30 Years — Maul Foster ALongi

Thirty Years of Building Community
Out there, and in here.

30 Years — Maul Foster ALongi

Thirty Years of Building Community
Out there, and in here.

Thanks to You

Since 1996 we have helped communities become better places to live, work, and gather. We clean up ground that was written off, plan what a place needs next, and help aspirations become reality. Along the way, we built a community of our own. None of it happened alone. Every project and every moment of our growth belongs as much to the clients, agencies, partners, and neighbors who trusted us.

Our Story

1996

Founded with a Purpose

James Maul, Tom Foster, and Neil Alongi open our doors in Vancouver, Washington, with a first job already on the books. From the beginning, they want more than a firm. They want a place worth showing up to, one that makes room for good work and good company, for fun camping trips and ski days and time spent together. Thirty years later, that part hasn’t changed.

On MFA’s first day of operations, we go to work on the Taylor Lumber & Treating site in Sheridan, Oregon, helping with pollution prevention and stormwater management while keeping a major local employer running. It isn’t just a first job. It sets the pattern for everything that follows. Nearly thirty years later, we still work on that site, albeit with a new owner, and the site continues to be a major local employer.

LATE 1990s

Turning Cleanup into Opportunity

MFA begins tackling brownfield sites—written-off ground with potential for becoming something a community wants back.

At sites like the Zidell Yards in Portland and the former Pacific Wood Treating Company location at the Port of Ridgefield, we turn cleanup into the first step toward reuse, helping communities end years of blight and start dreaming up what comes next.

EARLY 2000s

Growing to Meet Community Needs

A growing team and expanded services let us take on more work for more communities across the Pacific Northwest. We open our Portland office in 2002, the first step in our regional growth.

MID 2000s

Defining the MFA Way

As we take on more work in more communities, the way we work takes shape; a practical, collaborative approach, built on quality and clear communication, that becomes known as the MFA Way.

2007–2012

Expanding Community Solutions

We broaden our services beyond environmental and engineering work into multidisciplinary consulting, so we can see a project through from start to finish. Planning launches in 2007 to help communities decide what a cleaned-up site should become. Health and safety services follow in 2011 to keep industries clean and safe. And in 2012, our GIS and data analytics work becomes a practice of its own ⌕. We grow geographically too, opening offices in Seattle and Bellingham to serve more of the Pacific Northwest.

2013

Shared Ownership, Shared Success

In 2013, MFA establishes an employee stock ownership plan, opening ownership to employees firmwide. It’s a natural step for a company built from the start to be worth staying at: the people who do the work now own it, inspiring long-term thinking and a shared commitment to client success.

Since 2013, MFA has had 236 employee-owners, each one invested in the work and in what we build together.

MID 2010s

WCA Looking SE

Expanding Our Reach

We carry our work deeper into the Inland Pacific Northwest, taking on the cleanup of the Bunker Hill Superfund Site in northern Idaho, one of the largest environmental cleanups in the country.

In 2010, the Successor Coeur d’Alene Custodial and Work Trust chooses MFA as its first consultant partner on the site which encompasses roughly 960,000 acres contaminated by historical mining activities. The work puts down roots, resulting in new offices in Kellogg and Coeur d’Alene, and it’s still going on today.

LATE 2010s

Connecting People to the Work

We keep expanding what we can do, building two new teams: a communications group in 2016, and a team of air quality specialists in 2017. With communications, we step into a new kind of work, helping directly connect people to the projects that affect their lives.

On the Washington Department of Transportation tolling program, our communications team helps the public navigate major changes to how they travel. And through the Cleaner Air Oregon program, our air quality specialists help businesses and regulators make sense of complex new health-based rules.

2020s

Meeting the Moment

The 2020s ask a lot from communities. When historic wildfires tear through Oregon in 2020 ⌕, we mobilize to help communities respond and recover. As climate and resilience continue to define the challenges of our time, we acquire Peak Sustainability Group in 2024 to meet them head-on. And inside MFA, we build our first employee resource groups, making room for connection and belonging while a global pandemic kept people apart.

2026

Thirty Years In

Three founders have become a community of employee-owners, and one job has become thousands. We are still building the same two things we always have: better places out there, and a firm worth belonging to in here.

Thirty Years,
by the Numbers

The Work

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The Community We Built

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Donated to Our Communities

The Work Up Close

Time goes by fast. Some projects deserve a longer look. Here are a few that show what thirty years of this work built.

Zidell Yards An iconic Portland riverfront, cleaned up and set for its next life. keyboard_arrow_right For most of a century, the Zidell Marine on Portland's South Waterfront built ships before World War II and took them apart after, leaving decades of contamination on one of the most visible stretches of the Willamette River. keyboard_arrow_right Starting in 1996, we led the investigation, feasibility study, and remedy design, then helped oversee a cleanup that let the site's operations keep running while preparing the ground for what came next. The result is the largest privately funded brownfield remediation on the Willamette to date. The work did more than remove contamination. It restored and enhanced riverfront habitat and set the stage for redevelopment aligned with Portland's larger South Waterfront vision. keyboard_arrow_right "The Zidell site is an iconic downtown Portland feature with an amazing history and presence. It was such a privilege to work alongside the wonderful folks at Zidell, with their vision and forward-thinking approach. We were able to not only clean up the site but also restore and enhance the habitat as well as set the stage for redevelopment aligning with the larger South Waterfront vision."

