Lauren Ross, Ph.D., P.E. is an environmental engineer and owner of Glenrose Engineering, Inc. in Austin, Texas. Her areas of expertise include water quality protection and engineering design, groundwater transport, solid waste management and disposal, environmental monitoring and litigation. Her clients represent a diverse community of developers, businesses, tribal sovereign nations, industrial manufacturers, governments, lawyers, state regulatory agencies, universities, environmental and community organizations and private individuals.
Her work during the last twenty-five years has focused on design, monitoring, and protection systems for groundwater, surface water and soil. Her work includes the development, design, construction management, review, and inspection of state-of-the-art systems to capture and treat storm runoff using pervious pavement, retention/ irrigation, bioretention, sand filtration, infiltration and vegetative filter controls.
Her engineering consulting contributed to the successful Save Our Springs citizen’s referendum to protect Barton Springs, the closure of the Gibraltar hazardous waste disposal operations in a low-income and predominantly African-American community near Tyler, Texas, and restrictions to end over-pumping of the Edwards Aquifer in San Antonio.
Dr. Ross made five trips to New Orleans and coastal Louisiana since September 2005 to collect environmental samples and educate residents and volunteers on toxic threats and staying safe in the rebuilding environment. She produced the educational pamphlet Water, Mud, Mold, and More: Toxic Chemicals and Staying Safe When Returning to Coastal Louisiana. She has been the technical consultant to Common Ground’s toxic chemical bioremediation program in New Orleans.
To address escalating water scarcity, she designed the first City of Austin permitted residential graywater system and the first City of Austin permitted composting (“dry”) toilet in a public park.
Jeanine Sih Christensen, B. A. is office manager and research assistant for Glenrose Engineering, beginning in 1995. Ms. Christensen began her work career at age twelve in her father’s organic chemistry lab, where despite lengthy and repeated handling of many chemicals or perhaps because of it, she majored in English at the University of Missouri.