October 24, 2025, Vancouver, BC, Canada – Knight Piésold has won two awards at the 2025 Canadian Consulting Engineering (CCE) Awards, receiving the special Environmental Award and an Award of Excellence in the Water Resources category for the Salton Sea Species Conservation Habitat Project. Knight Piésold’s Keith Ainsley, a specialist engineer from the Vancouver office, and Richard Cook, a specialist environmental scientist from the North Bay office, accepted the awards at a gala reception held on October 16 at Palais Royale in Toronto, Ontario.

The 57th CCE Awards, sponsored by Canadian Consulting Engineer, represents the longest-running national recognition program for consulting engineering companies that demonstrate the highest quality of engineering, innovation, and imagination.

This year’s program recognized 20 projects with Awards of Excellence across seven categories from 60 eligible entries, with only six projects receiving additional Special Awards. Special Awards include the Schreyer Award, Engineering a Better Future Award, Environmental Award, and Philanthropy Award.

Knight Piésold shared the Environmental Award, also known as the Sustainability Award, in a tie with Englobe's Pétromont Varennes Site Rehabilitation Project. The award recognizes outstanding environmental stewardship, with the CCE Awards jury noting that Knight Piésold’s project “showcases a common-sense engineering approach to the restoration of a severely degraded ecosystem in a challenging location.”

Knight Piésold partnered with Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. (Kiewit) to support the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) in the development of the Salton Sea Species Conservation Habitat Project. The Salton Sea, a below-sea-level saltwater lake in California, has been shrinking for decades due to reduced inflows and increased evaporation. The shrinking lake’s hypersaline water has become inhospitable to most aquatic species and has severely impacted local and migratory bird populations. Wind-blown, airborne particulates from large areas of exposed lakebed sediments have also increased health risks for Imperial Valley residents, who experience asthma rates several times higher than the regional average.

As the EPC team for DWR, Knight Piésold and Kiewit developed an innovative gravity-flow system to provide habitat water with a lower salinity. The system features a specialized diversion structure with a labyrinth weir that controls water levels while effectively diverting fresh water from the New River into mixing basins to blend with hypersaline water pumped from the Salton Sea.

The EPC team constructed shallow habitat ponds and overcame complex geotechnical conditions on site, including construction on exposed lakebed sediments in a high seismic area with liquifiable foundation materials and designing facilities for a highly saline environment.

The project has created over 4,000 acres of aquatic and terrestrial habitats where endangered species are now flourishing, migratory birds have returned in greater numbers, fish populations are recovering, and native vegetation is thriving once again.

“We’re honoured to have been recognized for our work on this large-scale environmental restoration project,” Ainsley said. “Our close collaboration with Kiewit and DWR in addressing environmental and health concerns has resulted in a thriving wetland ecosystem at Salton Sea that we’re all proud of.”

Ainsley added, “The success of this project rests with the team that executed the work. This involved close design collaboration among Knight Piésold offices in Canada and the USA, Geosyntec, Northwest Hydraulic Consultants, as well as several other consultants that brought specific areas of expertise to the project.”

Looking ahead, Ainsley expanded on the project’s lasting impact: “This proof-of-concept project has established a toolbox of cost-effective construction methods that are now being applied to ongoing expansion efforts. With an additional 7,800 acres of habitat currently under development, we’re setting up the long-term success and sustainability of the Salton Sea.”

In addition to the two CCE awards, the project has also received an Award of Excellence at the ACEC-BC 2025 Awards for Engineering Excellence earlier this year.