About

Balance Hydrologics, Inc. is a full-service hydrology consulting firm established in 1988, headquartered in Berkeley, California, with offices in Truckee and Santa Cruz. Our firm is composed of professional staff with a broad array of experience in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, most of whom have an advanced graduate degree in the fields of hydrology, geology or engineering. We offer flexible and practical approaches to problems, good communication on complex and controversial projects, and we develop realistic, implementable solutions. One of our principal goals is providing planners, engineers, biologists, and land managers with rigorous analyses quantifying watershed processes. We couple intensive field study with application of cutting‐edge modeling platforms and analyses to meet the specific needs of the habitat or watershed manager. Most investigations are designed to measure, simulate, and plan for the effects of specific land uses on aquatic, riparian, or estuarine habitat conditions. Our projects cover a full spectrum of services, from studies to establish baseline hydrologic, hydraulic, geologic, and water quality conditions to developing mitigation or restoration designs, construction‐phase support, and post‐project monitoring.

Awards

Balance’s History

Balance Hydrologics was founded by Barry Hecht, along with Mark Woyshner in 1988, with the goal to focus largely on habitat hydrology, groundwater resources, watershed planning, and a variety of niche services, employing an assortment of specialty field methods in stream gaging, sediment transport, tracers, and others. At the time, most environmental firms focused on contaminated soil and groundwater clean-up projects. Balance Founders took a broader perspective; there was a unique and aspired intent to include geomorphic processes, natural geochemical transformations and multiple lines of evidence. Understanding the landscape became the foundation for our projects and led to site-specific analysis as paramount in the Balance approach.

What’s in a name? “Balance Hydrologics” captured the essence of this new company’s work style, ethics and love for the land and our approach to solving water-resource problems. In founding the company Barry had a knack for attracting talented, sincere people with unique ‘cross-pollinating’ qualities, giving rise to creative thought ‘greater than the sum of its thinkers’.