Articles

By Jim Rinke

At Prein&Newhof, environmental consulting focuses on helping clients understand what’s beneath the surface and what it means for the future of their projects and communities. That work is continuing to grow, and I’m grateful to now be part of a team that approaches complex environmental challenges with both technical expertise and a clear focus on practical solutions.

My path to becoming a geologist and working in environmental consulting didn’t follow a straight line. I actually started out in the engineering program at Grand Valley State University. Although engineering was interesting, I never really felt like I had found my place. I made a trip to see the head of the Geology Department and knew right away that this was where I belonged. Physics applied to chemistry with a bit of camping mixed in.

After graduating from GVSU, I applied to geology jobs all over the country. The call I received was from Detroit, where I started my professional career as an Environmental Geologist with Arcadis. While there, I was exposed to a variety of field work including underground storage tank removals, subsurface vapor sampling, mercury spills, asbestos cleanups, drilling, and monitoring well installations. It was great experience, but I wasn’t ready to call Eastern Michigan home. I wanted to see a little more of the world.

I left environmental geology and headed back to school to work toward a master’s degree in geology at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. Getting back into school was difficult but well worth it, and nothing like I expected. I thought I would end up in structural geology, but a professor who specialized in creating digital models of tectonic activity recruited me for a seismology study in Western Antarctica. Antarctica sounded like the adventure I was looking for despite having no experience in seismology.

Two years later, armed with a degree focused on seismics, it was time to rejoin the workforce. A friend from GVSU had been working for a mining company and helped connect me with a copper mine in Arizona. About a year in the desert of Bagdad, Arizona was enough for me, so I transferred to a molybdenum mine in Climax, Colorado. Living high in the Rocky Mountains brought beautiful seasons, incredible views, and plenty of hiking, camping, skiing, and biking.

I didn’t want to leave Colorado, but I was ready to leave the mine. With few opportunities for geologists nearby, I had to think outside the box. I had been homebrewing since graduate school and was a regular at local breweries when I was invited to spend time in the brewhouse to see what it was like. It was more fun than I’d had in a long time, and they called it work. It blended science and art in a way that immediately clicked for me.

A friend was opening a new brewery, and I joined him to help make it happen. I helped finish construction on the building, install brewing equipment, brew the first batch of beer, and open the doors to the public. Over the next eight years, I brewed hundreds of batches of beer and helped grow the brewery into one of the most popular in the county. After nearly a decade of crafting beverages, it was time to get back to something more sustainable. The physical demands were catching up with me, and I had now been away from home and family for almost 20 years. It was time to come home and return to the career that started it all.

Environmental work often begins with uncertainty. A site may look ready for development, a property may appear unchanged for decades, or a system may seem to be functioning as expected. Below the surface, conditions can tell a very different story. The role of environmental consulting is to identify those unknowns early and provide clarity so informed decisions can be made with confidence.

Our team supports clients through site assessments and investigations, regulatory navigation, and remediation and long-term management strategies. We work alongside clients to evaluate and address environmental conditions in a way that is both responsible and achievable. It’s not about applying a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s about understanding the specific conditions of each site and responding accordingly.

In recent years, one area has become an increasingly important part of that work: PFAS. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of man-made chemicals that have been used for decades in manufacturing and consumer products. Their persistence in the environment means they do not break down easily and can accumulate in soil and water over time. Because of that, understanding where PFAS is present and what it means has become critical for many communities across Michigan.

Our approach to PFAS reflects the broader way we think about environmental challenges. It starts with investigation, identifying potential sources and evaluating the extent of impact. From there, we help clients interpret what the data means and navigate evolving regulations to determine next steps. That work is supported by our Prein&Newhof Laboratory, where certified testing provides reliable data for PFAS and other contaminants. Having that capability in-house allows us to connect field observations with clear results and move more efficiently from questions to answers.

Even with all the technical aspects involved, this work is ultimately about people. Every site we evaluate and every sample we analyze connects back to a larger purpose, whether that’s protecting a drinking water source, supporting a redevelopment project, or helping a community better understand its environment.

