ENVIRON opens Salt Lake City office

In response to a growing geographic need for expert consulting services, ENVIRON is pleased to announce the opening of our Salt Lake City, Utah, office. According to Ron Hutchens, North America Division President, “The Salt Lake City office brings ENVIRON’s full range of services closer to our clients in the region, while Rick and Don bring particular expertise in terrestrial ecology, reclamation and restoration, water resources, and industrial wastewater treatment and management.”

Rick Black has more than 25 years of ecological research and consulting experience, as well as a diverse background in biology, ecology, policy, management and technical fields. His biological and technical experience emphasizes the application of biological and ecological principles to serving industry, state and federal clients in solving their specific growth needs. Specifically Rick has centered his research and applied principles to threatened and endangered species (TES) management and impact analyses, biological assessments, wetland development and management, riparian impacts analyses, vegetation community analyses, ecological risk assessments and revegetation research and analyses. His policy experience includes large corridor permitting, management of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents, Section 7 consultation, environmental assessments and wetland development, management and permitting. Rick has also been able to successfully develop and apply innovative biological and ecological indices to evaluate impacts to terrestrial systems from development projects and army activities. His expertise and professional passion centers on ecosystem management, desert ecology, mining restoration and revegetation, TES biology, wetlands ecology, and weed management.

Don Taylor has more than 20 years’ experience in water and wastewater management, focusing on industrial applications. He has managed large-scale projects in Asia, Europe, North America and South America, for the mining, petrochemical and refining, pulp and paper, food, power and iron and steel industries. Don’s specific expertise is in process design, including heavy metal precipitation, acid rock drainage, flue gas desulfurization (FGD) wastewater, physical-chemical precipitation and biological treatment (municipal, industrial, activated sludge, nitrification/denitrification, fixed film, etc.) He has designed and managed industrial water and wastewater applications for a variety of industries and applications and has generated basic engineering design packages including mass balances, process flow diagrams, sized all equipment and major unit operations, and developed market strategies that included strategic alliances with suppliers and local engineering companies. He has written plant operations manuals, and conducted numerous training sessions and plant startups. He has extensive troubleshooting experience in a variety of mining and industrial applications incorporating new or retrofit solutions drawing on considerable field experience.