Sage Environmental Consulting

Ramona handles the branding and online/offline communications for Sage and the family of companies. At the core of her experience is 6 years as a graphic designer before joining Sage in '07, working in a variety of industries. The projects she ran ranged from logo design, identity systems, web design, interior design, and branding. Sage needed a champion to build their brands and keep each company's messaging consistent. Ramona heads up this effort keeping Sage and family fresh and current in their customer's minds.

Ramona's personal philosophy:

The world is made a better place through good design and the right messaging!

As a trained environmental and chemical engineer, Steve brings more than just his vision to Sage.

With almost two decades of air permitting and air quality compliance experience, Steve has prepared Title V Operating Permits, Risk Management Plans, SARA 313 Form Rs and supporting documentation, 40-50 standard exemptions, and Emissions Inventory Questionnaires. He has worked extensively with Benzene Waste Operations, and has obtained air quality permits for chemical, petrochemical/refining, and foundry facilities. Steve has also assisted in negotiations with various local, state, and federal agencies.

In Steve's own words:

"My favorite time of year is when the Berkshire Hathaway annual report is released. It also happens to be the time of the Kentucky Derby. The greatest 2 minutes in sports."

With over twenty five years of air permitting and air quality compliance experience, Kelly is an expert in preparing air permits. She has completed SARA 313 Form Rs and Emissions Inventory Questionnaires for several dozen of clients. She has worked extensively within the refining industry as an air quality regulatory analyst and has also assisted in negotiations with various local, state, and federal agencies including consent decree and penalties negotiations spanning over multiple industries.

Something notable about Kelly:

She is a true sports fan, and has a lot of teams to cheer for: Go Hokies (VT), Tigers (LSU Grad), Red Stickers (St Joseph High School), Saints (LA transplant), Cowboys (true Texan), Astros (Houstonian), and Longhorns (family tradition)!

Larry Darcey brings with him 12 years experience in environmental compliance and permitting. Larry has also served as the environmental solutions manager at one of the largest refineries in the United States where he managed costs, prioritized projects, and provided guidance to the refinery's engineering and projects groups on environmental aspects of capital projects. In this position, Larry also found himself tracking and managing resolution of multi-media environmental audit findings generated during a multi-million dollar, multi-year audit.

Larry specializes in air quality permitting and compliance, and has extensive knowledge and experience with the Benzene Waste Operations NESHAP or “BWON,” having performed BWON compliance work at nearly two-dozen refineries and chemical plants. Larry routinely conducts BWON training courses and is recognized as one of the few national experts on BWON.

Larry has also reviewed and prepared SPCC Plans, performed environmental site assessments, and has worked with hazardous and solid waste management and NPDES permitting. Larry is a registered professional engineer in Texas, Louisiana, New York, Oklahoma, Montana, North Carolina, and New Mexico.

About his industry reputation:

Larry is known as the BWON guru, but prefers to be called “o-BWON-kenobi”.

Anita concentrates on building Sage's work in the forest products (wood, pulp, and paper) markets and is located in Sage's Green Bay office. During her nearly 30-year involvement in the paper industry, she has developed and implemented environmental, health, and safety (EHS) programs at both the corporate and facility levels, and she has conducted air and landfill permitting and negotiations, due diligence, wastewater treatment plant audits and troubleshooting, ISO 14001 implementation, and compliance audits. During her tenure supporting the forest products industry, she has actively supported the National Council of Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI), participating in its Northern Regional Steering Committee. She also has worked with the Technical Association for the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI), chairing the environmental division and serving as a member of the board of directors. Anita joined Sage as a Client Service Manager focused on supporting the forest products industry after working for RMT as a senior client service manager, senior client executive, and senior account executive. Previously, Anita served as VP of Regulatory Affairs for Pratt Industries, Inc. (USA), heading up the corporate EHS programs. Other positions along the way that prepared her for these high-level corporate roles were corporate director of environmental affairs for Bell Packaging and environmental manager for Menominee Paper Company.

Anita hales from 'da UP 'ey,' which is known to the rest of the world as Michigan's Upper Peninsula. They typically have a foot of snow by mid-December. Suffice it to say, it's mighty cold up there!

