CH2M HILL Brings in New Natural Treatment Systems Expertise

CH2M HILL, an engineering, procurement, construction and operations firm, announced that two natural treatment systems (NTS) technologists are helping to round out the firm’s wastewater services by offering their expertise of NTS to clients in the upper Midwest.

“As a global leader in water and wastewater services, natural treatment systems, like wetlands, have allowed CH2M HILL to provide a variety of cost-effective and sustainable services for industries and communities around the globe,” said Doug Lubben, CH2M HILL client service manager. “We are very happy that Brian M. Davis, Ph.D., P.E., and David Austin, P.E., have joined CH2M HILL’s natural treatment systems team in the Minneapolis/St. Paul office to share their international natural treatment expertise with local clients.”

NTS offers municipalities both short and long-term solutions that require fewer operational personnel, consume less energy, have lower operating and capital costs and produce fewer residuals than most “concrete and steel” approaches, the company said. Natural systems also are a sustainable approach as the natural systems rely on renewable sources of energy--solar radiation, wind, gravity and storage of energy in biological and chemical forms.

The NTS services that CH2M HILL offers include:
• Domestic wastewater treatment;
• Groundwater remediation (petroleum hydrocarbons, nutrients, metals);
• Aircraft deicing fluid treatment (i.e., propylene glycol);
• Acid mine drainage treatment;
• Storm water treatment;
• Phytoremediation; and
• Water recycling/irrigation system design.

Brian M. Davis, Ph.D., P.E., has experience in the design of treatment wetland systems for industrial and municipal wastewaters; numerical modeling of water chemistry; groundwater flow and solute transport processes; and waste and groundwater treatment for airport deicing, mining, refinery and other industrial activities.

David Austin, P.E., has more than 12 years national and international experience with natural treatment systems and decentralized wastewater treatment design, project management, permitting and technology development. Austin also has experience in designing subsurface and surface flow treatment wetlands for wastewater treatment and water quality improvement, lake rehabilitation and restoration projects, decentralized wastewater treatment, and national and local regulatory requirements.

Source: CH2M HILL