Rick Paquette, Rob Sheldon and Sonja Sax Join Epsilon

Joining Epsilon in July, as a Senior Consultant Rick Paquette supports our coastal sciences offshore wind practice across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. Supported by 25 years of experience, Rick’s responsibilities include federal, state, and local permitting, regulatory agency coordination, environmental impact assessment, and project strategy consultation.

An environmental permitting and regulatory expert with experience managing Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)-regulated natural gas pipeline transmission projects in offshore and onshore locations, Rick’s technical skills include wetland science, rare species consultation, natural resource inventory, environmental regulatory analysis, environmental impact assessment, construction management, and site restoration.

Rick received his M.S. in Environmental Studies from Antioch University New England, and his B.S. in Wildlife Biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst

A geographic information systems (GIS) practitioner with 12 years of professional experience, Rob Sheldon joined Epsilon in July. His expertise includes oil and hazardous material spill response, environmental site investigation, remediation design, and environmental due diligence. His early career focused on cultural resource management and included field survey and data recovery in areas of cultural significance. Rob supports clients from planning through construction, guiding their projects through complex state and federal regulatory requirements. Rob has used his computer-aided design (CAD) and GIS skills to support a variety of utility infrastructure, remediation, and ecological permitting projects.

There is surely direct cause and effect between Rob’s curiosity about how humans interact with the natural world, our changing natural and built landscapes over time, and his background in environmental consulting, archaeology, and GIS. Rob also brings a passion for visual art and design to his presentations of spatial data, all the while recognizing the need to balance office work with time spent in the field (naturally!). Rob graduated with an M.S. in Graphical Information Systems from Salem State University and a B.A. in History and Archaeology from The University of Massachusetts Boston.

Joining Epsilon in June, Sonja Sax is an environmental health scientist with 20 years of experience in exposure and health risk assessment. She has expertise in applying models to determine potential exposures and risks to air contaminants from industrial and other source, and effectively communicating risk to stakeholders. Sonja’s consulting career has included managing large and complex environmental projects on tight deadlines, conducting critical evaluations of health risk and toxicological assessments, and preparing technical and expert reports. Sonja’s extensive knowledge of air pollution regulations aids in issues related to air permitting and compliance, including applying and reviewing air modeling and air quality data, and navigating the critical evolving field of environmental justice (EJ).

Dr. Sax received both her Sc. D. in Environmental Health Sciences and her M.S. in Environmental Health Management from the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health and received her B.A. in Biological Chemistry from Wellesley College. She has served as a consultant for the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASAC) on ozone and particulate matter National Air Quality Standards (2019) and is active in the Air & Waste Management Association (AWMA), the International Society for Exposure Science (ISES), and the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA).