2025 CCBJ Business Achievement Awards

About the 2025 CCBJ Business Achievement Awards: In November-December 2025, Climate Change Business Journal solicited nominations for the CCBJ Business Achievement Awards. Nominations were accepted in 200-word essays in specific categories. Final awards were determined by a committee of CCBJ staff, CCBJ editorial advisory board members and regular contributors. (Disclaimer: Company audits were not conducted to verify information or claims submitted with nominations).

In-person awards will be presented to those in attendance at the EBJ & CCBJ Awards banquet at Environmental Industry Summit XXIV on April 2, 2026 in San Diego.

 

Advancing Best Practices in Climate Resilience: Floodwater Depth Estimation Tool

Resilient Analytics

Resilient Analytics, a Stanley Consultants company, is strengthening the climate resilience of the City of DeBary, Florida, by providing a comprehensive, data-driven roadmap to address growing risks from storm surge, hurricanes, and extreme weather. DeBary’s vulnerability was underscored in October 2024, when Hurricane Milton caused widespread flooding and power outages, reinforcing the urgent need for forward-looking infrastructure planning. The City engaged Stanley Consultants and Resilient Analytics to conduct an integrated vulnerability assessment of public infrastructure, guided by long-term community resilience objectives. Using advanced GIS-based analytics, the team evaluated 11 inundation scenarios across multiple climate time horizons from 2040 to 2070. The analysis combined exposure, sensitivity, and risk scoring to quantify infrastructure vulnerability under increasingly severe flood conditions. A key innovation was the adaptation of the Floodwater Depth Estimation Tool (FwDET) to address data gaps where flood models identified inundation extent but not depth. This enhancement enabled more accurate assessment of asset-level risk. The team also overlaid zoning and land-use data on flood scenarios, identifying potential tax revenue vulnerabilities and informing resilient land-use planning. Through close stakeholder engagement, the project delivered actionable recommendations for infrastructure upgrades and policy strategies, equipping DeBary with a clear, implementable path to climate resilience.

 

Growth In Climate Change Consulting

Climate Resilience Consulting

Climate Resilience Consulting (CRC) delivers measurable, scalable impact in a world where climate risk has become a business reality. Founded in 2016, CRC has grown dramatically—expanding multi-year partnerships with government, nonprofit and philanthropic clients and serving 35 cities and 12 states in 2024 alone. The growth of CRC reflects a surge in demand for pragmatic, multidisciplinary consulting that bridges policy, funding, and implementation. CRC is redefining what resilience consulting means. The company helps clients secure funding, align governance, and move projects from plans to shovel-ready initiatives. The CRC team has shaped national resilience frameworks, equitable technical assistance programs, and workforce development initiatives across 10 sectors—from housing and health to insurance and infrastructure. In 2024-25, CRC’s expansion was fueled not just by new contracts, but by nurturing dozens of partner organizations—helping them grow their own climate capabilities, market presence, and knowledge base. The company also continued developing a suite of AI-enabled tools to streamline resilience planning, reflecting its ongoing commitment to innovation in service of clients. As a woman-owned small business, CRC exemplifies the power of consulting rooted in impact, integrity, and collaboration—turning climate risk into resilience at the pace of change.

 

Business Model Innovation: Computational Pressure Model for CCS Well Permitting

SCS Engineers

SCS Engineers, in collaboration with the U.S. EPA, developed a time-based Computational Pressure (CP) Model to improve Class VI well permitting for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Unlike traditional methods that assume immediate hydrostatic equilibrium, this model calculates brine migration as a function of time and overpressure, offering a more realistic and site-specific approach to defining the Area of Review. The Time-Based CP Model offers these advantages:

• Incorporates site-specific subsurface data.
• Uses time-stamped data at intervals, with a 70-year model horizon (50 years beyond injection) for added safety.
• Shows that over-pressurization duration is limited, reducing the risk of upward brine migration and potential contamination of underground drinking water sources.
• Demonstrates that pressure in the injection zone typically decreases quickly after injection ends and that the risk from improperly plugged wells is lower than previously estimated.