—Ted Wall, PE, Former Vice President and Principal Engineer keyboard_arrow_right

Port of Ridgefield

The cleanup that became the model for everything after. keyboard_arrow_right When Pacific Wood Treating Company went bankrupt in 1993, it left behind polluted land and water threatening the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, the loss of 400 family-wage jobs, and a $100 million cleanup that the Port and City of Ridgefield were suddenly liable for. It was the kind of problem that can sink a small community. keyboard_arrow_right We worked with the Port, the EPA, and the Washington Department of Ecology on an approach that kept the site off the federal Superfund list, letting Ridgefield grow its economy and reclaim its waterfront instead of living beside abandoned, blighted ground. The approach worked so well it became a model we would carry to waterfronts and downtowns across Washington and Oregon. Thirty years after kickoff, we still monitor the site, and cleanup of its in-water areas has been certified complete. The relationship we built with the Department of Ecology led years later to our work with the Coeur d'Alene Trust. Good work begets good work. keyboard_arrow_right "The Port of Ridgefield project is an important part of MFA’s history, both because of the huge impact our remediation work had on the community and the example it set for future brownfield redevelopment projects.”

— James Maul, MFA Founder keyboard_arrow_right

Coeur d'Alene Trust The project that redefined what MFA could accomplish. keyboard_arrow_right A century of mining and milling at the Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex left contamination spread across roughly 960,000 acres of northern Idaho, causing damage that has persisted for generations. Cleaning it up is one of the largest and most complex environmental programs in the country. keyboard_arrow_right In 2010, the Coeur d'Alene Trust chose MFA as its first consultant partner to help organize and lead the effort. While MFA was still a small firm at the time, we proved we were up to the challenge. Today we help coordinate the whole program—prioritizing projects, negotiating with agencies, characterizing and monitoring the site, managing the data, reviewing remedial designs, and overseeing construction—helping accelerate a cleanup that had been studied for decades. The work, which continues today, helped MFA grow our presence in northern Idaho and establish offices in Kellogg and Coeur d'Alene. keyboard_arrow_right "Initially, the EPA was unsure if a smaller firm like MFA would be able to take on such a large, complex project. But we knew we could do it, and Dan Silver, Trustee for the Coeur d'Alene Trust, never doubted our abilities."

—Alistaire Clary, PE, COO and Principal Engineer keyboard_arrow_right

OSU-Cascades

A former landfill and pumice mine, becoming a university. keyboard_arrow_right In one of Oregon's fastest-growing regions, a former demolition landfill sat vacant for decades, a barrier to growth that no one had cracked. Oregon State University saw a campus. The plan: turn the landfill and an adjacent pumice mine into a 128-acre campus for 5,000 students, built out over the next thirty years. keyboard_arrow_right We developed the phased remediation and expansion strategy that made it possible, but the hallmark is how the material moves. Rather than hauling contaminated landfill material away and trucking clean fill in, we screened and processed the excavated material on site and reused it to reclaim the neighboring pumice mine, so the cleanup and the campus advance together. That single choice eliminated nearly 30,000 truck trips through Bend, cutting emissions, cost, and disruption to the surrounding neighborhoods. In 2025, the project earned the Phoenix Award, the EPA's highest national recognition for brownfield redevelopment. keyboard_arrow_right

ODOT Wildfire Recovery Making it safe to clean up after Oregon's worst fire season. keyboard_arrow_right The wildfires that swept Oregon in the summer of 2020 were the worst in the state's history, burning thousands of buildings and displacing whole communities. Before the cleanup could even begin, someone had to determine what hazards the ash and debris left behind. keyboard_arrow_right The state brought us on to do that work. Against an urgent timeline, we tested burned properties for asbestos and other hazardous materials to determine whether debris could be safely removed, developed the sampling and analysis plans that protected cleanup crews and neighbors, and ran a statewide air-monitoring program throughout the response. It became one of the largest projects in MFA's history, including as many as 85 people from eight firms across the state. We also used demographic analysis and Oregon's environmental-justice priorities to focus monitoring on the communities most at risk, ensuring the response reached those most exposed to potential hazards. keyboard_arrow_right "It was a huge project for us to take on—probably one of the biggest for MFA ever in terms of staff that worked on the project, the short amount of time we had to get ready for the project, and the number of partners we brought onto the project. Though there were challenges, I am really proud that MFA was part of helping the impacted communities recover from the disaster."

— Merideth D'Andrea, RG, LG, Principal Geologist keyboard_arrow_right

The Next Thirty

Thirty years in, the work is far from finished. There is still ground to clean up, still businesses and communities deciding what comes next, still good ideas waiting on the right people to carry them out. We plan to be there for it, owned by the people who do the work, rooted in the Pacific Northwest, and still holding to the beliefs we started with: do right by people, do good work, and make room for life outside of it. Do that, and the next thirty years will follow.

Thank you to everyone who hired us, worked with us, and stuck around to see MFA’s 30th. We couldn’t have made it without you. Here’s to building the next thirty together.