Harlan Moyer, 89, former President and CEO of CH2M Hill, died on February 15, 2016 in Fall River Mills following a brief illness.

Moyer was the last of a team of engineers from two West Coast companies, CH2M of Corvallis, and Clair Hill & Associates of Redding, that merged in 1971 to form CH2M Hill, now one of the largest environmental engineering firms in the world. Moyer served as the company's president and chief executive from 1977 to 1992. He remained a Senior Executive Vice President until 2010, when he retired after 58 years with the company.

Harlan Ernest Moyer was born in Napa, California on December 20, 1926. His father, Ernest Moyer, developed an early portable batch plant for making concrete, contracting out his services building bridges and roads on the rapidly expanding byways of California.

At age two, Harlan Moyer and his mother and three older brothers camped out near the banks of the Sacramento River at Delta, California, 30 miles north of Redding, while his father worked for builder Henry Kaiser on the Dog Creek Bridge on Highway 99. The family then moved to Alturas, in far northeast California, when his father went to work for Pickering Lumber Company to help build the world's largest sawmill. After the stock market crash, and the sudden death of the company's founder in 1929, the huge modern mill, though completed, was never fully operational.

The family stayed in Alturas to establish Moyer Sand and Gravel, and at age 12, the youngest Moyer began operating a dragline steam shovel draining marshlands. He got his drivers license at age 14, and began parking the company dump truck at school so he could make deliveries after class.

An avid skier, Moyer worked with Modoc Forest Ranger William Beatty to construct the Cedar Pass Ski Area. Using equipment from his father's business, and powered by a donated Model T engine, they built what remained for 50 years the longest rope tow in California.

In 1944, at age 17, he joined the Navy, training as an aerial tail gunner. The war concluded before he saw combat, but his experience led to a love of flying. He became an experienced pilot, flying company planes to jobsites up and down the west coast and across the Sierras.

After his discharge from the Navy in 1946 he returned home to Alturas, married another Modoc High School graduate, Betty Sherer of Canby, and began working for his father's company building the Cedar Pass Highway. After encountering a friend who was working as an engineering assistant for the California Division of Highways, Moyer realized that a college education might give him the opportunity for less physically demanding work, so he enrolled at University of Nevada at Reno on the GI Bill.

Just two weeks after receiving a degree in engineering from UNR in 1952, Moyer was hired by Clair Hill as employee number 25. Moyer was instrumental in securing an engineering contract for Clair Hill with the South Lake Tahoe Public Utility District in 1960, and served for more than a decade there as project manager for the first advanced tertiary treatment plant in the country.

The Tahoe plant produced highly purified water by recycling sewage and other wastewater. Archie Rice, a CH2M engineer and one of the project's designers, quipped at the time that the only thing that could further improve the water coming from the finished Tahoe treatment plant would be "adding bourbon."

Despite prospects that the new water process would result in water pure enough for safe for human consumption, Moyer deftly led negotiations with local officials to ensure it was piped out of the Lake Tahoe basin altogether, and used for recreation and agricultural use only. The South Lake Tahoe Public Utility project, followed by the Tahoe Truckee Sanitation project, together helped prevent potentially catastrophic pollution of one of the largest and most pristine alpine lakes in the world.

The Tahoe project and its innovative water recycling concepts received international recognition for Clair Hill and CH2M, just as environmental awareness was growing worldwide. After Moyer was recognized for his leadership on the Tahoe project by U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Moyer received a letter of thanks in April 1972 from President Richard Nixon, and some even referred to him as "the man who saved Lake Tahoe."

Following the success of the Tahoe water project, Moyer had a chance meeting with Noman Cole, at the American Waterworks convention in Reno in 1971. Cole had served under Admiral Hyman Rickover in the US Navy's nuclear submarine fleet, and was an influential member of the Northern Virginia Water Quality Board. After Cole visited the Tahoe plant, he proposed building what he called "Tahoe East," another innovative water recycling plant in Northern Virginia.

CH2M Hill was selected as the design firm, and Moyer became project manager for Upper Occoquan, winning out over several much larger and prominent engineering groups. Upper Occoquan today recycles 54 million gallons a day of drinking water from raw sewage, successfully diverting wastewater from the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. In drought years, the Upper Occoquan plant supplies 90 percent of the drinking water to Fairfax County, Virginia, and it remains one of the world's most advanced water reclamation facilities, with engineering teams from around the world still using it as a model.

During the Occoquan project, Moyer and associate Gene Suhr opened CH2M Hill's first east coast office in Reston, Virginia, which became the starting point for the company's broad national, and international expansion. Moyer later consulted on major engineering projects in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, and throughout the US.

In 1972, Moyer worked with California Congressman Harold T. "Bizz" Johnson on the drafting of the Clean Water Act, and in 1980 he worked on the creation of congressional Superfund legislation aimed at mitigating toxic waste sites throughout the US.

Current CH2M CEO Jacqueline Hinman first met Moyer when she joined the firm in 1988 as a young engineer, and was surprised when the CEO was assigned to her team at a project management seminar. Moyer became one of her mentors, and was a willing guide to young engineers. His "sage advice and practical wisdom were a great source of strength," she noted in a letter to CH2M staff on his passing. "Harlan was a classic," she said, who adhered to the core values of "respect and collaboration."

During Moyer's tenure as CEO of CH2M Hill, the firm grew from 1,400 to 6,000 employees, and increased revenue ten-fold to $600 million. The company now has over 25,000 employees. When asked about the secret to the success of CH2M Hill, Moyer once said "Good, capable people have made this organization what it is. We don't sell any widgets; we sell brains. And we do a good job of it."

In his early career, Moyer was an active member of the Redding community, where his four oldest children all attended school. In 1982 the company moved its headquarters from Corvallis, Oregon to Denver, Colorado, with CEO Moyer splitting his time between the firm's Denver and Redding offices.

Harkening back to his childhood in rural Modoc County, and summers spent an his uncle's farm in Napa County, Moyer was never happier than when he was driving a tractor. He and wife Betty built a ranch house in Palo Cedro, "The Rockin' M," that was the site of many large gatherings, including an annual Memorial Day softball game held in a cleared pasture. After Betty's death of cancer in 1982, Moyer moved to Denver, but he also maintained property in McArthur, California where son Dave was a farmer.

Moyer's version of telecommuting was conducting conference calls from a pickup truck while checking on crops. During harvest season in the Fall River Valley, he'd work from dawn to dusk with the same tenacity he showed in his management career. His skillful operation of strawberry diggers, bean harvesters, combines and alfalfa balers, earned him the name "El Toro" among the farmworkers. He and his second wife, Carol, built another ranch home near McArthur, California in 1992, where he continued to enjoy farm tasks, and host large family gatherings.

Moyer is preceded in death by first wife Betty Moyer, and his son Dan. He is survived by wife Carol Moyer, children Connie Pola (John), Dean Moyer (Jenny Abbe), David Moyer (Sally), Dan's widow Carilyn Moyer, Ann Shelden (Robert), and Eric Zimmerman (Yoshiko); 13 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren.