CK Associates

Keith Nichols is the Program Manager of Ecological Services with more than twenty-six years of experience in conducting ecological studies in the inland and coastal waters of Louisiana. He has also provided ecological management for oil and gas clients in central and western United States. Mr. Nichols is the Environmental Spill Response Coordinator for all emergency actions and/or environmental assessment projects associated with water and soil/sediment quality. Under his direction the Emergency Response Team has responded to a number of water and land based spills requiring his experience in collection of field data to assess impacts, to develop assessment strategies and to provide the agency/client liaison to coordinate and facilitate response and recovery operations. Mr. Nichols is also responsible for providing Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) technical direction for obtaining baseline and incident data and facilitating the cooperative efforts between clients and State and Federal Natural Resource Trustee Agencies.

Wade Bryant is a Senior Environmental Scientist with CK’s Ecological Team and comes to CK after 25 years of federal service. Mr. Bryant was a Senior Ecologist with the US Geological Survey for twenty-two years and worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service Division of Environmental Contaminants and the Division of Refuges. Mr. Bryant spent 4 years as a science advisor to the Federal On-Scene Coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Prior to 2010, Mr. Bryant led integrated assessments of stream ecosystem health for a national-scale federal program. These assessments included the evaluation of effects of alterations in hydrology and stream habitat, nutrient enrichment, pesticides, heavy metals, and PAHs on the stream biota. Mr. Bryant has expertise in the design and implementation of aquatic monitoring programs, wetland ecology, ecological risk assessment, and statistical analysis/modeling. Mr. Bryant has extensive experience providing technical support to federal agencies including: US Coast Guard, NOAA Office of Response and Restoration, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, USFWS Endangered Species Program, Department of Interior Section 106 Compliance Office, and the Department of Justice.

Brian Newman has worked as an Environmental Scientist and Project Manager on numerous wetland delineations, threatened/endangered species surveys and habitat assessments. Over his eleven-year tenure with CK, he has acquired numerous section 404/10 Nationwide and Coastal Use Permits in addition to numerous jurisdictional determinations and Water Quality Certifications. Mr. Newman has also developed mitigation banking prospectuses, Mitigation Banking Instruments and has been a liaison for resources agency coordination or multiple mitigation banks throughout south Louisiana. He has overseen field efforts on multiple large scale environmental surveys for new pipelines and gas storage facilities. Mr. Newman has developed resource reports for these large scale projects regulated by FERC.

As a Senior Geospatial Analyst, Chad LeBlanc is responsible for the design, development and implementation of GIS projects and applications. Specializations include data acquisition, transformation, and management and applying GIS based technologies and processes to multi-media environmental projects. Mr. LeBlanc is also responsible for GIS and AutoCAD support company-wide. Mr. LeBlanc is responsible for managing daily workflow and drafting needs within the Baton Rouge office. All of CK’s geospatial technologies including global positioning systems and GIS software licenses are managed by Mr. LeBlanc.