Region: West

After Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers enacted a series of policy changes that have affected communities across the nation. In addition to new design and construction guidelines for levees and new processes for determining flood insurance rate maps, the Corps placed the responsibility for levee […]

The Ledgewood Landslide that occurred on March 27, 2013 on the west side of Whidbey Island was one of the largest shoreline landslides in recorded Puget Sound history. The slide created a near-vertical headscarp at the crest of the slide area that was approximately 600 feet wide. The slope failure pushed debris approximately 250 feet […]

The 45 Ranch, along the South Fork of the Owyhee River in the remote canyon lands of southwest Idaho, encompasses the most ecologically significant bottomlands habitat within the entire 52 miles of the river. Previous land management practices reduced the Ranch’s once-vibrant wet meadows to dry, desiccated fields of weeds. The Nature Conservancy engaged GeoEngineers […]

The K-W diversion is an in-stream structure that directs water from the Entiat River into an irrigation system that serves agricultural landowners in the Entiat River valley, Chelan County, WA. The existing K-W diversion failed regularly, requiring annual in-channel maintenance that disturbed fish spawning and rearing habitat and hindered fish passage. Our client asked GeoEngineers […]

Beaver Creek is a year-round salmon-bearing stream that runs through the US Navy’s Manchester Fuel Depot near Port Orchard, Washington, and empties into Clam Bay in Puget Sound. Since the 1940s the creek and its estuary have been rerouted, blocked by dams and covered with fill. These activities have impaired the natural function of the […]

Nearly two centuries of industry along Oregon’s Willamette River has led to significant sediment contamination, especially near the watershed’s convergence with the Columbia River, near Portland. A 10-mile stretch of the Willamette, running through Portland Harbor, continues to be heavily contaminated by metals, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxins. Levels in […]

The Talent, Medford and Rogue River Valley Irrigation Districts operate and maintain the Rogue River Project, a complex water system owned by the Bureau of Reclamation that irrigates about 35,000 acres of the Rogue River Basin in southern Oregon State. Much of the project’s infrastructure of reservoirs, canals and dams was built with federal funds […]

In November 2006, GeoEngineers was midway through a channel migration zone (CMZ) study for Pierce County on the Upper Nisqually River when heavy storms battered the region. The storm damaged a number of bridges and caused extensive changes to the river channel. With a State deadline quickly approaching, the County had to quickly revise the […]

GeoEngineers’ major utility client has more than 650,000 oil- and chemical-filled devices in its asset inventory—from a single transformer to a 7 million-gallon capacity diesel storage tank—so it must actively manage periodic spills that occur when assets are damaged. These incidents can be as small as a leak from a roadside transformer after a car […]

Pierce County officials were worried that future channel migration  on the Upper Puyallup, White and Carbon rivers could damage property and infrastructure. The county asked GeoEngineers to develop a channel migration zone (CMZ) analysis in order to better understand potential river boundaries over the next 50 to 100 years and identify low, moderate and severe […]