The Water Entrepreneur Podcast的动态

Transcript

So we're here at WEFTEC 2024 in New Orleans and we're here with Andrew BaThan and Jacob (Jake) Oldenburger of Tetra Tech. Hi guys, how you doing? Good, How you doing? How you doing? Alright, so hopefully you guys have been having a good time so far in New Orleans. You didn't haven't ripped up the the town too hard, have you? No, it's first time here. What? I'm loving it here. OK, same here. Tons of food to eat. It's been great. Great, great. So first of all, I wanted to congratulate you guys on your paper being rated one of the top 50 by BlueTech. Research, you know, it's quite an honor. It's it's good for, you know, for them to be able to review all the papers and for you guys to have, you know, getting some recognition. So congratulations. Thank you, Thank you. And, you know, I was going to mention Hurricane Helene, but now we got Milton coming through and, you know, I just wanted to let you know, I know that in these major storms can really be devastating to coastline communities. How did where did the interest come for you guys in developing these kind of natural solutions? I think it's more about resiliency, hardening the the the coastlines just to make it stronger so it gets protected, the community gets protected. Yeah, yeah. It's important. This is that it's a balanced approach, right. So these with these large devastating storm events, you know, the quick assumptions to jump to very hard infrastructure, but we have learned as community like that's not the one. So there's a lot of different potential solutions. So making sure you're balancing that with water quality benefits that these type of improvements can be. And that's what kind of is leading to kind of the diverse types of solutions with living shorelines and how they could be hybrid solutions to handle large events like these massive hurricanes, but also just the day-to-day. Resiliency in terms of addressing long term sea level rise or just providing more benefit for the habitat to develop itself and become more resilient. So are your guys background like landscape architect? What kind of background do you have to get into this kind of business? I'm a civil engineer, so I'm working with a lot of resiliency, flood protection, coastal protection, water quality, water infrastructure. So same here, I'm a civil engineer. We came with our coastal ecologist. A lot that are really into understanding the nuances between these infrastructure hardened areas with stones versus the plants and other benefits that they have. So it's a mixed team that goes into these living shoreline approaches. So are these solutions kind of purely for coastlines? I mean, we had this big issue with the lien in Asheville, NC inland. I mean, can you build use these solutions on, you know, in river ecosystems as well? Yes, definitely. So one of the projects that we did. In Long Island, New York was for a river, so it's flood protection, protecting the community, also hardening the the shoreline. So yeah, definitely we can. Yeah, so I mean, it's definitely, it's not a, you know, only a coastal living. It's definitely could be utilized in different cases, lakes, estuaries for sure to help enhance the habitat. You know, it depends on what the main goal of the, the, the solution is. And so for rivers and and our one project we have as part of this presentation abstract, it was more focused on flood resiliency was a tidally influenced river, but it could be used for upstate up further up the watersheds into more of the mountainous areas to harden for those higher flow events, but also provide the nature and the riparian. Bones to help encourage the water quality. It's interesting using the word hardened, but you're really softening it, correct? Yeah, it's definitely it's a hybrid approach, right. You could definitely go look more natural based with the dunes and vegetation. But as we're seeing with these ferocious events that is not going to hold up there. So looking for hybrid solutions and trying to see if there's other ways to retrofit that into the solution set and that's kind of what we talked about in different kind of guidance documents that we're looking at developing for some of our. Appliances not is a potential menu of items to choose for living shoreline solutions and you guys kind of focused on you know, like you know, natural plants and you know, natural ecosystem development. Is that kind of part of the solution or you know is it really just kind of. You know, specific to whatever area you've got. I mean, I'm just kind of curious how you think about designing these systems, especially since, you know, civil engineers typically you guys like to, you know, work with concrete and steel. I guess it depends on the nature and where the project is located. So we work with our landscape architects, provide plants, vegetation that are native to the area and definitely removing any invasive species in that area. That's a big thing. And also just like you said, depending on the locations and you know, down in Southern Florida looking at mangroves as potential solutions, things like that, that kind of attenuate that wave impacts and which could have then provide other potential solution sets to open up. So it's really dependent on site specific. What you can utilize, but yeah, definitely nature natural based plants that are local to the area are definitely the key components of the living shoreline. And you, you're when you, when's your presentation? You already give it. No, it's tomorrow. OK, great. Well we got some time there. Maybe we can get this posted before. So are you going to be talking about specific case studies or just design in general? So we have three different projects that we'll be looking at and we speak about the challenges and lessons learned on each of the project. So the first just a high level, the first project is about the the design and the constructions and the challenges that we face through different phases of the project. The second, Jake and yeah, second one, we're talking about a guidance document to help private land owners along coastlines are public and how to navigate the complex, you know, solutions of implementing living shorelines versus, you know, barriers to entry to permitting side of it and implementation. And where do I go, where do I start? And you know, helping them. So we're we're looking at developing guidance documents, we're gonna talk about a case study about that. And then the last one is kind of looking at an inland solution in a rivers out in Washington, state of Washington along the Columbia River and trying to balance the hard infrastructure and that soft infrastructure in terms of challenging river flows during high velocities, but with the goal of trying to provide water quality for the local ecosystem, specifically the salmon out there. So I'm curious if any of your designs have been tested by any serious storms, and if so, how did they do? So there was one that was implemented, there was a living breakwaters in Fort Pierce, FL that was designed, I forgot how many years ago, but it did get impacted like two years later with a hurricane and it performed remarkably. It definitely cut down. Prior to that it was it was a harbor that got destroyed by a previous storm event. So this living breakwaters off this coastline provided those solution sets to protect the harbor, but also provide an ecosystem so that it definitely held up very well from that storm event. So are you trying to work with local governments or state governments to try to get these kinds of rules guidance documents kind of implemented and put, you know, codified? Is that something you guys are working on or, you know, is that a little kind of outside your pay grade? Yeah, I mean, we're we're working with those communities to develop. We have a lot of experience, our coastal ecologists. I was shout out to Aaron Hague, who's one of she should be here. She couldn't make the the conference this year. She's leading our national practice. For these coastal ecology and living shorelines. So she's been doing this for decades. And so a lot of lessons learned and research and talking to different folks has gone into developing these guidelines. So, you know, a lot of communities are taking this into account. They're developing their own best management practices. I mean, even the Army Corps has developed nationwide permits for living shorelines is now over the tool to implement. So talking about that and how you can use those already guidance documents or permits that are out there to help leverage. For certain projects is definitely part of it and we're seeing a lot more clients starting to jump on with that right now. Great. Well, thanks a lot guys are really appreciate you stopping by for a few minutes and good luck with everything. Thank you so much. Thank you.