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Water. 

It's a human thing.

Our story

When consulting engineers Donald Lee and Steve Ro decided to start their own firm in December of 1979, they couldn’t have known how dramatically California’s water requirements would change over the next 4 decades … but it didn’t matter. They always operated under the defining principles that if it’s not sustainable it’s not a solution, that your word is everything, and that the way you treat people is the way they’ll remember you. Forty years on, that hasn’t changed.


Which is why, when you talk to our clients, you hear the same things over and over: that we do what we say, we stick our necks out, and we care just as much as they do about what they do.

That’s because what they do is bring something to Californians that we can’t live without: clean, safe, sustainable water. And they do it day-in and day-out, despite decades of budget shortfalls, despite a century-old infrastructure and despite the mounting demands of climate change and explosive population growth. It’s pretty miraculous. Yet most of us go about our daily lives without even noticing. Until something breaks.

Of course, the more pressure you put on a system that’s past its capacity, the more things break. And in California, that pressure is not letting up. So we’re working with municipalities and agencies across the state to find innovative ways to avert public health and safety crises, reclaim water security and make life better … for our clients, our communities and for generations of Californians to come.