Wastes and Toxics

As an immigrant, issues of race, equity, and inclusion have always been central to my lived experience and values. As an environmental engineer and policy analyst, I feel grateful to align my convictions with my experience and to lead ERG’s environmental and climate justice solutions practice.

I enjoy bringing a practical, engineering approach to solving the complex environmental problems facing our country, from air toxics emissions to hazardous waste issues to industrial and municipal wastewater contamination.

When I tell people I’ve worked at the same company for almost three decades, they are often astonished: Who would want to do the same thing for so long? What they don’t realize is that it’s never the same. I consider myself fortunate that, throughout my career at ERG, the work I do has always been interesting, challenging, and changing with the times.

I always appreciate when our government clients ask us to help them quantify the benefits and costs of actions they are considering. The more complex assignments, such as accurately characterizing behavioral changes under multiple compliance scenarios, put a premium on our creativity and experience.

Sustainability has been a central theme throughout my career. As an engineer, I particularly enjoy crafting approaches and tools to efficiently reduce chemical and energy inputs, guided by lessons learned from sustainability initiatives worldwide.

Each year, Americans generate millions of tons of waste and consume increasing amounts of resources. Educating and helping the public and organizations learn how they can reduce, reuse, and recycle has been a major focus of my career. I take great satisfaction in applying my extensive waste reduction knowledge to help my clients design and implement strategies to reduce the impact that waste has on the U.S. environment.

Bringing regulators and the regulated community together, educating them on each other’s concerns, and helping to find environmentally preferable and economically feasible solutions is one of the most enjoyable parts of my work.

Until recently, we have too often taken an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” approach to waste disposal and overlooked the connection between surface and ground water, leading to groundwater contamination and depletion. We have to climb out of this history of environmental exploitation to a path of sustainability. I enjoy all my work to help get us there, including groundwater remediation, aquifer storage and recovery systems, and design of new water production wells.

As the world economy and population growth continue to strain natural resources, work toward sustainable materials management through source reduction, reuse, and recovery becomes increasingly critical. Conscious of these growing pressures, I am deeply motivated to support my clients in identifying and promoting effective ways to manage resources more efficiently.