Company History

In 1981, Roux was founded by Paul Roux as a groundwater contamination investigation practice. His goal was to build a small consulting firm where the staff was smart, hardworking, talented, and nice.

Talk about “perfect timing,” Roux’s modest start followed The Federal Superfund Law of 1980, which held responsible parties accountable for cleaning up hazardous waste, pollutants, and contaminants—otherwise known as CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act).
 
Our firm’s first project was conducting groundwater investigations at the Industri-Plex Superfund Site in Woburn, Massachusetts. After years of remediation, this Site that was once deemed the fifth most hazardous waste site in the nation by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has been renovated into a thriving center for transportation, retail, offices, and hotels.

Our early work at Industri-Plex led to Roux winning other Superfund sites and expanding our expertise to encompass Industrial and Compliance work. Over the past 40 years, Roux has worked on dozens of major state and federal Superfund sites across the country, including the nearly $300 million BROS Superfund Site in New Jersey.

Roux, which at the time had only 6-7 employees, was retained by an agricultural chemical manufacturer for monitoring well installation and groundwater sampling at dozens of sites, as well as monitoring water quality from 25 rivers in numerous environmental settings across the country. Several different types of study protocols were developed by Roux, which were accepted and adopted by the EPA and manufacturers to develop directions and warning labels on pesticides and herbicides

In the mid-80s, we began providing environmental services to the Energy industry, in which we have successfully completed hundreds of remedial projects. By the late 1980s, Roux was retained by a major petroleum company to oversee environmental remediation conducted at 80 service stations from the mid-Atlantic to New England. Roux took over and led the remediation at a number of these sites, as well as sites in California.

Toward the end of the decade, Roux assembled a Litigation Support team to provide in-depth scientific analyses and expert testimony for presentation in reports, depositions, and trials. Over the years, our associates have provided expert testimony on hundreds of environmental disputes, including many high-profile cases.

Roux was chosen to investigate and remediate over a dozen prominent refinery and terminal locations throughout the Northeast, including the largest underground release of petroleum in the United States. At this Site, we have since designed and implemented cutting-edge remedial technology for contaminant capture, extraction, and treatment, including three-dimensional modeling, soil vapor extraction, and recovery of over 8.5 million gallons of separate-phase product.

Moving into the 1990s, we added environmental Insurance Support to our list of services. We’ve since supported more than 45 national, international, and regional insurance carriers, reviewing over $10 billion in claims to support fair evaluations of insurance liabilities and costs for environmental projects.

The experience gained working on Superfund sites and other big environmental remediation projects was applied to the remediation of large-scale, complex Brownfields sites. By the end of the decade, Brownfields work had become a key part of our business and a major driver of our firm’s growth. To date, Roux has remediated hundreds of Brownfields sites across the country.

Roux has developed and continues to create and employ a number of Green & Sustainable Remediation technologies, including the Constructed Treatment Wetland (CTW), which can be used to treat a wide range of contaminants in wastewaters. In 1996, Roux received a patent for an innovative CTW design that greatly increases efficiency and reduces the land area needed for its installation.

Roux was retained by the property owner, a multi-national chemical company, to develop a cost-effective alternative landfill cover and leachate treatment design. The multi-phase project was designed by Roux in 1998, with the CTWs constructed in 1999 for pH neutralization and metal removal, since the Site’s landfill leachate contained high levels of zinc, iron, and acidity. The Phyto Cap, consisting of 18,500 specialty tree species, was installed in 2001. The solution is passively operated and has the capacity to treat combined leachate and stormwater runoff flows of up to 150,000 gallons/day.

A prime example of our Brownfields work is the Pacific Park development, including the Barclays Center (home of the Brooklyn Nets) in downtown Brooklyn, New York. The overall Project consists of 8 million square feet of residential, retail, commercial, and entertainment property. The Barclays Site contained an active 100-year-old train yard prior to redevelopment. At this time, Roux conducted a waste characterization of over half a million yards of soil that needed to be excavated to build the arena. Roux provided Phase I and II ESAs throughout 22 acres (sampling of soil, groundwater, and soil vapor) and collected over 350 soil samples and over 175 groundwater samples using various drilling methods.