SCS and EPA introduced a spatially distributed Endangerment Potential Map using thousands of data points to visualize migration risk across a site. The map shows that the risk from any single borehole is about one in 10 million, providing a significant margin of safety. 

 

Consulting & Engineering: Hawick Flood Protection Scheme, United Kingdom

Jacobs

The Hawick Flood Protection Scheme marks a transformative milestone in 2025, culminating in the successful completion of all major works associated with a 20-year program that now protects 935 homes and businesses from a 1-in-75-year flood event. Last year saw the delivery of finishing works across the town, reinstatement of public spaces, new active-travel routes, enhanced access to the River Teviot, and the formal handover of Hawick back to the community—celebrated by an opening ceremony in August. Jacobs led the scheme from initial flood risk assessment through design, construction management and collaboration with Scottish Borders Council, McLaughlin & Harvey, Scottish Water, Transport Scotland, SUSTRANS and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. The integrated program delivered five major infrastructure upgrades in one: new flood walls and embankments, replacement bridges, trunk road improvements, utility upgrades and extensive public-realm enhancements. Beyond protection, the scheme leaves a lasting legacy of revitalized amenities, economic uplift, including over 150 apprenticeships, and a beautiful, climate-resilient riverside town shaped by collaboration, innovation and local expertise.

 

Consulting & Engineering: Climate Risk Assessment

Woodard & Curran

Woodard & Curran delivered a comprehensive climate risk assessment to support RYAM, a large international forest materials supplier, in understanding and mitigating potential liabilities under future climate scenarios. The client’s objective was to capture a broad scope of physical and transitional opportunities and vulnerabilities, which include up and downstream supply chain, markets, and customer sites. The company leveraged Global Climate Model output to analyze individual facility locations and key forests based on climate variables and hazards to determine the potential climate change impact for these scenarios for several periods through the current century. A Microsoft PowerBI dashboard was also developed, featuring geo-referenced site locations and interfaces to the risk rankings, allowing on-the-fly analysis, filterable by dimensions like climate stressor, facility type, and outlook term. Once the global portfolio assessment was complete, Woodard & Curran performed a more refined assessment of four key sites chosen by RYAM. A summary for each key site was developed and delivered to RYAM for consideration in resilience strategy capital investments, accompanied by high-level resilience recommendations.

 

Consulting & Engineering: Sustainability Target Architecture Solution Implementation

AECOM and BASF

AECOM is partnering with BASF to implement a global solution for energy and carbon management, enabling transparency and accurate estimation of GHG emissions at the asset level to support Product Carbon Footprint assessments. As the world’s largest and oldest chemical manufacturer, BASF operates, due to local legal requirements, diverse processes across sites, each with unique systems and data sources. To address this complexity, BASF adopted its Sustainability Target Architecture Solution (STArS) using Enablon, with AECOM leading the global design strategy and implementation. AECOM developed a scalable, reasonable assurance compliant approach that allows rapid, plant-by-plant implementation, validated through three proof-of-concept sites. Leveraging its global presence across North America, Europe, and APAC, AECOM collaborated seamlessly with BASF’s corporate team and Enablon to deliver the solution. Following successful pilots and APAC rollouts, BASF is expanding STArS to 550 plants worldwide, including Ludwigshafen, Germany—the largest chemical single-owned chemical production site in the world. This initiative enables BASF to automate GHG estimation/reporting using near real-time data, driving sustainable product development, reducing energy consumption, and lowering costs. By integrating advanced technology with strategic consulting, AECOM helped BASF transform complex environmental data into actionable insights, setting a benchmark for carbon management in the chemical industry.

