USA: GEI Enhances Contaminated Sediments Practice

GEI Consultants, Inc., one of the nation’s leading geotechnical, environmental, water resources, and ecological science and engineering firms announced the accelerated growth of its national Contaminated Sediments Practice.

The company has strengthened its offerings both through acquisition and the hire of a number of senior experts and mid-level technical staff in waste engineering, marine ecology, shoreline restoration, and construction management services.

The move underscores GEI’s commitment to offering a full array of scientific and consulting engineering services to site owners and teaming partners seeking innovative solutions to complex contaminated sediment problems. GEI’s services range from complete sediment site characterization and management, and related civil and structural engineering to alternative shoreline stabilization design; river, harbor and estuary management; and species assessment and impact mitigation. Services may be delivered separately or seamlessly, depending upon scope, need, and timing.

“GEI has been and is engaged in a number of complex projects involving contaminated sediment in streams, rivers, canals, estuaries and harbors,” said Francis P. Leathers , GEI president. “Clients are looking for innovative design and remediation solutions in all phases of the project life cycle, and GEI is positioned to support such initiatives, including site investigation, permitting, remedial design, capping, dredging, transport and more.”

One recent project, a contaminated boat slip in New Bedford, Mass., exemplifies GEI’s contaminated sediments work. The project’s location – within the New Bedford Harbor PCB Superfund Site – required unusually close collaboration and coordination with the project and property owners, as well as approvals from seven different state and federal regulatory agencies. The award-winning project also focused on preserving marine sediments in the harbor. GEI’s remediation work was the first phase of a multi-phase project aimed at redeveloping and revitalizing the former industrial property.

GEI’s sediment characterization services now include physical, chemical, and biological sampling programs; in-house aquatic biology and ecotoxicity laboratory testing; human and ecologic risk assessments; forensic chemistry; deposit mapping and geophysics; GIS and 3D modeling; fate and transport studies and modeling; and physical properties and stabilized strength. Sediment management services include dredging method evaluation; dewatering method evaluation; in-situ sediment capping design and permitting; sediment cap material procurement; in-situ/ex-situ solidification and stabilization; confined disposal facility design and permitting; co-disposal facility design, permitting, and operations; dredge and sediment cap verification sampling and testing; and related construction management services.

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Press Release, January 31, 2013