Posted on August 1, 2022
At its Summit & Expo in Houston, Texas, the Western Dredging Association awarded Paul Fuglevand its 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his lifetime of outstanding work supporting the dredging community and the Western Dredging Association.
After receiving both a B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering, Mr. Fuglevand joined Hart Crowser in Seattle, WA, where he worked from 1980 to 1989. In 1989, he became a founding partner of Dalton, Olmsted & Fuglevand, Inc. where he continues to work. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in multiple states.
For some 40 years, Mr. Fuglevand has been an active member of WEDA – when he first joined is hard to say as current WEDA records do not go that far back. But we know for sure that he presented a paper at the WEDA conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, in August 1986. We also know that his work within the dredging community dates back to the 1980s when he served as Project Manager for sediment characterization and geotechnical engineering aspects of the permitting, design, and environmental monitoring of a proposed 3 million-cubic yard dredging project to the Navy’s development of Homeport Facility in Everett, WA.
Since then, he has completed many notable projects, taught dredging fundamentals to thousands of USACE staff, and continues to actively contribute on a national scale to advance the dredging industry. He has participated in the National and Pacific Chapter WEDA conferences, ASCE Dredge conferences (Dredge 2002, Dredge 2015), the Sediment Management Work Group (SMWG), and Battelle Sediment Conferences.
He has led efforts to incorporate the federal Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) cost-sharing authorities into sediment cleanup actions. These efforts have included presentations in Washington, DC, to Congressional staff as well as USACE and EPA Headquarters staff on the application of WRDA authorities to environmental dredging and disposal. His published work has highlighted the potential for leveraging the cost-sharing provisions under WRDA to achieve accelerated cleanup, restoration, and renewal of marine waterways. He was one of the leaders in the use of Precision Dredging for Sediment Remediation, starting with the Hylebos Project, Tacoma, WA, where he was involved from design investigations in the 1990s through design and construction in the early 2000s, and where he is still performing ongoing monitoring.
In 2006 Mr. Fuglevand was one of forty-seven experts invited to the national sediment remediation workshop sponsored by the EPA and USACE. He served on the residual sub-group, presenting his findings of methods to limit the formation of residual sediment layers during dredging of PCB impacted sediment and the results of extensive monitoring programs to track residuals.
He was one of a few consultants invited by the National Research Council to provide senior technical review and input to their 2007 report, “Sediment Dredging at Superfund Megasites, Assessing the Effectiveness.” He provided specific input on environmental dredging methods, remediation costs, dredge positioning, residual layer formation, pilot studies, contract mechanisms, best management practices for water management, and verification sampling.
In 2008 Mr. Fuglevand was invited by the USACE to provide input and a technical review of its publication, “Technical Guidelines for Environmental Dredging of Contaminated Sediments.” His input included site characterization, selection and performance of dredging equipment, spillage, and residuals from environmental dredging, estimating dredge production rates, accuracy of dredging equipment utilizing GPS and electronic instrumentation, dredging on sloping ground, limiting post-dredging residuals, and adaptive management for environmental dredging.
He was Chairman of a seven-member peer review panel of the Hudson River Phase 1 sediment remediation project in New York State, which was mandated by the Consent Decree between General Electric (GE) and US EPA. The dredging project removed an estimated 250,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment from the river during the 2009 construction season.
As a Lead Instructor and Course Developer for the USACE Dredging Fundamentals Course from 1997 to 2010, Mr. Fuglevand taught dredging concepts to thousands of USACE employees all around the US. The five-day course presented fundamental dredging theories and accepted dredging practices for both navigation and remediation dredging to USACE personnel through lectures, group discussions, and a field trip to operating dredge equipment as well as information on how USACE dredging projects are engineered, managed, and maintained.
In addition, he has successfully managed the remediation of several EPA Superfund Sediment Sites around the US. He is currently working on sediment remediation at multiple Superfund Sites in Washington and Oregon.
In 2016 he was part of the team that won the Environmental Excellence Award for “Boeing’s Plant 2 and Sediment Remediation and Urban Waterway Restoration, Duwamish Waterway, Seattle, WA.” In 2021 he was one of the authors that won the WEDA Best Paper Award for “Vibracore Sediment Acquisition Monitoring (V-SAM) for Remediation Dredging Design at the Portland Harbor Superfund Site.”
Mr. Fuglevand remains an active member of WEDA, serving on the WEDA Board of Directors since 2013 and on the Technical Paper Committee for the 2022 WEDA