For me, PFAS is personal, not just technical. I found out how harmful PFAS could be before I really understood what PFAS were. In 2018, just two weeks after the grand opening of the brewery, I was diagnosed with a type of cancer linked to PFOA exposure. I grew up on well water in an area later identified as a PFAS site. At first, I appeared healthy and cancer free, but it spread and returned four years later. This time surgery wasn’t enough and chemotherapy was prescribed.

Unfortunately, most of us know someone who has faced cancer and understand how difficult it can be, not just for the person going through it but for everyone around them. I was fortunate in many ways and made it through relatively unscathed. I hope to use my experience to help others facing similar challenges. At the very least, I can now help identify areas of PFAS contamination and be part of a team working to prevent it from harming others.

Experiences like that bring the purpose of this work into sharper focus. Environmental consulting is often about identifying risks that aren’t immediately visible and helping others understand them before they become larger problems. It requires careful analysis and a commitment to doing the work thoroughly. That commitment shows up in how we approach each project. We focus on understanding the full picture, communicating findings in a way that is useful and actionable, and developing solutions that support long-term outcomes.

All the changes in direction, the challenges, and the experiences have built me into who I am and prepared me to be here. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to apply all of this with a company that believes in what they do. I look forward to getting reinvested in the community I grew up in and using my knowledge and experience to help create a cleaner environment. It wasn’t the straightest line, but it has been an adventure.

Environmental conditions are not always visible, but their impact is. The work we do helps bring those conditions into focus so communities can decide what comes next. It’s a responsibility I take seriously, and one I’m proud to carry forward as part of this team.

By Stephanie Potoka

As early as middle school, I knew that math came easily for me. Around that time, my dad showed me an issue of National Geographic pertaining to a rising environmental issue that a relative was studying. This was also in the days of only three TV channels out in the country (four, if we rotated the antennae). So when I was home sick from school, watching the kid-appropriate daytime channel, I discovered a career plan. The show I found, hosted by Jaime Escalante of calculus teaching fame, was about using math in environmental applications. Given my math abilities and growing environmental knowledge, this added up to a concrete and comfortable plan. Was civil engineering on my radar at this point? Not even close. Numbers were too beautiful with their patterns and connections, as evidenced by another lovely TV show of that era, Square One, making the Fibonacci series, tessellations, and code-making both memorable and comprehendible.

As a result, I decided to pursue an undergrad degree in mathematics at Calvin University where some of my classmates were, of course, engineers. I was, however, not pulled into the field yet. My next life choice was grad school for a master’s in industrial and applied mathematics at the University of Minnesota, an introduction to the field of math modeling. Finding this not to be practical enough, I decided to pursue another master’s, this time in civil engineering. Nine years after undergrad, I was the proud holder of two master’s degrees and mom to three. Given the pressures of life, the added constraint of an autoimmune disease, and addition of two more kids, the solution was to spend the next 12 years at home watching construction work in our Chicago and then Grand Rapids neighborhoods with two machine-loving youngsters, while also making time for classroom involvement relating to environmental issues.

Thanks to a civil engineering friend, I started part time at Prein&Newhof as an engineer on the first day that my youngest started full-time school. At the time, I really had no idea what civil engineers did day-to-day, but I happened to land in what P&N considers a “support service,” specifically that of hydraulics and hydrology. To me this is essentially the civil engineering version of industrial and applied modelling all about water, including both water on the landscape and contained within a system of pipes (think drinking water as well as wastewater). There was still a firehose of information, a steep learning curve, and so many questions which my co-workers graciously answered (and continue to answer).

A useful way for me to dive into work was involvement in Water System Reliability Studies. Unbeknownst to the vast population of Michigan residents, communities do this overview examination of their drinking water system every five years. This data-heavy report includes a map of the entire system of watermain, details of storage tanks, pumps, wells, and treatment plants, as well as water-usage related data like total pumping and billing. The other component of the study is flowing hydrants throughout the system, recording the changing pressures and flows, and then bringing the field data back to the office to calibrate the hydraulic model of the system.

