ABOUT
Markus Ritsch, M.S., P.E. President and Principal Engineer with Water & Earth Technologies, Inc.
Markus is a professional Civil Engineer and has more than eighteen (18) years of experience in surface water hydrology, hydro-meteorological monitoring, and environmental data collection. He has provided design and construction support on numerous data collection projects ranging from flood detection networks to water quality monitoring networks and automated sediment sampling programs. His areas of expertise include real-time monitoring network design, equipment installation and maintenance, conceptual planning, stream gaging, hydrology, rating curve development, radio path studies, permitting and licensing, and construction management.
Markus directs the design, construction and maintenance of flood warning and dam safety systems. Experience with various sensors, data loggers and telemetry protocols, coupled with a background in hydrology and hydraulics, allows him to evaluate, design and build specific monitoring solutions to meet our client’s needs.
Markus has developed specific expertise with real-time telemetry solutions, including the National Weather Service (NWS), Automated Local Evaluation in Real-Time (ALERT) protocol, two-way radio systems, and real-time satellite communications.
Markus spent six (6) years as a Water Resources Engineer calibrating rainfall/runoff, streamflow forecasting and snow accumulation and ablation models. He has extensive experience and continued involvement with the calibration and operational use of hydrologic modeling systems. This gives him a unique perspective to design and maintain monitoring networks that produce data of high quality that are useful within a hydrologic and hydraulic context.
Richard Spotts, B.S., P.E. Principal Engineer of Water & Earth Technologies, Inc.
Richard has more than 30 years of experience in surface and ground water hydrology, water quality and quantity monitoring, and environmental impact assessment. He has provided technical and managerial support on more than 100 mining projects, on numerous corridor projects (pipelines, transmission lines, and roads), and other projects involving natural resources throughout the U.S. and overseas.
Richard has successfully applied geomorphic approaches to the design of reclaimed landforms and restored streams, and has used these models and his experience/expertise to evaluate reclamation and closure scenarios for surface-mined lands, heap-leach and tailings facilities, waste rock and overburden dumps, pit backfills, landfills, and other types of land disturbance and reclamation.
Richard manages hydrologic and water quality investigations for compliance with state and federal regulations and permit application requirements and has successfully developed, negotiated, secured, or reviewed mining permits, mine closure plans, NPDES permits, Clean Water Act Section 404 permits, and numerous permits required by other state and federal agencies.
Richard also specializes in water data acquisition and analysis, flood hazard analysis, and water monitoring network and hydraulic structure design and installation. He has conducted forensics studies and has served as an expert witness.
Rob Niedenzu, B.A. is WET’s Field Services and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Manager.
Rob specializes in the design, installation and maintenance of environmental monitoring systems. He has specific expertise with respect to flood detection systems that employ the ALERT protocol and real-time telemetry. He has worked on projects throughout the U.S. Rob has experience in the environmental monitoring arena where he has directly supported or managed the installation of water and environmental monitoring stations. These projects, in addition to designing and bench testing systems before installation in the field, have allowed him to become familiar with various hardware platforms and telemetry protocols. He is certified in the operation and use of both HydroLynx model 5096 and model 50386 dataloggers, and is knowledgeable of most types of other dataloggers, water quality monitoring hardware, automated pump samplers, pressure transducers, rain gages, and other types of hydrometeorological measurement sensors.
Rob is also a geographic information systems (GIS) project manager for Water & Earth Technologies, Inc. (WET). He has applied GIS technology to hydrologic modeling, decision support tool development, graphical user interface design, environmental impact statement production, pipeline routing, and mining development. His participation on these projects includes designing, populating, and managing spatial databases, converting data, editing data layers, designing maps, and developing user interfaces through programming and dialog design. He has experience in preparing GIS data for input to hydrologic modeling and analysis efforts; developing river basin management databases; creating clear and concise maps; and preparing town basemaps, zoning maps, and census maps. Rob also has a background in remote sensing, global positioning systems (GPS), and flood warning and detection systems.
Ryan Wade, B.S., P.E. is a Project Engineer and Hydrologist for Water & Earth Technologies, Inc.
Ryan Wade has worked for WET for the past 18 years, and a Professional Engineer registered in Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Texas. Mr. Wade graduated from Montana Tech, and works from a remote office near Kalispell, Montana. His professional experience is surface water hydrology, hydraulic structure design, reclamation and permitting, and construction oversight. Additionally, he installs and maintains flood warning and environmental monitoring systems. He has worked on projects throughout the western U.S., Australia, and Latin America.
