Our Hydro Sciences teams bring together expertise in geosciences, construction, data science and more to keep freshwater clean, heal our oceans and support harnessing offshore wind energy.
Our teams at Marine Services, Gregg Drilling, Causeway Geotech, CS Marine and our core environmental and construction businesses combine decades of experience that ranges from marine oil terminal demolition to remediating groundwater contamination to deep-sea geotechnical investigation. Combined with our digital and data experts at MBS and Cognitell, our Hydro Sciences platform is uniquely positioned to solve the hardest problems in remote and challenging locations.
A commitment to clean energy
Production of clean energy from our oceans is set for explosive growth, rising from supplying a negligible amount of energy today to potentially powering all of some countries’ energy needs within 20 years. We are helping harness the force of our oceans by supporting the rapid global expansion of offshore wind farm development. Our oceans can power the world.
Water Monitoring & Remediation
Our team partners with Tetra Tech to monitor ground, surface and storm water at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. We also work to characterize and model the fate and transport of legacy contaminants dating back to the cold-war era industrial complex. At Los Alamos, we design, test and implement remediation strategies to protect:
- the underground aquifer
- neighboring tribal lands
- critical regional waterways
- sources of drinking water for the surrounding communities
Restoring a Natural Estuary
As part of a project with the Tulalip Tribes, our construction teams built up a containment levee and breached an existing levee to restore the Qwuloolt Estuary within the Snohomish River floodplain.
Historically, the area was tidal marsh and forest scrub-shrub habitat, interlaced by tidal channels, mud flats and streams. For more than 100 years the project area had been cut off from the natural influences of the Snohomish River and Salish Sea tides by levees, drained by ditches instead of stream channels, and characterized by a monoculture of invasive reed canary grass instead of native shrubs and grasses. Through the cooperation of its many partners, this project has retuned the historic and natural influences of the river and tides.
Key Facts
On average, an offshore wind farm will include 100 turbines that generate enough energy to power hundreds of thousands of homes.
Ocean biomass is concentrated in coral reefs, and ocean currents cause upwelling in lower trophic nutrients. Evidence is mounting that cold-water fisheries and coral reefs are already feeling significant impact from climate change.
Arctic summer sea ice has halved in the last 40 years, and sea-level rise of up to a meter is expected this century.
People Powering the Planet
John Gregg
A skilled engineering geologist, John founded Gregg Drilling in 1985 to provide quality environmental investigation and find creative solutions to coastal erosion.
Benjamin Lowry
LEAD SCIENTIST
Ben uses remote sensing and geospatial analytics to solve problems, improve decisions and promote safety for people and planet.
Lee Pepper
For the past 10 years, Lee has worked on software that has been used in land management, oil and gas, ocean bathymetry, and other systems that trend toward complex geospatial integrations involving business workflows and intelligence.
