The environmental cleanup industry, which experienced a period of rapid growth in the 1980s, seems to have matured and become a familiar part of the business landscape. Companies needing cleanup services are now well-educated consumers, who know more about what they need and how much they are willing to pay, according to some local industry members.
“Ten years ago, if your company had ‘environmental’ in its name and you simply had an interest in resolving environmental issues you were in demand,” said Gary Ezovski, president and chief executive officer of Lincoln Environmental Inc. in Smithfield. “When a client hired you back then the focus was on, ‘can you help me?’ If the answer was yes, the next question was ‘when?’
“Today environmental affairs have become much like any other business issue,” Ezovski said. “That means today they (businesses) are more selective in how they qualify people that can help them, they are more demanding of the people that help them, not only from a technical standpoint, but from a cost standpoint. The environmental business has matured.”
“Our customers have gotten a lot more sophisticated over the years,” said Tom Sylvia, a chemical engineer who co-owns Environmental Strategies & Management Inc. in Norton, Mass..
Highly competitive
Environmental consulting, however, remains a highly competitive field.
“The competition is changing quite a bit; there’s been a lot of consolidation in our area,” Sylvia said.
Many larger firms concentrate on contracts for cleaning up contaminated spots that have been designated Superfund sites, government contracting, and even Fortune 500 companies, according to Sylvia. Environmental Strategies is an environmental consulting firm, which specializes in groundwater and soil remediation. It was founded in 1995 and there are four full-time employees.
“That’s left a lot of room for smaller companies,” he said. Room to work for small to medium sized businesses, which need environmental consultants but can’t afford big ticket prices of large firms. “That’s where we think we have been able to establish a nice niche,” Sylvia explained.
But the industry, he added, “is not growing as fast as it once did. This field was really born in the mid ’80s; it really went through a phenomenal growth.” Now it is going through what Sylvia calls “a weeding out process.”
Ezovski said he thinks the process of some environmental consulting businesses closing down or being sold is happening for a variety of reasons. Lincoln Environmental was founded in 1982 and has about 50 employees.
“I think there are some people that came into the business for the financial incentive, and the environmental world was the place of high demand and the easy place to make a living, if you will. I think what is transpiring today, is that to stay in the environmental business you have to want to do it,” Ezovski said. “People have to be interested in getting dirty.
“Some people determine that this was fun, but ‘I’d rather go and do something else now,'” he added. “Those of us that enjoy what we do in this environmental business will stay and make it our livings.”
In fact the man who founded Lincoln Environmental gradually backed away from the business and hired someone to run it. “He was an individual that was action oriented; even in the early years of the business he got frustrated with many of the regulatory details that didn’t always seem to make sense. It caused him to focus his efforts elsewhere and get someone like me involved,” Ezovski said.
“Once a business matures you really have to want to do it,” he said.
And with maturity comes change.
Laws change and new products and tools are designed.
Risk assessment
For instance, Sylvia said risk assessment has become “an important part of the work” for environmental consultants these days. Basically that means the consultants “determine what the appropriate level of cleanup is” for a contaminated site, because some locations may not need to be rendered pristine if there’s no groundwater in the area or if it’s a site that is going to be used for industrial purposes, he explained.
“If a site is going to be used as a daycare, then obviously the level of cleanup is a lot higher,” Sylvia added.
At Lincoln Environmental they have been working on helping clients take advantage of government programs that offer reimbursement for certain types of cleanup, such as a gas station that needs to replace underground storage tanks, Ezovski said. And they’ve even developed a software product, which uses a commercially available database to help clients anticipate the cost of environmental cleanup and maintenance projects over a period of time, he added.
