Chilkat Environmental has been operating from Haines, Alaska since 2007and has maintained a constant workload without growing larger. This business model has resulted in successful projects and satisfied clients detailed in our portfolio. After many years working for and managing other firms, we watched half of contract values lost to administration, overhead and corporate profit while the scientists were left with half the resources to get the job done and the client left with burgeoning costs. While this structure is fathomable for big projects, for most projects the client has little to no benefit from misplacement of their resources. Larger scale companies are inefficient at performing smaller scale projects due to overhead, bulky administration and overburdened support staff. Chilkat continues to stay at small scale to maximize efficiency.
We outcompete other firms in our areas of expertise and project scale because the company is built to be efficient, not to keep getting bigger.
Chilkat employs only qualified professionals without depending upon support staff. We are active people who balance physical and mental performance to achieve a high level of productivity and happiness. Consulting firms compete based on quality, cost and schedule but it’s pretty hard to measure how good they are because their promotional materials only display successful projects and don’t address whether their jobs had change orders that increased cost or if they performed on time. The Chilkat portfolio includes ALL of our projects and clearly presents our schedule and cost performance. Chilkat offers clients the peace of mind that their needs will be resolved fast, correctly and for the least amount of money.
We specialize in contaminated sites work in Alaska. Most of our work has been for Tribes under the Native American Lands Environmental Mitigation Program to cleanup impacts remaining from the DoD, but we also manage fuel spill cleanups, gas stations, borough environmental tasks, home heating oil spills and PCB electrical equipment. Much of this work is preparation of workplans for environmental sampling, the performance of sampling (wells, soil, water, tissue), preparation of reports and plans to perform cleanup. We also manage cleanup including excavation of contaminated soil, management of stockpiles and disposal, management of hazardous waste, industrial site cleanup for metals recycling, and large-scale cleanups of former WW2 sites including removal of hundreds of buildings. Our team has also been involved in directing PSP research in Alaska and fisheries habitat work including studies of the Eklutna before and after dam removal.
The Team
Scroll over staff images for links
Elijah Donat
Principal Investigator
Elijah has worked as an environmental consultant in Alaska for over 25 years. He has a BA in Federal Indian Law and Environmental Science and an MS in Environmental Engineering from Humboldt State University. Elijah is a certified Project Management Professional. While directing the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society in Alaska he prepared curriculum and taught courses with the University of Alaska to train tribal environmental professionals how to prepare quality assurance project plans and to perform environmental sampling. Elijah has extensive experience with all aspects of environmental sampling for water, air, soil and tissues. Elijah is one of the most knowledgeable scientists in Alaska with management of PCB containing electrical equipment. He is very competent profiling, shipping and disposing of hazardous materials such as; radioactive, flammable and corrosives materials, dioxins, etc. As a grant writer, Elijah has been awarded with over $50,000,000 for Alaska Tribes. He managed cleanup of the largest (abandoned) lumber mill in southeast Alaska and conducted PSP research for a decade including groundbreaking discoveries in how PSP interacts with oceanographic conditions. Since 1999 Elijah has been managing environmental projects for the Department of Defense, Native American Lands Environmental Mitigation Program, and has become the most experienced contractor in the state for this program that cleans up military impacts on Native lands. While most of Elijah’s background is with contaminated sites in Alaska, he has also managed and performed many biological studies for improvement of salmon habitat in southcentral and western Alaska. Elijah provides continuing technical support for many tribal environmental programs, Yakutat Borough, Petersburg Borough and Gustavus and others. Elijah satisfies ADEC requirements 18 for all services that call for a Qualified Environmental Professional, including AAC 75.33 and 18 AAC 78.008.
Kevin Forster
Environmental Scientist
Kevin has worked for Chilkat Environmental for over 17 years- performing environmental sampling, site investigations & clean-ups. He has field managed Chilkat Environmental projects from Southeast Alaska to the Aleutians. Kevin also creates all of our technical images and is our web developer. He is our high-angle specialist: an accomplished mountaineer and ice climber with EMT2 training. Kevin recently managed a 2 year multiagency project cleaning ocean plastic from five remote beaches near Yakutat that included remote field camps and logistics.
Will Priscandario
Environmental Scientist / Fisheries Biologist
Will has worked as an environmental consultant and fish biologist in Alaska for 22 years. He has also been a commercial gillnetter for 10 years and served on many boards protecting fisheries. Will has a BS in Marine Biology from Florida Institute of Technology, is a certified wetland delineator, GIS technician, fish biologist and experienced author. He has prepared many wetland delineations, phase 1 investigations, biological studies, habitat assessments, contaminated sites documents, NALEMP documents, and bird studies. Will has managed fish weir and fish wheel projects and has extensive southeast Alaska fieldwork experience. Mr. Prisciandaro has extensive hazardous waste management experience and is familiar handling hazardous materials.
