Catherine Elder now heads Aspen’s Energy Resource Economics Practice. Formerly known as the Integrated Electricity Analysis and Policy Group, ERE will continue to perform integrated policy and economic analysis of energy resource issues.

2014 conferences

In 1993, just 18 months after Aspen was founded, President Hamid Rastegar assembled a large team of experts to prepare an EIR/EIS for a controversial 150-mile crude oil pipeline from Kern County, through downtown Los Angeles County, ending at refineries in Wilmington.

Aspen Environmental Group is pleased to announce the opening of our newest office in Tempe, Arizona with new hire Philip Lowe! Our Tempe office will serve as a local base of operations to provide the same high-quality environmental services provided by our six California offices.

Aspen energy policy economist and natural gas expert Catherine Elder spoke at a Natural Gas Development Summit held in Taipei in mid-November. The Summit was hosted by the U.S. State Department and Taiwan’s Bureau of Energy and was staged by the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research.

Palmdale Water District (PWD) recently awarded Aspen a contract amendment to continue work on the Littlerock Sediment Removal Project located in the Littlerock Recreation Area of the Angeles National Forest.

In October 2013, Aspen Cultural Resources Specialist Dr. Sarah Heffner was invited to speak at the first meeting of the recently formed Chinese Railroad Workers Archaeology Network Workshop, a part of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, which was held at Stanford University from October 10-12.

As a volunteer for the California Condor Recovery Program sponsored by U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Santa Barbara Zoo, Aspen’s Lead Environmental Monitor Jenny Slaughter gained access to some of our state’s most precious avian resources-the nesting California Condor.

Meet our new hires

View the list of conferences Aspen attended in 2013.

Reservoir sedimentation is a growing threat to water supply reliability and flood hazard protection, throughout the world and right in our backyard.

Aspen Environmental Group, together with the Bureau of Land Management and the County of Imperial, was recently recognized by the California Association of Environmental Professionals (AEP) with the 2013 “Outstanding Environmental Analysis” award for preparation of the Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report (EIS/EIR).

Aspen has recently been awarded a contract by the San Bernardino County Department of Public Works (SBCDPW) to prepare environmental documents and regulatory permits for the development of the Donnell Basin.

California is home to approximately 40 million people yet still supports a complex association of plants and wildlife, many unique to the state and found nowhere else on earth.

Aspen has been awarded a multi-year Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Support Services contract with Western Area Power Administration, Sierra Nevada Region, which is a Power Marketing Agency (PMA) and is part of US Department of Energy. We are providing staffing at Western’s Folsom, CA facility to assist the agency with all GIS-related tasks.

In one of his final acts as Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar signed the Desert Harvest Solar Project Record of Decision on March 13, 2013 along with two other renewable energy records of decision.

Aspen’s public participation team for the Desert Harvest Solar Project Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) prepared a comprehensive animated video presentation for the Draft EIS public meetings, which clearly identified the NEPA process, the project schedule, and the key environmental issues for stakeholders.

The Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) is a coalition of water agencies from throughout the state, making up the largest of its kind in the country.