 

Consulting & Engineering: Carbon Certification Program for Brazil

AECOM, BNDES, Bradesco Bank and Ecogreen Fund

Brazil must scale carbon credit supply by 400% by 2030 to meet global demand. Despite vast potential for nature-based solutions, the market has faced persistent bottlenecks: dependence on foreign certifiers, complex certification processes, the absence of methodologies and safeguards tailored to Brazil’s biomes, regulatory frameworks, and socioenvironmental realities. Unveiled at COP30, ECORA is a groundbreaking national carbon credit certifier conceived/structured through AECOM’s Advisory Program, with BNDES, Bradesco Bank, and the EcoGreen Fund as shareholders. Purpose-built to accelerate Brazil’s low-carbon transition, ECORA establishes a new benchmark for transparency, security, and scalability. Designed to operate seamlessly with AECOM’s Conservare Digital Platform, ECORA enables full lifecycle management of carbon credits, from feasibility assessment to asset retirement, integrating public data systems, geospatial analytics, predictive modeling, and automated traceability. This innovation strengthens integrity, reduces transaction costs, and ensures methodologies aligned with Brazil’s unique ecosystems and regulatory context. By delivering cost-efficient, high-integrity certification methodologies tailored to Brazil’s context, ECORA will democratize access, attract global investment, and reinforce compliance with emerging national and international policies. This initiative underscores AECOM’s commitment to engineering a resilient, low-carbon future, leveraging technology and expertise to unlock climate solutions at scale.

 

Consulting & Engineering: California Decarbonization Strategy

Tetra Tech, Inc.

Tetra Tech developed a strategic framework and detailed roadmap working with California’s Department of General Services to achieve operational decarbonization goals across the State of California’s vast portfolio of facilities to comply with State Senate Bill 1203. The portfolio is represented by 35 individual state agencies with over 15,000 buildings totaling over 104 million square feet. Tetra Tech’s sustainability experts identified decarbonization strategies to reduce GHG emissions and enhance resiliency, including electrification measures to eliminate onsite natural gas use, energy efficiency measures to reduce utility expenditures, and developed strategies for renewable energy deployment and clean energy procurement. Once implemented, 52 million therms of annual natural gas consumption and 520,000 metric tons of annual CO2 emissions will be eliminated from State operations. Tetra Tech also developed a prioritization framework that will support each agency’s annual planning efforts to optimize the sequencing of targeted investments in specific buildings over the next 10 years, factoring in emission reductions, equity, and cost considerations. To support implementation, Tetra Tech developed a customized interactive project tracking tool that integrates with each agency’s annual reporting and five-year infrastructure requirements and provides real-time updates on project completion, natural gas savings, and emissions reductions.

 

Consulting & Engineering: Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme

Arthian Limited

Arthian is a Scottish headquartered planning, development, sustainability and engineering consultancy. We work across sectors; industrial & commercial, education, aviation, food & drink, local & national government, travel & utility infrastructure and the built environment, providing innovative, sustainable solutions for people and the planet. Our team of project engineers and scientists reached more than 200 across 17 UK and Ireland locations, outlining our aspirations to grow organically and attract the best talent available. The firm’s motto – “Shaped by Expertise, Powered by People” – highlights its commitment to guiding clients towards a low carbon future. Highlights in 2025 included: delivering a third of Arthian’s Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) submissions through ESOS Action Plans and Annual Compliance Updates; completing 47 technical advisory assessments for local government; and delivering a combined 323 Energy Performance & Display Energy Certificates. The firm is one of 13 alliance partners supporting the Mayor of London to meet UK Net Zero targets, one of two Welsh Government & Scottish Government Assessors, and one of six approved assessors in England. Arthian takes a holistic approach, combining in-house skills across multiple disciplines to deliver a renewable project, taking account of all climate and risk factors.

