Bozeman, Mont. - Bitterroot Restoration, Inc. (BRI) of Corvallis, Montana, has received a five-year, $5 million contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for watershed and abandoned mine lands planning and restoration. The contract is the largest in the 15-year-old company's history and the only one of its kind awarded to a Montana company this year. BRI attributes its success in part to having a collaborative project in place with another branch of the Army Corps, the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) of Hanover, NH. That partnership, facilitated by the MSU TechLink Center, aims to develop and commercialize new technologies for restoring disturbed and contaminated sites. "TechLink has helped us to continue to expand our vision, not just regionally but nationally," said Gant Massey, BRI Director of Consulting. BRI's proposal competed with those of approximately 20 other large and small restoration companies nationwide. The process, from proposal to award, took one year. Bitterroot Restoration is a Montana success story. The company was established in 1986 by Pat Burke, Maury Burke and its first employee, Len Ballek. Pat Burke and Len Ballek still run the company today. Now the company has two branch facilities in California, projected revenues of $6.8 million this year, and its staff roster includes 80 to 90 full-time and up to an additional 50 seasonal employees. Many of BRI's staff hold advanced degrees, and many were educated in the Montana university system, Ballek said.

"Over the last ten years we've averaged forty percent growth per year," said Ballek from his office in BRI's new 4,000 square foot headquarters, a remodeled Victorian farmhouse in rural Corvallis. "We plan to be at around $30 million in annual revenues in five years."

Another of the company's goals for the next five years is to expand its operations and establish branch facilities in Seattle/Portland, Flagstaff/Phoenix, and Omaha. "Even with this rapid expansion we would only have two to three percent of the ecological restoration market west of the Mississippi River," Ballek said.

The primary business of the company is to restore native ecosystems and landscapes in areas that have been disturbed by mining, construction, or military operations. CRREL's mission includes developing cost-effective restoration techniques for cold regions. Abandoned mine sites merit special attention because the remnants of arsenic and other dangerous compounds used in the extraction of ore continue to pose a serious health threat years after the mines are shut down. In cold regions, special techniques are required for successful site restoration. "The philosophy of the company is to restore basic ecosystem functions and the key species that existed prior to disturbance," said founder and president Pat Burke. BRI's teams of botanists, biologists, plant physiologists, soil scientists, computer scientists, and engineers gather information about each site's history and current status, collect seeds from native vegetation, grow seedlings, plan the restoration project, plant, and monitor the results. These projects may take anywhere from three to ten or more years to complete, Ballek said.

Around 60 percent of BRI's current projects are for the public sector and 40 percent for the private sector, according to Massey. TechLink will continue to assist BRI and other companies in the northwestern U.S. by providing opportunities to collaborate with the Department of Defense and other federal laboratories.

TechLink is funded by the Department of Defense and NASA to link companies in Montana and the surrounding region with federal laboratories for joint research and technology transfer. Its overriding purpose is to contribute to the success of both technology-based companies and key resource-based industries in the state and region.

CONTACTS:
Dan Swanson
MSU TechLink
(406) 994-7736
dss@montana.edu

Len Ballek
Bitterroot Restoration, Inc.
(406) 961-4991
len@bitterrootrestoration.com

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