Roux was commissioned to design a stormwater treatment system for a 200-acre metal smelter in Iceland. Our system collects stormwater runoff from production/industrial areas and provides pretreatment via vegetated bioswales and engineered soil profiles. Water is then conveyed to two CTWs for detention and treatment prior to discharge to the fjord. This project achieved the client’s goal of achieving a 75% “green” facility footprint.

We provided consulting and engineering services for a large in situ groundwater remediation project at a former television manufacturing facility in Taoyuan, Taiwan. After a thorough evaluation of the hydrogeology and geochemistry of the Site and pilot testing of two possible treatment methods, enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD) was the technology selected to treat the Site’s groundwater. Monthly injections of molasses have been successful in creating and maintaining an anaerobic subsurface environment conducive to ERD across the Site. As a result, after four years of operation, the mass of PCE detected in monitoring wells decreased by over 98 percent and trichloroethylene (TCE) mass decreased by over 95 percent.

Roux was retained to provide strategic remedial consulting support for the closure of three former wastewater lagoons containing 160,000 cubic yards of sediment. The three lagoons were originally constructed within the floodplain of the Illinois River, covering approximately 12 acres of land. Our pre-closure investigation services include the extensive evaluation of lagoon sediments, geotechnical assessments for dike stability, hydrology assessments, wetland delineations, treatability studies, and closure option analyses. Our engineering design included the restoration of approximately 50% of the land area to pre-lagoon conditions, restoring the floodplain to a natural condition. Roux provided construction oversight and field engineering support for the $9.3M capping and stabilization project.

Roux California began in 2011 with three Principals and one Business Development Manager, who all remain integral members of our firm today. Our goal from day one was to bring people with diverse backgrounds together who were aligned with our culture of providing solutions to complex challenges. Roux merely provided the platform and let great people do great work. Today, we have over 50 employees in Long Beach and Oakland, allowing us to better service our clients across the country.

Roux provided project management and construction management for a major federal agency remediation program from 2011 to 2015. Specifically, Roux has managed contracts with the client’s consultants and contractors to complete a site investigation, feasibility study, remedial action plan, and remedial design per Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) requirements; environmental documentation per California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requirements; construction documents; procurements for bids; and remedial construction. Roux provided oversight for two remediation construction projects at the 1,500-acre property in 2013, wherein approximately 12,500 cubic yards of soil, asphalt, and debris were removed. The excavated material was transported via trucks to off-site into permitted landfills and the sites were backfilled with clean soil.

Another international CTW project was designed by Roux for a massive manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia. The system has been installed and is currently treating two million gallons per day of industrial process and sanitary wastewater. Treated water is 100% recycled for use within the industrial facility.

This year marked the Tronox Inc. v. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. case ruling. For this case, Roux evaluated the cost to remediate 373 major sites formerly owned or operated by the Kerr-McGee Corporation. Thanks to Roux’s evaluations, expert testimony, and Judge Gropper’s ruling, our client was awarded $5.1 billion for cleanup costs—the largest environmental bankruptcy award to date. In addition to cost allocation, our experts specialize in contaminant fate and transport, forensic evaluation, and standard of care, among a number of other technical areas.

Roux has provided a wide range of environmental services to Los Angeles County Counsel, the Department of Public Health, and the Division of Environmental Health related to the former Exide Technologies site in Vernon, California. Roux assessed the historical operations, evaluated the extent and magnitude of the facility emissions impacts in both the surrounding industrial/commercial and residential neighborhoods, reviewed and critiqued various proposed cleanup approach remedies, assisted with Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) interactions, and was a resource to the community outreach by LA County. Roux developed the protocols for and mobilized staff from all over the United States in order to lead the demonstration of an efficient and effective sampling and assessment methodology for the timely characterization of many impacted residential properties.

Roux provided Expert Witness services for insurance coverage litigation and bad faith claims related to the cleanup and redevelopment of the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The litigation required a comprehensive review of the technical assessment and cleanup of dozens of former military operations, the insurance claims process for both a Remediation Stop Loss policy on the anticipated cleanup and an Environmental Liability policy for newly discovered contamination, and the financial tally of the various claims paid versus unresolved.