To use any computer model, we must trust the reality of its abstraction: that the model does not 100% predict the system, but it gets close enough to be useful. Initial computer models began as text only, simply a list of pipes and associated connections with the program performing all the equation computations of water flow that, for decades, people had done by hand (or slide rule!). Given its ease of use now, with graphics and all, it’s tempting to use the model as a black box with magical answers. Given the iterations of these models that senior professionals have seen, though, we always ask the question “Do the results make sense?” Because sometimes they don’t, and if not, we must find out why. The purpose of the model is to aid in identifying areas of the water distribution system that could use improvement, often with larger diameter pipe or increased pumping capacity. The whole reliability study involves not just the model, spreadsheets, and numbers, but also the fluidity of patterns and connections.

In addition to enjoying the technical components of my job, coming to the profession so late in life has elevated my appreciation of municipal Department of Public Works employees and managers, as well as surveyors, GIS specialists, construction contractors, and all others involved in the work of infrastructure. I always knew that the fundamental building blocks of our first-world luxuries (clean drinking water, treated sanitary sewer systems, roads, bridges, and rainwater management) were taken for granted but had no idea how extensive the work behind them truly is. These building blocks are not perfect, though, as anyone with knowledge of PASER ratings, groundwater contamination, storm water quality, and aging infrastructure would know. There are still uncountably many environmental issues to approach from different angles, but I derive great satisfaction in being part of the integral behind-the-scenes work to maintain and improve infrastructure for local communities. While I now am fully converted to engineer, I am thankful to still be immersed in the beauty of numbers.

by Claire Vellinga, Construction Observation Intern

There are days where I take a step, and for a moment I simply take in the world around me and the space I fill within it. This is when I realize I am no longer a little girl with hopes and dreams. I am a woman with plans that align with my life goals. To be completely honest, I didn’t grow up wanting to be a civil engineer. I didn’t even know it was a career. But I’ve always had a knack for puzzles, logic, and problem-solving games and activities, so it seemed logical to look into engineering. Sitting in my freshman Introduction to Engineering class at Hope College, civil engineering caught my attention. I liked the fact that it seemed tangible. Things you could actually see and touch. However, even then I didn’t really understand how vast the field of opportunity in civil engineering was. It wasn’t until I started my internship at Prein&Newhof after my sophomore year that my curiosity and fascination within civil engineering really took flight.

One of my favorite parts of being on a job site is watching what I see on paper get excavated and constructed. I see it as a whole world underneath the world we know. The underground infrastructure fascinated me. While inspecting on site, I typically just see one small part at a time. But I’ve found it intriguing to look beyond just what is in the hole below me or on the plan set in front of me. Thinking about how everything is connected and carefully designed, calculated, and constructed to serve the needs of our communities is what I’ve found myself interested in.

This summer, I got to watch a live sewer connection. This was an interesting experience for me as it was the first time I had seen anything like it. Before that day, I don’t think I realized how complex and involved an infrastructure update like that can be. Between coordinating bypass pumping and the actual live connection, there was a lot going on. This experience really helped open my eyes to the bigger picture. While I was just looking at a pipe, a whole team of individuals was working both up and downstream to make sure the connection was smooth. That day, I learned a lot about coordination and constructability from a “hands on” perspective.

The “hands on” experience has been one of my favorite parts of interning at P&N. There’s a lot I can learn in the classroom, and from fellow engineers, but as a college intern, it has been extremely useful to actually see the work out in the field. It’s been fun to see things I read in a book, or got lectured on, show up in my field inspections. I’ve learned so much from observing and from asking questions. From basic terminology to phasing and environmental regulations, there is something new to learn every single day.

I’ve interned with the Holland Office’s engineering team for the past two summers, and Ken Bosma, Jonathan Nelson, Lucas Timmer, and Jesse Boogaard have been the best mentors. They answer my daily questions and elaborate further than what I even knew to ask about. From the beginning, they made it clear that no question was a stupid question. There is so much I have yet to learn, and they are more than patient in their explanation and reasoning. This environment made me feel safe to learn, grow, and make mistakes.

