Tag: Water Resources

Lots of Water over the Dam: Bakken Wraps up 41-Year Career

The year was 1973, and the U.S. unemployment rate was 4.9% and growing. Newly minted civil engineers like Jim Bakken were working wherever they could; for Jim, a fall 1972 graduate, that meant continuing the job he had his junior and senior years at the University of Minnesota – working as a janitor at 3M… Read More »

Colorado Floods: A Year Later

It’s been a little over a year now since employees in our Colorado offices experienced a catastrophic flood, giving our water resources engineers a chance to put their skills to a serious test. The September 2013 flood made national headlines and sent the state scrambling to deal first with the emergency and then with the… Read More »

Remote Catamaran Retrieves Data and Keeps Surveyors Safe

Conditions are sometimes too dangerous for water resources engineers to get up close and personal to collect hydrographic survey data at bridges. When scouting bridges in 2012, Ayres Associates’ staff decided one bridge – U.S. Highway 8 over the St. Croix River in Polk County, Wisconsin – was impassable by jet boat and not navigable… Read More »