 

Consulting & Engineering: Hartland Landfill Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) Facility

GHD

In 2025, the Capital Regional District marked a major decarbonization milestone with the official opening of the Hartland Landfill Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) Facility—Vancouver Island’s first full-scale RNG production system. This groundbreaking project, supported by GHD from concept through execution, transforms landfill gas into high-quality renewable natural gas and injects it directly into FortisBC’s gas network, creating a local, circular, self-funded energy source for the community. This facility is projected to reduce 475,000 tonnes of CO?e over 25 years, significantly advancing regional climate goals while demonstrating a scalable model for low-carbon energy generation. GHD provided multidisciplinary engineering, permitting, environmental, and construction support as the client’s technical advisor, helping develop and navigate a unique delivery framework to implement a system designed for long-term performance, resilience, and operational efficiency. Beyond emissions reduction, this project exemplifies circular economy principles, converting a waste by-product into clean energy that offsets carbon-intensive supply, while generating revenue that will sustain system operations. Reaching full operational status in 2025 represents the project’s most critical milestone, positioning it as one of Canada’s most innovative RNG deployments and a remarkable example of municipal climate leadership.

 

Consulting & Engineering: Low-Carbon Pathways for Universities

Salas O’Brien

Salas O’Brien is helping colleges and universities redefine what’s possible in the transition to a low-carbon future. With more than 20 campus decarbonization projects in 2024-2025 alone, the firm is providing data-driven pathways to carbon neutrality through innovative planning, electrification strategies, and renewable energy integration. At the University of Colorado, Boulder, Salas O’Brien is developing a campus-wide decarbonization plan to guide deep emissions reductions across energy systems and facilities. The firm is also working alongside Princeton University to decarbonize its campus, targeting net-zero carbon by 2046 through the transformation of heating, cooling, and energy infrastructure. And at Marquette University, faculty partnered with Salas O’Brien to evaluate a feasible, cost-effective energy transition that aligns with the university’s Jesuit mission and may serve as a model for Wisconsin’s clean energy future. These recent collaborations have positioned Salas O’Brien as a trusted expert in large-scale campus decarbonization, helping institutions bridge the gap between climate goals and actionable solutions. Through this growing body of work, Salas O’Brien is demonstrating how integrated design and engineering are helping accelerate decarbonization across higher education. By turning ambition into measurable progress, Salas O’Brien is helping campuses nationwide lead the way toward net zero.

 

Financing: GHG Mitigation – Data-Driven Decarbonization at Heathrow, U.K.

Jacobs

With increasing pressure from consumers and governments to decarbonize, airports worldwide are seeking practical, high-impact solutions. Heathrow – Britain’s aviation hub and a global leader in the sector – is not only setting ambitious net-zero targets but actively delivering them through a rigorous, data-driven decarbonization approach. At the center of this effort is the digital Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) tool, developed by Jacobs in collaboration with Heathrow. Integral to Heathrow’s Carbon and Sustainability Program, this aviation-specific model goes far beyond traditional sustainability reporting. It provides an interactive dashboard that links financial investment directly to quantifiable carbon savings (£/tCO?e) across each project’s lifecycle, enabling transparent and defensible decision-making. The tool allows Heathrow to strategically prioritize decarbonization initiatives based on cost-effectiveness and carbon impact, ensuring that capital is directed to measures that deliver the greatest emissions reduction. It optimizes investment by illustrating the environmental return on every pound spent and ensuring alignment between financial and sustainability goals. It also forecasts multiple decarbonization pathways, enabling proactive planning and agile responses to emerging technologies and evolving regulations. By adopting this advanced digital model, Heathrow is setting a new global benchmark for airport decarbonization, demonstrating a scalable, transferable approach for major airports pursuing net-zero futures.