At its core, this is why I chose to join Prein&Newhof post-graduation. The work environment the team has created gives me the confidence and support I desire as a new engineer, and I know that I will take this experience and continue to keep learning as I grow in my engineering career here. I’m excited to know that this is a culture and community that I will continue to get to work in every day.

by Paul Reinhold, PLA, LEED AP, NGICP

As a landscape architect, my job is often seen as primarily visual—choosing plants, shaping outdoor spaces, coordinating materials. And while aesthetics do matter, what’s always been more important to me is how people experience a community gathering place. Who feels welcome there? Who can move through it with ease? How does the space represent the community who uses it? These questions have guided my work for decades and are at the heart of something I care about: universal design.

Universal design isn’t just about meeting accessibility requirements or adding a ramp to the corner of a park. It’s a design philosophy that seeks to create spaces that work for everyone. When we apply these principles to public spaces, especially in smaller communities, we open doors (sometimes quite literally) to a better quality of life for more people. When I was invited to work on the design of the Village of Muir’s Sensory Park, it was clear this project would be a meaningful example of universal design in action.

Why Universal Design Matters

Universal design is guided by seven core principles. These help us think beyond minimum requirements and imagine environments that support independence and inclusion for people of all ages and abilities:

• Equitable Use: The design is useful and appealing to people with a range of abilities.
• Flexibility in Use: It accommodates a variety of preferences and needs.
• Simple and Intuitive Use: It’s easy to understand, regardless of a person’s experience or background.
• Perceptible Information: Information is communicated effectively, even if someone’s vision, hearing, or cognition is limited.
• Tolerance for Error: The design reduces risks and minimizes consequences of mistakes.
• Low Physical Effort: It can be used comfortably, with minimal fatigue.
• Size and Space for Approach and Use: It provides appropriate room for access, regardless of body size or mobility device.

I keep these principles in mind on every project, but they took on particular importance in the design of Muir’s new park.

Meeting a Community Where It’s At

The Village of Muir sits just under a square mile in Ionia County and has less than 600 residents. It’s the kind of place where people wave from their porches, where community parks serve as front yards and backyards all in one. Over the years, Prein&Newhof has worked closely with the Village, including helping to acquire funding and to design a new bridge over the Maple River in 2014. That experience laid a foundation of trust, and when the Village set its sights on creating an inclusive park alongside the Fred Meijer Clinton-Ionia-Shiawassee (CIS) Trail, they came back to our team.

The idea for the sensory park had been in the works since the Village’s 2017 Recreation Plan. Through public input and demographic data, it became clear that the community needed a space where everyone, especially those with disabilities, could feel at home. This wasn’t about adding a few inclusive pieces of equipment to an existing park. It was about creating a whole new environment grounded in accessibility, interaction, and sensory experience.

Designing with Intention

The site, directly next to Railroad Street Park and the CIS Trail, gave us a good starting point. But the original plan relied on land not owned by the Village. When the hoped-for easement didn’t come through, we had to adapt by reworking the design to fit within Village property while still holding true to the project’s goals.

It helped that this wasn’t just a park with a single purpose. We included a variety of play types and sensory features: a hillside slide, zipline, multiple textured play areas, a fireplace for gathering, a performance space with grass seating, and even a bike repair station. All of these were designed with accessibility in mind, from the surface materials to the layout of paths and seating. We also ensured that ramps, parking, and resting areas supported a wide range of users—not just children, but parents, grandparents, and anyone else passing through or spending time there.

As we moved forward, we helped the Village apply for the Michigan CDBG Public Gathering Spaces Initiative. This is a highly competitive grant program focused on improving usability, accessibility, and seasonality in spaces that serve low to moderate income populations. In 2024, the Village was awarded $1.2 million to bring the park to life. The funding was a major win, but the budget still required careful coordination. We worked with the low bidder and MEDC to value engineer where needed, always making sure the core vision of accessibility and universal design remained intact.

