The River Engineering Changemaker

WSP’s Justin Lennon has a passion for the environment and a desire to make sure we engineer with nature to improve the sustainability and resilience of our river corridors.

United States | Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Reading Time : 5:11 minutes

A civil engineer and national leader of WSP’s hydraulic structure and flood control practice, Justin Lennon works with clients to restore ecosystems, improve the function of our waterways and implement flood resilience efforts to protect communities. A self-described nature junkie, Lennon likes to bring the concept of untouched nature into engineering design. The opportunity to work on ecosystem and stream restoration projects is what drew him to WSP after graduate school. Over the past 20 years, his career path evolved to specialize in riverine engineering, coastal hydraulics and flood resilience efforts nationwide.

Discover more about Lennon’s commitment to implementing nature-based solutions to restore environments and protect communities from flooding.

Describe some of the biggest challenges in your field and ways that you're working to help resolve them?

Future climate resilience is going to be a big challenge for a while. We do not know the exact rate of change, but being able to adapt to this change is an important paradigm shift that we need to understand as engineers, particularly when we are working with surface water and environment.

It’s a challenge I like working on and an area I've been able to specialize in at WSP. It’s not just the coastal area that should be concerned about rising water levels. We also consider how rainfall amounts are changing inland and the impact to flood patterns.

How does stream restoration improve community resilience?

Stream restoration is essentially undoing the damages of the past that we have wrought on our ecosystem. In the 1800s, streams were straightened to support farming practices. Roads were built over top of these streams and locked them in place. Fast forward 200 years and we end up with a bad situation where streams are causing erosion, flooding and aquatic habitat degradation.

We use geomorphology to study other areas of the river to understand the healthy natural condition for it. Then we design to restore that channel to a healthy form that will allow the river to rebalance itself with nature, sustainably hold that form going forward, and bring aquatic life back that hasn't been in the system for hundreds of years.

Justin Lennon

Senior Vice President, Water Resources Engineering

United States

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We use geomorphology to study other areas of the river to understand the healthy natural condition for it. Then we design to restore that channel to a healthy form that will allow the river to rebalance itself with nature...

Powells Creek project in Virginia will establish wetlands along the creek to act as buffers

against flooding. Native mussels will further drive the bounce back of the ecosystem.

What are some of the impactful projects that you've been a part of?

I am proud to be part of many highly successful stream restoration projects throughout the country.

The Powells Creek project in Virginia is a great example, where we designed about two miles of stream restoration on a large river system. The project will establish wetlands along the creek to act as buffers against flooding and improve degraded bank conditions that threaten a sanitary sewer main line. We are already seeing tremendous uplift in the function of the completed areas of the system, with Prince William County pushing forward with plans to seed the system with native mussels to further drive the bounce back of the ecosystem. Once fully completed, the stream is going to look tremendous.

Another project, performed by Baltimore County as part of its efforts to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed and its vast ecosystem was the Dead Run stream restoration. I was the lead designer for this restoration. Our sustainable design relied on bioengineering for long-term sustainability and reconnected the floodplains to allow for high flows to spread outside of the channel. Shortly after construction the project was impacted by a 500-year flood, the same storm that caused catastrophic flooding in nearby Ellicott City. This system is living proof of our ability to accomplish a sustainable design in the face of extreme weather events.

In a completely different role in helping our communities, I am also working on a large dam design project in Puerto Rico that will provide water security and help mitigate droughts in the future for a community that saw drinking water supply impacts after Hurricane Maria. The project includes several future ready innovations to mitigate reservoir sedimentation and maintain drinking water yield for the next 100 years.

Dead Run Stream before restoration. The restoration design relied on bioengineering for long-term sustainability and reconnected the floodplains to allow for high flows to spread outside of the channel.

Dead Run Stream after restoration.

WSP employs a Future Ready® approach to make a lasting impact on our communities. What opportunities are you most passionate about to build a more sustainable and resilient future?

All the projects that I get involved in embrace the Future Ready approach. For example, a stream restoration project is designed to be a sustainable system that’s going to adapt to the future. So not only will we rebuild a stream to work with the present day, but we’re also constructing it to adapt and be a great asset to the community.

I’ve been working closely with our Climate, Resilience and Sustainability team for well over a decade on new tools and methods for incorporating future climate resilience into infrastructure design. More and more we are seeing our clients require these types of forward-looking approaches into their projects.

Are there any emerging trends or technologies that you find promising in your field of work?

Nature-based solutions may not sound like fancy technology, but they are quite an innovation that we are using in riverine engineering. Not that long ago, in the 1970s and 1980s, concrete was added to river channels to move water as fast as possible. That technique caused more harm than good. I am excited about how nature-based solutions are restoring our environments.

We have developed several powerful tools to support our resilience work and evolve how we incorporate future climate into our designs. I look forward to integrating AI technologies that are being developed with our high-level decision tools to incorporate future climate into infrastructure design.

Why do you enjoy working at WSP?

In short, I love the people that I work with and the quality of our teams. Working at a company the size and scale of WSP provides the opportunity to participate in some of the biggest and most challenging projects. We have changemakers in every office around the country and in every specialty that are tremendous to work with. I feel lucky to be part of that team.