Mr. Wade is experienced with geomorphic reclamation design, having completed several award-winning projects. He has designed culverts, small dams, and other sediment and water control systems. He prepares design reports, engineering drawings and construction specifications for his projects. He utilizes AutoCAD Civil3d and ArcGISPro software for deliverable production. He is experienced obtaining local, state, and federal permits such as floodplain permits, 310 permits, and 404 permits.
Erik Carlson, B.S. is a Project Engineer and Hydrologist for Water & Earth Technologies, Inc.
Erik is a civil engineer and hydrologist for Water & Earth Technologies. Erik specializes in the design, installation and maintenance of environmental monitoring systems and flood detection systems that employ the ALERT protocol and real-time telemetry. He has become familiar with various hardware platforms and telemetry protocols including most types of dataloggers. Erik has expertise with water quality monitoring hardware, automated pump samplers, pressure transducers, rain gages, and other types of hydrometeorological measurement sensors.
Erik has worked on mining reclamation projects throughout the United States. Erik has experience surveying with both an engineer’s level and rod and a high precision GPS unit that supports RTK correction. Mr. Carlson has surveyed multiple site areas with the GPS unit to develop as-built surfaces for mapping purposes.
Erik has supervised the construction for multi-million dollar projects. Duties included managing project schedules, field checking engineering designs, communicating with parties involved, ensuring safety while working and analyzing construction quantities to maintain the project budget.
Kate Malers, M.S., P.E. is a Project Engineer, Hydrologist and Technical Writer for Water & Earth Technologies, Inc.
Kate is experienced in the use of models for engineering applications including analyses of hydraulics and sedimentology, water quality and watershed characteristics, hydropower optimization, dam design and hydrologic data analysis. She has conducted water resources site assessments, instantaneous flow measurements and cross- section surveys to support the development of stream stage-discharge relationships.
Kate has also coordinated multi-disciplinary site investigation and documentation efforts and has experience in researching, writing, editing, and producing on-line and physical technical documents including Environmental Assessment (EA) materials, mine permits, grant applications, FERC hydropower relicensing applications and reports.
Blair Hanna, Ph.D., P.E. is a Project Engineer and Hydrologist for Water & Earth Technologies, Inc.
Blair is an engineering hydrologist with over 10 years experience in various aspects of hydrologic and engineering investigations of water resource systems. He is responsible for hydrologic design, hydraulic modeling and analysis of telemetered hydrologic data. He has applied modeling techniques to analyze solutions to surface water quantity and quality problems at a wide range of complexity and physical scales.
Blair has experience in projects involving water balance modeling, physical and statistical hydrology, water quality modeling, geographic information system applications, databases, environmental data analysis and statistics, water allocation modeling, open channel flow and environmental dispersion, numerical methods and optimization, geochemical modeling, groundwater flow and transport modeling and software design and development. His experience with engineering consulting, federal agencies and academic research have offered experience in a wide range of water resource problems and solution techniques.
Eric Hess, B.S. Civil Engineering is a Field Engineer for Water & Earth Technologies, Inc.
Eric is a field engineer with experience in every aspect of hydrological monitoring projects. He fabricates, bench tests, installs and maintains hydrological monitoring equipment including remote rain, weather, stream and well stations, repeaters and flashers and remote monitoring cameras. He has upgraded systems from legacy ALERT to ALERT2, including FCC licensing, TDMA planning and station upgrades.
His responsibilities at WET also include product research, procurement and shipping, bench testing and programming equipment prior to installation, fabrication of electronic, mechanical and infrastructure components, hydrometry (including surface discharge measurements with a Sontek flow meter and an ADCP boat), reach- and cross-section surveying for hydraulic rating analyses, and preparation of technical documents. Mr. Hess has experience with field work pertinent to all aspects of water resources characterization including both water quantification and water quality sampling.
He has participated in the design, fabrication, installation and annual maintenance of roadway flashers that are activated automatically by online NWS flash flood warnings and/or nearby water level sensors. Prior to working at WET, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2009 until 2013.
Joe Cloutier is a Field Technician for Water & Earth Technologies, Inc.
Joe is a field technician with broad experience in hydrometeorological monitoring projects. He fabricates, bench tests, installs and maintains monitoring equipment including remote cameras, rain, weather, stream and well stations, repeaters and flashers. He has worked on upgrading systems from legacy ALERT to ALERT2, including TDMA planning and station upgrades. His responsibilities at Water & Earth Technologies, Inc. also include procurement and shipping, equipment programming, and fabricating electronic, mechanical and infrastructure components.
Joe has experience with field work pertinent to all aspects of flood detection and water resources characterization. Before he worked at WET, he served in the U.S. Army Reserves from 2013 until 2020.