A Space That Belongs to Everyone

There’s something powerful about watching a design become a real place. In a community like Muir, where resources are limited but people show up for each other, it means even more. This park isn’t just for kids. It’s for the parent with limited mobility who wants to watch their child play up close. It’s for the grandparent who needs a smooth path and a place to rest in the shade. It’s for the child on the autism spectrum who feels more comfortable exploring quiet sensory areas. It’s for visitors on the CIS Trail who stop in to stretch their legs or fix a flat bike tire. It’s for everyone.

That’s what universal design looks like when it’s done well. It doesn’t feel like a set of accommodations tacked on—it feels like a space that simply works for whoever shows up. And in the end, that’s what landscape architecture is really about for me. Designing places that welcome people in, however they move, however they perceive the world, however they connect. I’m proud to have been part of making that vision real for Muir’s community.

by Will Thies, PE

It was the summer of 2016, and I was fresh out of college. Various learning opportunities inside the classroom and in developing countries had strengthened my interest in tackling water-related challenges, particularly water resources, distribution, and management. I had just been hired by Prein&Newhof to work as a General Municipal Engineer, and I was looking forward to applying some of what I had learned.

Shortly before beginning my work, I took a tour of the North Kent Sewer Authority’s PARCC Side Clean Water Plant with some other young engineers from Prein&Newhof. I had toured a couple of water and wastewater treatment plants before, but this was different. I was put face to face with tanks full of hundreds of thousands of membrane filters, pipes labeled “permeate” (something I had never heard of), buildings designed to look like big red barns, a room filled with nothing but large blowers, and much more. I was fascinated, and my eyes were opened to the world of process engineering. A few phone calls later, my plans at Prein&Newhof had changed. Instead of general municipal work, I became the newest member of the process engineering team and began learning about things like flanges, impellers, and plug valves.

What is process engineering?

Even after graduating with a general civil engineering degree, I hadn’t heard the term before. Process engineering is involved with the design of equipment and systems that apply energy to (and sometimes extract energy from) water or wastewater to transport or treat it. After all, water doesn’t flow uphill, and the waste we send down our drains has a habit of remaining waste unless we apply some energy to it.

Process equipment includes pumps, blowers, mechanically cleaned screens, grit removal systems, clarifiers, bioreactors, mixers, aerators, thickeners, digesters, and much more. This equipment is packaged together at facilities such as pump stations and treatment plants. These facilities are all around us, often tucked away by rivers and creeks—out of sight, out of mind. But this typically unseen infrastructure is critical to our communities.

Take pump stations, for example. The purpose of a pump station is to lift wastewater and push it through a force main to a high point where it can return to flowing by gravity. Without them, it would be nearly impossible to convey wastewater over large distances or from low areas to a wastewater treatment plant.

There are all sorts of pump stations in our communities. Some use pumps that you could lift by hand. Others use pumps that are as tall as a giraffe and weigh a few tons. Some pump from one corner of an intersection to another. Others pump up to 20 miles away. Some pump as much water as a garden hose. Others pump enough wastewater to fill an Olympic swimming pool in less than 20 minutes—that’s about 50 million gallons each day.

What does it mean to be a process engineer?

As process engineers, we get to be on the cutting edge of some remarkable advancements in water and wastewater technology. We live in a world where equipment can automatically start, stop, adjust, optimize, ramp up and down, open, close, throttle, reverse, and much more based on signals like flow rate, oxygen concentration, water level, and electrical resistance. Entire water and wastewater treatment processes can run themselves with very little operator input.

These advancements are important because of our growing awareness of how much we depend on clean water both before and after we use it. Because of this awareness, increasingly strict limits are placed on how “clean” our treated water must be before it is returned to a river or creek. It’s our responsibility as process engineers to help communities steward our environment in a way that doesn’t financially burden the owners of that system—us.