 

Practice Growth: Cook County Climate Resilience Program

Corvias Infrastructure Solutions, LLC (CIS)

Since 2024, CIS is leading Illinois’ Cook County’s Climate Resiliency Planning for Communities Program, a $14-million initiative funded through the American Rescue Plan Act and administered in partnership with the Cook County Department of Environment and Sustainability. The program advances climate adaptation infrastructure in five municipalities in the Greater Chicago region: Bellwood, Franklin Park, Justice, Lynwood, and Markham. These communities were selected due to historic disinvestment and heightened climate vulnerability. Building on resiliency plans previously developed, this Phase is focused on implementation. Over a 24-month delivery period, CIS is managing the delivery of approximately 17 projects from concept design through construction. The projects reduce flooding and stormwater impacts, rehabilitate sanitary and combined sewer systems, expand green stormwater infrastructure, enhance tree canopy protections, and upgrade critical drainage assets. Representative efforts include green stormwater infrastructure improvements along Grand Avenue in Franklin Park that reduce runoff while improving pedestrian safety and streetscape quality, and the development of a climate-resilient park in Markham that converts vacant land into community amenities while addressing heat and flooding risks. Through rapid, coordinated delivery across five communities, CIS is demonstrating measurable impact by leveraging $14 million in

 

Climate resilience: San Luis Obispo County Fireshed Report and Dashboard

Rincon Consultants, Inc.

The San Luis Obispo County Fireshed Report and Dashboard represent a groundbreaking approach to wildfire resilience and climate adaptation. Developed through a California Climate Investment grant from CAL FIRE, the project, led by the San Luis Obispo County Fire Safe Council in partnership with Rincon Consultants, creates a dynamic, GIS-based planning framework to address wildfire risk across 2.1 million acres. The initiative delineates 37 distinct “firesheds” informed by regional fuel conditions, climate data, and decades of fire management experience, providing a consistent, data-driven foundation for adaptation strategies. The Fireshed Dashboard transforms static wildfire planning into an interactive decision-support tool, integrating up-to-date datasets on fire behavior, topography, and socio-economic vulnerability. By linking the Dashboard with the static Fireshed Report, the project enables agencies, landowners, and policymakers to coordinate mitigation, restoration, and emergency response more efficiently. This comprehensive framework advances climate resilience by quantifying risk under changing fire regimes, promoting equitable protection for vulnerable communities, and improving funding competitiveness for mitigation projects. Together, the Fireshed Report and Dashboard model an adaptive, replicable system for integrating climate science, technology, and collaboration into regional wildfire resilience planning.

 

Industry Leadership: Expedited Emissions Permitting for Data Centers

Burns & McDonnell

Burns & McDonnell is shaping industry standards for environmental compliance in both mission-critical and new-generation infrastructure. As data centers and emerging technologies drive unprecedented growth, Burns & McDonnell provides strategic leadership to address the industry’s most pressing challenge: expedited permitting under complex regulatory frameworks. The firm’s integrated approach combines air permitting – the cornerstone of compliance – with acoustics, environmental review, and stakeholder engagement to deliver holistic solutions that enable rapid deployment without compromising environmental stewardship. It actively engages in national, state, and local policy discussions and provides thought leadership through educational partnerships and technical presentations, elevating awareness of air and acoustics permitting challenges. Programmatic strategies streamline approvals for hundreds of emergency generators, supported by sophisticated air construction permit applications and comprehensive environmental reviews addressing air quality and noise impacts. Advanced, repeatable modeling frameworks for air dispersion and acoustics ensure defensible compliance with NAAQS and local ordinances across diverse sites. Through proactive regulatory engagement and collaboration with agencies and industry groups, Burns & McDonnell is driving progress for critical and emerging infrastructure. We are committed to delivering solutions that resolve complex challenges and raising the bar for environmental responsibility across the sector.

 

Information Technology: Digital Transformation in GHG Reporting

Terracon

In 2025, Terracon was selected to assist U.S. Steel in transforming its environmental compliance process by migrating air emissions reporting data from complex, facility specific spreadsheets into a centralized SaaS platform. The platform standardizes Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) data collection and subpart logic across 30 facilities, ensuring consistent reporting practices and full alignment with the GHG Protocol for sustainability disclosures. By replacing 50 legacy spreadsheets, the program minimized error risk, enhanced data transparency, and provided real-time insights for environmental managers and ESG teams. EPA reporting through the Electronic Greenhouse Gas Reporting Tool (e-GGRT) became more efficient as manual rework was significantly reduced. Through the implementation of this platform, Terracon identified data inconsistencies and introduced a refined methodology, enabling U.S. Steel to re-baseline its emissions with greater accuracy and confidence. Terracon configured site specific rules and mappings for applicable GHGRP subparts, embedded QA/QC checks, and established audit ready data lineage. The centralized system serves as a single source of truth for emissions data, streamlines certification processes, and consolidates information into a unified dashboard. Results: reporting cycles were fully streamlined, validation and error flags significantly reduced, and unified visibility established across all facilities with strong data completeness.

