sept-2017

100 101 fashion, for wind and solar farms, we help them with their siting and initial permitting, and then the monitoring to ensure compliance with the conditions of their permits.We work with trans- mission and gas pipeline companies also to help with siting, permitting, and compliance. In the Pacific Northwest, we do a significant amount of work associated with salmon recovery for the Corps of Engineers in support of their large hydropower projects on the Snake and Columbia Rivers.” While the bulk of the company’s clients are U.S.- based, Thalken says that Normandeau Associates does take on overseas projects when appropriate. “We do not actively market overseas, but, in cer- tain fields, we’re recognized, even internationally, as the leaders,” he states. “For example, we have a patented technology in the hydropower industry for determining fish survivability that has been requested and used on projects in Europe.We have patented technologies for determining bats in the vicinity of a wind farm and as a result of that, we’ve done work in Central and South Amer- ica associated with wind farms.We’ve done raptor interactions with transmission lines in Uzbeki- stan.We actually helped write the avian/power NORMANDEAU ASSOCIATES line interaction manual for APLIC (Avian Power Line Interaction Committee).We’ve looked at thermal discharge issues associated with indus- trial processes in Saudi Arabia and the impacts to the Persian Gulf. So we do work overseas, but it’s usually work where we’re recognized interna- tionally as the firm with the expertise to do it, or we’re brought overseas by our engineering team partners who have a need for a service and rec- ognize that we can provide it and do it well.” Thalken believes that Normandeau Associates differentiates itself from the competition in sev- eral significant ways. “First is through our use of innovative technologies,” he says. “We have sever- al patented and proprietary technologies that we can provide - endorsed by natural resource agen- cies as the preferred method. These technologies put us in the forefront in the different industries in which we work. The second is, with approxi- mately 250 staff, we are one of the largest, stand- alone natural resources firms in the country.We can put a lot of people in the field for a large- scale project –hundreds of miles of transmission line, for example, that need to be surveyed for wetlands and endangered species. So, it’s both ends of the spectrum that differentiate us. For