WEDA Honors Members, Companies With Excellence Awards
The Western Dredging Association (WEDA) presented its 2025 annual awards at the World Dredging Conference (WODCON), held June 23 to 27 in San Diego, Calif.
Dredger Of The Year
Dylan Davis, coastal program manager for the South Atlantic Engineer Division, received the Dredger of the Year award. Davis has had an enthusiasm for dredging throughout his career. After graduating from the University of New Orleans, he spent time on the Corps hopper dredges Essayons and Yaquina, then rose to a management role with the Portland Engineer District. During that time, when the Essayons was in extended drydock, Davis led the effort to bring industry hopper dredges to the West Coast through an innovative regional contract.
Davis later moved to Atlanta, where he served as chief of navigation for the South Atlantic Division. With navigation and coastal protection so closely connected in the Southeast, Davis added coastal protection to his portfolio, bringing significant annual savings to the Corps.
In 2024 and early 2025, a historic hopper dredge workload made it impossible to attract acceptable bids. Thus, Davis broke the regional contract into biddable components and eventually attracted bids for all but two of the projects. Additionally, he has worked to reduce dredging impacts on sea turtles and other endangered species and won a new South Atlantic Biological Opinion (SRBO), which provides for studying the turtle windows that are so impactful to dredging in the Southeast.
Davis has served on the WEDA board of directors for many years and belongs to many other related organizations, where he is a voice and advocate for the dredging industry.
Lifetime Achievement Award
William H. “Bill” Hanson Sr., vice president of market development for Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company (GLDD), received the Lifetime Achievement award in recognition of his nearly five-decade career in dredging. After graduating from Texas A&M Coastal Engineering in Galveston, Texas, where he was a co-op student in dredging, Hanson joined the Los Angeles Engineer District as a resident engineer in 1979. He then went to Connolly-Pacific Marine Contracting Company as project manager, estimator and client relations officer in 1983. Hanson moved to the New York area to join GLDD in 1988, followed by postings in Jacksonville, Fla., GLDD’s former headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., and, finally, to Washington, D.C., where he became a member of GLDD’s executive leadership team.
In all positions, he has worked with the Corps of Engineers at all levels to establish an active, constructive partnership with dredging contractors, and he was important in involving industry in the contracts at the design stage to increase efficiency and lower costs, WEDA stated in presenting the award.
Hanson also led GLDD’s efforts to beneficially reuse dredged materials and is a charter member of the Natural Infrastructure Initiative with Caterpillar and the Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited Conservancy, International, and AECOM. He has advocated for the “Use Industry First” protocol and the Jones Act, and he has often spoken on the need for fully functional shipping channels in the United States. He has been active in WEDA, as president and as a board member, and he has enabled conversations between the Corps, industry and other stakeholders regarding challenges facing the dredging industry. Hanson is affiliated with 24 maritime, coastal and environmental groups, where he is a knowledgeable advocate for dredging.
More WEDA Awards
The Industry and Innovator Award went to Steve Becker Sr., vice president and fleet manager at GLDD, a long-time supporter of WEDA.
Becker’s 41-year career with GLDD has been a major reason the company has excelled in safety, dredge innovations and production, the company stated in its award nomination.
Becker has led the design and building of four hopper dredges (Liberty Island, dredge Ellis/tug DB Mackie, Galveston and Amelia), one backhoe dredge (New York), one rock fall vessel (SRI Acadia), nine dump scows, four floating booster stations, two Multi Cat tugboats and dozens of support vessels and other equipment. The mechanical department team he leads also converted a dustpan dredge to an ocean-going cutter suction dredge (CSD) and performed major upgrades on four other CSDs (Carolina, formerly the Jim Bean, and the Texas, Florida and Ohio).
Mark Hale, dredge captain for Weeks Marine, and Mayo J. Broussard, senior construction representative for the New Orleans Engineer District, both won Dredger On Deck Awards.
Hale’s 44-year career included two decades with Bean, before he briefly joined GLDD, then returned to Bean before transitioning to Weeks Marine with the EW Ellefsen in 2007. He has served as dredge captain for Weeks ever since. He has led operations on several high-stakes projects.
Broussard will soon retire from a 60-year dredging career, 23 years on contract dredges, and the remainder with the New Orleans Engineer District. He has dedicated his career to safe dredging operations, has planned and coordinated dredging projects, performed hydrographic and land surveying, operated and programmed electronic positioning equipment and monitored daily production on maintenance and new work projects.
Jeremy Gasser, PE, senior principal at Geosyntec Consultants, won the Young Professional Engineer of the Year Award.
Gasser is a civil engineer with 10 years of experience in civil and environmental consulting and marine construction fields. He was involved with the Gowanus Canal Superfund in Brooklyn, New York, and dredging to support dam removals in California and has been the lead designer and engineer of record for many projects on the Gulf Coast.
Safety Excellence Awards went to Weeks Marine, J.F. Brennan Company and Conrad Shipyard.
The award for an environmental-based, beneficial-use-focused project went for the Houston Ship Channel Expansion, Project 11, presented to Lori Brownell, Port Houston; Carlos Tate, Corps of Engineers; Dana Cheney, Gahagan & Bryant Associates; and Rod McCrary, AECOM..
For environmental-based, remediation-focused projects, two awards were presented. The first went for Implementation of an In-Lake Drum Removal Pilot Study in Torch Lake, Mich., presented to Paul LaRosa, Anchor QEA, Dustin Bauman, J.F. Brennan Company; Arthur Peitsch, EA Engineering Science and Technology; and Jessica Telano, Honeywell International.
The second award was presented for the Milwaukee Estuary Area of Concern (AOC), Milwaukee River Operable Unit 2 (OU2) Remediation, presented to John Trast and Joe Caryl, GEI Consultants; Greg Smith, Tyler Lee, Nathan Wyrowski and Andrew Timmis, J.F Brennan Company; and Patrick Kenny, WEC Energies.
The 2026 WEDA Dredging Expo and Summit will be held July 20 – 23 at the Hotel Bonavanture in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