Roux was hired for a multimillion-dollar Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study (RI/FS) at a 1,300-acre former aluminum reduction facility in Columbia Falls, Montana, performing a complex site assessment and risk assessment. The Site includes seven closed landfills, one active landfill, two closed leachate ponds, and several wastewater percolation ponds. Our work includes geophysical surveys of the landfills, landfill soil gas surveys, drilling of 95 soil borings, and installation of 43 monitoring wells, including 17 deep monitoring wells up to 300 feet in depth. Since 2015, we’ve taken approximately 750 samples, completed human health and ecological risk assessments, and created a comprehensive RI Report and FS Work Plan.

Roux’s Economic & Complex Analytics (ECA) team is nationally recognized for its expertise in helping clients evaluate the legal, scientific, and financial risks associated with environmental, mass tort, and product liability litigation. Our ECA professionals provide strategic consulting and expert services that assist clients identify, quantify, forecast, and mitigate current and emerging environmental, toxic tort, and product litigation risks. Our collective expertise has been leveraged in complex insurance coverage disputes, arbitrations, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reserve disclosures, financial due diligence, bankruptcy reorganizations, underlying claim evaluations, and public policy initiatives. Overall, our analysts work to reduce risks for our clients through better forecasting and predictive modeling.

Roux provided environmental services for a 17-acre high school campus in Chicago’s Roscoe Village neighborhood. Services included Phase I environmental site assessment (ESA), Phase II ESA, acquisition negotiation support, supplemental site investigation (SSI), regulatory management, a Tier 2 Risk-Based Closure Assessment, and full-scale remediation. Over 200 soil samples were collected across the Site to fully characterize and complete a Tier 2/Upper Confident Limit evaluation, which resulted in significantly reduced remediation time and costs. Roux seamlessly integrated remedial actions with other site construction activities to drive down costs, increase efficiency, and allow on-time occupancy of the new campus.

Roux is providing strategic remedial consulting support for a large petroleum refinery in eastern Texas, including the preparation of a comprehensive conceptual site model to facilitate the application of innovative petroleum plume closure strategies. Roux analyzed several years of investigation, recovery, and monitoring data while refining the conceptual site model to evaluate the current and future approach to petroleum recovery activities for several plumes. A work scope was developed and executed to address any identified data gaps, allowing Roux to employ the conceptual site model to prioritize LNAPL recovery activities and pursue closure at a plume and sub-plume level.

Roux has performed investigation, remediation, and regulatory reporting services at three midstream petroleum facilities in Texas, with a goal of meeting regulatory requirements and achieving closure. At the marine shipping terminal, a tank release threatened the adjacent ship channel. Roux has conducted remediation activities, groundwater sampling activities, and reporting activities, and is in the final stages of confirmation sampling before closure.

A valued member of the Roux team since 1999, Sin Senh, is now our President and Chief Executive Officer, marking a transition to our firm’s next generation of leaders. Roux’s number one core value is to stay privately held, and since our inception, our key focus has been inward toward our people.

Our newest practice, Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG), stems from businesses beginning to examine the sustainability of their operations, and how they disclose potential liabilities and manage risk over time. As ESG and climate change gain more attention, Roux is highly qualified to provide our clients with strategic advice on how to comply with a shifting regulatory landscape driven by ESG standards set by government and investors. As ESG standards continue to develop, Roux’s team of experts can provide strategic advice to companies in a variety of industries on the ever-changing environmental regulatory framework, and how to develop and execute a long-term environmental strategy.

Roux has transformed dramatically—both in size and the scope of our services—over the past 40 years. We look forward to continuing to grow our next generation and collaborating on more challenging and rewarding projects alongside our clients.

The Buffalo-based firm, Benchmark Civil/Environmental Engineering & Geology, PLLC and TurnKey Environmental Restoration, LLC (collectively called Benchmark TurnKey), has merged with Roux. Benchmark TurnKey, comprised of 35 personnel, is known to be a strong advocate for their clients’ business interests and projects. Many of their client relationships span over 25 years.