Buzz Harris is a Chemical Engineer with 38 years experience in industry and consulting. He began his career as a process engineer at the Texaco Port Arthur refinery, where he spent six years rotating through responsibility for all the major refining process categories. He joined Radian Corporation in 1976, where he worked 29 years before joining Sage in 2005. He has spent the last 31 years in consulting to the refining and petrochemicals industries. Buzz played a lead role in the fugitive emission studies that established the monitoring protocol, correlation equations, and emission factors for refineries and SOCMI facilities. He has been continuously involved in LDAR equipment leaks issues for 32 years, in projects ranging from bagging, training, database, regulatory development, and auditing. In recent years, LDAR audits have become nearly his full-time job, having completed more than 130 LDAR audits over the last eight years. Buzz has also been active in supporting the development of new LDAR technologies, such as Smart LDAR. He has played a part in most public demonstrations of infrared imaging of equipment leaks, and has participated in several private demonstrations. Buzz is active in development and presentation of training materials related to LDAR, and is a lecturer at LDAR University. He has presented several dozen papers on LDAR at workshops and meetings and has chaired several LDAR-specific workshops. He is regular participant on expert panels to field audience questions on LDAR and Smart LDAR.

It's all about the music:

Buzz moved to Austin in the mid-1970s to be close to the source of the Outlaw Country music scene. His mp3 player still includes a bunch of alt-country, roots rock, blues, and a wide variety of other music. If he comes to visit you for an audit, tell him about your favorite artist or a live music happening in the area.

Scott Muller is currently responsible for new business development. Scott assists clients with executing their environmental strategies by providing and coordinating resources across Sage's offices and business units. He is also an experienced senior project manager, client service manager, and division manager.

Scott specializes in Clean Air Act consulting, and provides regulatory and technical assistance with all aspects of air quality permitting and regulatory compliance. Scott's background includes State and Federal New Source Review (NSR) permitting, Title V permitting, air compliance audits, annual emission reporting, and air dispersion modeling. He has also gained detailed Title V and NSR permitting experience in several states, and specializes in project management, environmental agency relations, regulatory analysis, permit flexibility, environmental data management, and compliance enhancement.

Thoughts on engineering:

Virtually all engineers can plan well, and most can implement a plan. Very few engineers verify that the plan is properly implemented. Those few that verify well will go on to manage the rest. Good verification requires great communication, and personal discipline.

Randy Parmley brings three decades of experience in air quality consulting to Sage, where he runs the Gulf Coast Operations. While his background encompasses almost every aspect of air quality, Randy's primary areas of expertise are in the areas of air quality permitting and atmospheric dispersion modeling.

Randy has worked extensively with the refining and petrochemical industries and has a strong reputation preparing and negotiating large and complex Flexible, PAL, PSD, Maintenance Startup and Shutdown (MSS) and Title V permitting Projects. Along with preparing approximately 2500 air permit applications and supporting dispersion modeling analyses, Randy has conducted regulatory, permitting, and modeling seminars in North America, South America, Europe and Asia.

Randy's engineering and air quality background enable him to evaluate and communicate complex emission release and modeling concepts in an understandable and credible manner. As a result he has been used by many of the leading law firms specializing in environmental issues. Randy's expert witness experience includes contested permit hearings, serving as a neutral mediation expert in merger and acquisition disputes, disaster/event modeling evaluations and testimony, and a variety of health-effect related toxic tort support efforts.

Randy is really proud of:

Randy is really proud of: his wife, Debbie's, artistic ability. She is an accomplished artist in the chinese watercolor technique, and her work has been shown in many galleries and exhibitions since she dove head first into her passion in 2003. And lucky for Sage, her design skills have made the invitations for many of the Houston office's events warm, appealing, and completely memorable!

Teresa has environmental experience working in chemical and petrochemical processing facilities to evaluate Regulatory Applicability under Federal Operating Permitting and New Source Review Permitting. She has participated with clients as part of the design phase of construction to proactively identify compliance requirements and update the process design to identify control strategies or possible operating improvements to reduce environmental impacts. Her experience also includes developing, implementing, and maintaining Compliance Assurance Systems for multiple petrochemical facilities.

Out of the office:

When not working, Teresa and her family can be found in the backyard. Teresa has great ambition to have the most abundant vegetable garden and luscious flower gardens in the neighborhood, however the number of plants killed each year by her "green thumb" is staggering.

