L. Gene Suhr, former director of water and wastewater engineering at CH2M Hill Cos. and an innovator of globally used advanced
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At CH2M Hill for 35 years, Suhr helped push it to become top-ranked in the fields, the firm says.
Among Suhr's notable roles were managing and designing the first U.S. advanced wastewater treatment plant at South Lake Tahoe, Calif., in the 1960s and developing the master plan for a first-ever treatment program in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 1980s.
He also was chief technical consultant for the Milwaukee Water Pollution Abatement program from 1976 to 1985, at the time the world's largest single public works project of its kind, says CH2M Hill.
Suhr's son Stephen Suhr, a Las Vegas-based design manager for CH2M Hill, noted anecdotes about his father's career, including storing sludge samples in a hotel bathtub near one project site to the dismay of housekeeping staff, and losing a hat at another treatment plant when it fell into a clarifier and the company initially would not allow him to expense a replacement.
treatment design techniques, died on Jan. 27 in Vancouver, Wash. He was 79.