 

Project Merit: Climate Resilience – Flood Resiliency Study

AKRF, Inc.

The Borough of Selinsgrove partnered with an AKRF-led consultant team to identify actionable, community-based resilience strategies through an inaugural Flood Resiliency Study funded by the SEDA-Council of Governments. Long-benefitting from its location along the Susquehanna River, the Borough faces increasingly complex riverine and flash flooding triggered by climate change and watershed urbanization. Addressing these risks by proposing tailored resiliency tools while preserving Selinsgrove’s historic character posed a unique challenge. The approach navigated a rich institutional knowledge of flooding through stakeholder engagement with long-term residents, Borough officials, first responders, and a flood task force. Key outcomes included a Historic Preservation Toolkit aligning preservation goals with floodplain regulations, educational materials exceeding National Flood Insurance Program requirements, and a comprehensive Flood Response Operations Plan driven by the community’s lived experiences and direct needs. These strategies strengthen preparedness, support long-term resilience while safeguarding architectural heritage, and streamline response roles for a small municipality with dedicated but limited staff resources. Selinsgrove’s resulting Flood Resiliency Plan showcases that planning is at its strongest when grounded in local knowledge and collaboration – a replicable approach for riverfront communities as flooding grows more severe nationwide.

 

Project Merit: Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience – Lynn Harbor Park

Charter

Lynn Harbor Park is a landmark example of climate adaptation and resilience in practice, transforming one of Massachusetts’ most vulnerable coastal brownfields into a future-ready public asset. Built atop a remediated municipal landfill and former MGP site, the 30-acre park was designed to withstand sea-level rise, storm surge, and extreme weather conditions that threaten urban waterfronts across the Northeast. A signature resilience feature is the park’s 30-foot-high riprap revetment, engineered to stabilize the shoreline and protect both the capped landfill and adjacent neighborhoods from coastal flooding. Integrated stormwater systems, including swales, detention basins, terraced slopes, and deep engineered planting beds, manage runoff passively and reduce long-term maintenance burdens. More than 500 trees, 16,000 shrubs, and acres of native meadow create a self-sustaining landscape that improves biodiversity and stabilizes soils under future climate scenarios. The project advanced resilience not only through design, but through delivery. By sourcing 1.3 million tons of beneficial reuse material to fund the landfill cap, the team created a financially sustainable pathway for climate-resilient redevelopment. Lynn Harbor Park demonstrates that climate adaptation can serve as a catalyst for environmental renewal, economic growth, and community resilience, offering a replicable model for coastal cities nationwide.

 

Project Merit: Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience – Beneficial Uses of Dredged Material

Marstel-Day, LLC

Marstel-Day evaluated innovative beneficial uses of dredged material (BUDM) to address intersecting problems of marsh loss, sea level rise vulnerability, diminishing DMMA capacity, and the high-costs of alternative sediment disposal methods. Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay near St. Mary’s, Georgia dredges approximately 1.85 million cubic yards of sediment annually to maintain its navigation channel, but its dredged material management areas (DMMAs) are nearing capacity. Additionally, the surrounding marshes are eroding, worsening vulnerability to sea level rise and exacerbating channel sedimentation. The project applied innovative analytical and collaborative methods to develop a dredge material management plan that included three sequential marsh analyses, evaluating historic, current, and future conditions and critical implementation thresholds to prevent large-scale and irreversible marsh loss. The team regularly met with groups and facilitated a workshop with over 30 stakeholders from local, state, and federal agencies to discuss challenges, opportunities, and implementation considerations. The wholistic approach and analysis led to an effective strategy to manage sediment from annual dredging activities and stored in the DMMAs while simultaneously restoring nearby marshes. The study showed how improving marsh health and restoring historical hydrology, thereby reducing marsh erosion and the resulting sedimentation of the navigation channel, ultimately reduce long-term dredging requirements.