Tim is a 30+ year engineer with expertise in services ranging from complex PSD and nonattainment NSR permitting, Title V permitting, and NSPS and NESHAPs compliance, to dispersion modeling, greenhouse gas compliance assistance and critical state and federal agency enforcement negotiations. He knows how to deal with the skeletons in your closet that can undermine the best-planned compliance programs at your facility. Tim has assisted a wide variety of industrial sector clients, and has conducted and managed some of the most challenging permitting projects, including his role as Permit Manager for the largest portland cement plant in the US, and the largest single-line facility in the world at 4 million tonnes. As Permit Manager, Tim was responsible for obtaining all environmental permits and approvals, while shepherding this high-visibility project located just outside St. Louis through many intricate federal, state, and local stakeholder negotiations.

Tim's avocations:

Tim's avocations include an after-hours fascination with fossils, and you can often find him digging in the dirt as an accomplished, amateur paleontologist, with world-class dinosaur discoveries to his credit. Working with Tim, you'll get the added bonus of an education in bone-hunting, both prehistoric and modern (like the kind of compliance issues that can pile up in a facility and turn into nasty monsters). And don't get him started talking about the Austin and Nashville music scenes! Another fond pursuit, he's a Vanderbilt (Nashville) graduate with a sincere appreciation for Sage's Austin music-scene roots!

David has over 28 years experience in a variety of areas within the environmental field. These areas include instrumentation system design, air toxics monitoring programs, fugitive emission programs, design and installation of continuous emission monitoring systems (CEMS) and mobile air monitoring systems, maintenance of infrared air monitoring systems (FTIR) and numerous projects related to LDAR. He is currently active in the areas of application of new CEMS technologies, meteorological system design, and ambient air network design.

In the LDAR field, David participated in several key bagging projects that eventually led to the development and enhancement of refinery emission correlation equations. He has initiated LDAR programs both here and abroad as well as managed a large scale refinery tagging inventory project. David provides training on a variety of LDAR issues to refinery LDAR staff and participates in symposiums dealing with topics of interest to the LDAR community. David serves as a member of an LDAR audit team that has conducted LDAR audits at over 100 refinery and petrochemical plants across the U.S and has served as the audit leader on 18 of these audits. David has recently completed a 9 month study on the application of SmartLDAR techniques to traditional LDAR programs and is active in evaluating the use of this new technology to the area of fugitive emissions. David is part of a three-person team of LDAR experts which will perform a comprehensive assessment of LDAR for a major oil company site, and is currently engaged in performing emission rate tests (bagging) in both state and federally funded programs, conducting consent decree LDAR audits, and in the updating of a client's corporate LDAR manual.

David's office:

David's office is a busy place that alternately changes from storage facility, shipping depot, equipment museum, to (now and then) a regular ole' office. David heads up Sage's IR camera work (including training) and his office is ground zero for the development of projects and trainings, and the collection and dispatch of equipment needed for all IR camera uses.

Senior Technical Specialist Igor Shnayder has conducted air quality related projects and has been involved in numerous projects requiring air quality modeling for over 15 years through his work in the environmental compliance and permitting field.

Igor has prepared NSR Permit applications, Title V Permit applications, Emissions Inventories, Start-up, Shutdown, and Malfunction Plans, Risk Management Plans, SARA 313, Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plans, Spill Prevention, Countermeasure, and Control Plans, and other environmental compliance documentation for oil and gas, petroleum refining, metallurgical, SOCMI, and other industrial facilities in nine states.

Knowledgeable in state and federal environmental regulations for different industries and states, Igor has used MS Office, AutoCAD and various special (TANKS, GRI-GlyCALC, Surfer) applications to complete over two dozen significant simple, complex and special modeling projects.

American Dream:

Igor came to America from Russia in 1992, heading up a family of five, and arrived on our shores with $300 in his pocket. Fortunes reversed (in a good way!) when he became a founding member of Sage very soon after his arrival here, and he considers this his own personal American Dream story.

Joe Wilwerding has 11 years of continuous environmental engineering experience which includes preparation of various investigations such as Consent Decree Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) /Benzene Waste Operations NESHAPS (BWON), Clear Air Act (CAA) Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT), and Multimedia/Title V. He has developed in-depth knowledge in determining applicability of regulations, litigation and negotiation of technical support of national/global consent decrees with petrochemical companies regarding LDAR and benzene waste operations. Joe also worked as a compliance investigator and national technical expert for LDAR at the National Enforcement Investigations Center (NEIC). As a “consultant” for EPA headquarters and regional offices, NEIC performs investigations around the United States (including territories) at large petrochemical and manufacturing facilities.

To sum up Joe's role at Sage:

"Take me to your data"!