-educated future for the engineering workforce by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers—we want to recognize each of the nearly 50 engineers at ESA who have made a positive impact on the world around us. Read More »

ESA Biologist Erika Walther Receives Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse Permits One of the smallest, and arguably cutest, San Francisco Bay endemic species is the salt marsh harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys raviventris). These mice are listed as a federal- and state-endangered species due to habitat loss, but ESA’s biologists are hard at work to restore and preserve these areas. Enter Erika Walther. Read More »

Take a Deep Dive into the Sustainable Water Management Profile The Sustainable Water Management (SWM) Profile, has emerged following several years of work by the Water Foundation. ESA Vice President Betty Andrews, PE, is a member of the SWM Team, a collaborative effort to develop and pilot test the framework, and she provides further insight into this forward-thinking tool. Read More »

Hydro-Carving Approach a Success at Balm-Boyette Stallion Creek Restoration This restoration project seemed fairly straightforward at first blush: grade the pits, plant native species, and restore the freshwater wetland and upland communities back to the way they were before the area was mined. Then Tom reviewed a historic aerial of the site. “There was a creek there that was breached by the mining activities, which resulted in the creek being cut off from the natural flow patterns in the region,” Tom Ries explains. “As soon as I saw that, I thought, ‘well, we have to restore that creek.’” Read More »

Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR) On January 23, 2020 the EPA and Department of the Army finalized the “Navigable Waters Protection Rule” (NWPR) to define “waters of the United States” (WOTUS). The new rule finalizes a two-step process to replace the 2015 Clean Water Rule, which also re-defined WOTUS. ESA’s team of environmental permitting specialists are reviewing the NWPR to understand how it may affect our clients and their projects, including the potential jurisdictional status of various aquatic features. Read More »

Assessing the Impacts of Watershed-Scale Decision Making: The Santa Ana River Sustainability Assessment Pilot Read More »

Press Release: Environmental Science Associates Opens San Jose Office “For all of us, opening a new office during our 50th anniversary year is especially exciting—it’s a celebration of the firm’s important relationships with our South Bay clients, a continuation of our long-standing tradition of supporting the development of healthy, livable communities, and, of course, it supports our mission of providing value for our employee-owners,” said ESA President and CEO Leslie Moulton-Post. Read More »

Co-Equal Benefits of Habitat Protection and Water Supply Security During the recent multi-year drought, each of the the City of Ventura’s supplies—groundwater, the Ventura River, and Lake Casitas—experienced cutbacks that threatened the need for substantial rationing in the city. It became evident that a new reliable, locally controlled water source was required to meet existing and future demands. Read More »

Charting the Course for Water: Washington’s Hirst Decision Washington state may not be the first place one thinks of when considering water scarcity, but recent court decisions and legislation have put the issue front and center in the Evergreen State, particularly in Puget Sound watersheds. Read More »