The clean side of the law: environmental service companies take a close look at state and federal regulations, then clean up our earth accordingly.

• Author: Stewart, Corenne

Environmental service companies take a close look at state and federal regulations, then clean up our earth accordingly.

They are comprehensive planners and strategic developers. They're mediators and facilitators, teachers and cleanup crews. They sample water, soil and air; unearth drums of toxic waste and cap landfills. They conduct petroleum spill research, compile data, count birds and monitor fish populations. They are environmental service companies, a specialized branch of engineering that works with industries to ensure their compliance with state and federal environmental regulations. And although the hay-day may already have peaked, service companies say there's still plenty of life and longevity in the field.

Environmental regulations trace their roots back to the 1960s, the era of counterculture movement and growing public awareness. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, published in 1962, alerted the country to the dangers of pesticides and the first Earth Day was held April 22, 1969, which helped catalyze what has been called the "decade of environmental legislation." During a 10-year period from 1970 to 1980, the U.S. saw official establishment of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Foothill Engineering Consultants Inc.

Marilyn A. Plitnik of Foothill Engineering Consultants Inc. has been in the environmental service industry 16 years. At the time she got into the field in 1983 it was just taking off. Plitnik said many of her classmates from graduate school were choosing to go into industrial engineering because it was more lucrative. "The industrial engineers were starting out at $30,000, and the environmental engineers at $15,000," she said. "So in those days, the ones who chose to go into environmental engineering were idealists and conservationists. They wanted to play a part in cleaning up the earth."

Plitnik is a certified professional geologist, a certified professional hydrologist and president of the Alaska section of the American Institute of Professional Geologists. She's worked as a project manager at Foothill for 13 years. "It's a lot of client-regulatory interface," she said. "And what I do is mostly what we call 'up front' work." This means she's part of the team that investigates a site, identifies the problem, determines how wide-spread it is, then draws up a workable solution.

Plitnik said it was President Jimmy Carter who...