At Prein&Newhof, we realize that providing clean water is not just about helping communities get the latest and greatest technology. While technology has its place, we strive to think like operators as we design systems that are simple, maintainable, and replaceable. It’s operators who are the true experts in our field. They are the ones monitoring water and wastewater treatment plants 24/7 to prevent any dangerous upsets in the treatment process. They are the ones running out to a pump station that lost power during heavy rain to make sure wastewater doesn’t back up in our basements. The easier we can make their jobs, the better.

In addition to thinking like operators, process engineers at Prein&Newhof get to wear many other hats. Some days we are selecting materials and colors for a new building to house process equipment. Other days we are checking on steel reinforcement before a concrete pour. We get to design underground pipelines, coordinate with mechanical and electrical engineers, and provide complex sequences of operation for equipment programmers. And the best part of our job? We get to watch as the systems we have designed are constructed and put into operation. There is always a special sense of satisfaction when we can see and admire the results of our work.

While I wouldn’t have predicted it ten years ago, I’m thankful I ended up in a position where I can serve our community as a process engineer. It has provided a way to steward this beautiful creation while tapping into my nerdy side every now and then. Of course, it has one downside: it’s hard to drive by a pump station without pointing it out to my family! But I point it out because I’m proud of the work I do. It’s easy to forget about the infrastructure we don’t see, but for me, pump stations and treatment plants are powerful symbols of service to others and a reminder of the daily blessings we often take for granted. We are providing a service that previous generations have given to us, and it is a privilege to pass it on to the next generation.

by Amanda Bricker, Lab Technician

Over twenty years ago, I had just completed an internship with Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore where I helped examine the chemistry of the water and conduct a fish survey of the park’s inland lakes. I tested the E. coli levels at the park’s beaches weekly, monitoring for any potential beach closures. That summer experience gave me my first real glimpse of environmental work in action.

It influenced me to shift my final year at Alma College to focus more heavily on environmental classes, but when I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, I wasn’t entirely sure where it would lead. I did not have a clear plan, just a growing interest in the kind of work that helped protect people and the natural world. It only took a few months after graduation, and I joined the lab team at Prein&Newhof. The reason I have stayed for over two decades is simple: I believe in what we do.

At Prein&Newhof’s Laboratory, we test drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, groundwater, surface water, soils, sludges—you name it. We look at everything from bacteria like coliform and E. coli to chemical contaminants like per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances, lead, nitrates, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). We work with municipalities, private well owners, local businesses, and environmental consultants on a daily basis. No matter who we are serving, I always feel like I’m contributing to something that matters.

There’s a real sense of purpose in knowing that the work we do helps people make informed decisions about their water. Whether a family is testing their well for peace of mind, or a city is monitoring its water system to better understand trends over time, the data we provide plays an important role. We’re here to provide reliable testing that helps guide the next steps and inform big decisions.

My son once said to me, “Your job is only fun when people have bad water.” It made me laugh because, in a way, he’s right—there is something rewarding about being part of the response when someone has a concern or a problem with their water. When people are worried about what’s coming out of their tap, they’re often scared or overwhelmed. Being able to offer clarity through testing, and to help them know what they’re dealing with, feels like a quiet but meaningful kind of service.

I also love the variety in the work. No two days are ever exactly the same, and there’s always something new to learn. Our team genuinely enjoys the problem-solving aspect of the job and the steady rhythm of lab work. We’re a group of people who care deeply about clean water and about doing things the right way.

What’s kept me here, more than anything, are the passionate coworkers and community members I get to work with on a daily basis. I’ve lived in Michigan my whole life, and I know how much people care about their lakes, rivers, and clean drinking water. I know how personal it is when someone calls about a concern with their home’s water. Being part of the team that helps answer those questions feels like contributing to the health and well-being of our community.

If you’ve ever wondered about what’s in your water or just want to better understand the quality of the water you use every day, Prein&Newhof’s Laboratory is here to help. Whether you’re testing a private well, checking your home for lead or PFAS, or managing compliance for a larger system, we’re here to walk alongside you with science, transparency, and care.

You can learn more about our lab and the services we offer at https://www.preinnewhof.com/laboratory/.