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David Evans and Associates Inc.’s High-Tech Underwater Dam Inspections
A DEA marine services boom truck on site for an inspection survey at a hydropower dam.
D
avid Evans and Associates Inc. (DEA) is an engineering and professional services consulting firm with 29 offices and more than 850 employees nationwide. DEA serves energy, water, transportation, land development, surveying, and marine services clients. The firm provides numerous services of interest to hydropower facilities, including advanced underwater dam inspections that involve bathymetric data, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), imaging sonar, 3‑D scans, and laser systems. In this interview, Nick Lesnikowski, DEA’s senior geophysicist for marine services, tells us about these techniques and their uses.
Nick Lesnikowski: I grew up in New England. I went to the University of Massachusetts and received a geology
14 | HYDRO LEADER | October 2021
hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF DEA.
Hydro Leader: Please tell our readers about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
degree in 1982. Immediately after graduating, I accepted a job as a geophysicist with Amoco Production Company in New Orleans. Amoco liked to hire geologists and teach them geophysics as they practiced it. I worked in the offshore division, assessing lease holdings that were coming up for bid and things of that nature. I also did a bit of work with shallow hazard analysis and started to get familiar with side scan, high-resolution subbottom profiling, hydrography, and detailed mapping of areas where rigs might be placed. I left Amoco after about 3 years and was commissioned as an officer in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Corps. I was assigned to the research vessel Discoverer, which was a class 1 vessel, meaning that it was one of the bigger ships that NOAA operated. I spent 2½ years on the Discoverer, going in and out of Seattle and all around the Pacific. It was a great experience.