 

Project Merit: Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience – Plainwell Dam Removal and Channel Restoration Project

SWCA Environmental Consultants

SWCA Environmental Consultants was a vital subcontractor to Taplin Environmental on the Plainwell Dam Removal and Channel Restoration project, a large-scale effort focused on the recovery of the Kalamazoo River in Allegan County, Mich. This work was integral to the ongoing Kalamazoo River Superfund Site cleanup, specifically addressing legacy industrial PCB contamination, and advancing the removal of Beneficial Use Impairments within this Area of Concern. Following the dam spillway removal, our team remediated and enhanced over 7,000 linear feet of riverbank and 12 acres of floodplain. Key restoration elements included installation of over 300 in-water root wad habitat structures, restoration of 12 acres with native seeding, and planting of over 1,450 native trees and shrubs. These features not only enhanced aquatic and terrestrial habitat but also created stormwater storage capacity in the floodplain. By working closely with the project owner and stakeholders, the team delivered adaptive, constructable riverbank treatments that prioritized long-term functionality and ecological value. The successful implementation restored natural river flow, dramatically improved water quality, supported fish migration, and created a more resilient river system that delivers lasting benefits to both wildlife and the community.

 

Project Merit: Climate Resilient Infrastructure – Wissahickon Valley Park

Skelly and Loy, Inc.

Wissahickon Valley Park is within a registered National Natural Landmark in northwest Philadelphia. Nestled along the trout-stocked Wissahickon Creek, the Valley Green Inn area is visited heavily throughout the year and relies on three small parking areas to stow vehicles for hikers, cyclists, photographers, and nature enthusiasts. The Valley Green Upper Parking Lot connects to the destination via a footpath that parallels Valley Green Run. Winding together with the stream, the trail afforded visitors a scenic path, safely separated from vehicular traffic on Valley Green Road. Erosion and degradation led to toppled walls and slumped slopes that had supported the walking corridor, closing the path and forcing visitors onto the road. As champions and stewards of the park, Friends of the Wissahickon engaged Skelly and Loy for planning, design, and construction to restore the stream and rebuild the trails. Cliffs of Wissahickon schist, a stone arch bridge, and well-trodden trails framed the picturesque setting and set expectations for the constructed features. The steep valley gradient and limited footprint guided the ultimate improvements: a restored step-pool stream entwined with a new steel, wood, and concrete pedestrian bridge.

 

Project Merit: Low-Carbon Energy – Port Newark Container Terminal

Dewberry

The Port Newark Container Terminal (PNCT) handles more than 1.3 million 20-foot equivalent units of cargo capacity annually. Aligning with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s Net-Zero Roadmap, PNCT partnered with Standard Solar Inc. for a 25-year power purchase agreement for this solar installation project. The installation spans 7.8 acres and uses 14,663 solar panels mounted on rooftops and canopies over parking lots, building facilities, and 15 active truck lanes. The 7.2-megawatt project generates up to 50 percent of the PNCT’s annual electrical demand, greatly reducing emissions and improving air quality. In addition to generating power for terminal operations, the system can feed excess power into the regional utility grid, providing clean energy to the city of Newark and nearby areas. A computational fluid dynamics analysis was conducted to optimize the arrangement and spacing of the solar panels, allowing for proper air circulation beneath the canopies for drivers and personnel, thereby maintaining a safe and efficient environment. Dewberry was the Engineer-of-Record for this complex project, constructed without interruption to terminal operations. The project saves 8,994 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to removing 2,098 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles from the road.