Water Management
A New Approach to Water Treatment
Jeff Ashley setting the stage for technical strategies for water treatment clients
Jeff Ashley became Morrison-Maierle’s first Water Treatment Technical Leader in late 2025. This new role allows him to help shape the company’s technical strategies and lead improvement efforts for our water treatment clients.
To better understand how this new role can help communities with their water treatment plants, we sat down with Jeff to learn about his focus, priorities, and approach to his work.
Q: What is a “Technical Leader?” What are the roles and duties of this position, and how does it differ from your previous engineering role?
Jeff: The old school version of a technical leader, at least in my mind, was someone who just worked on projects—no business development, just doing the technical work and pushing it out the door. That’s how the role looked 20 or 30 years ago, and it’s very different today, especially here at Morrison-Maierle.
There’s still the technical side that involves leading projects and getting into the details, or helping coordinate large, multidisciplinary efforts alongside a project manager. But now there’s also a business development component, where technical expertise helps bring in work because clients want to work with experienced, trusted people who are visible experts.
The other, newer piece is the internal people side that requires sharing knowledge and training others in our group. A big part of my focus is mentoring staff and developing tools, and improving processes.
To me, the role really comes down to four things: client service, technical project work, business development, and mentoring or training.
Q: Do you have plans to attend conferences and give presentations?
Jeff: I submitted an abstract for the Montana MSAWWA & MWEA Joint conference that’s taking place in Butte this coming April. It’s a new water treatment presentation topic I came up with.
The idea is pretty simple, comparing two different water sources, a clean source versus a dirtier one, and breaking down both the capital and operating costs of treatment. The presentation will boil it down and hopefully shed some light on the actual cost differences, and be helpful when we are working with communities and systems that may have multiple water source options.
I’m also kicking around some ideas for internal training, which involves digging into our design process and looking for efficiencies and improvements. That means getting more specific about how we approach water and wastewater treatment, pump stations, and similar projects.
Beyond that, I’m involved in a couple of national AWWA committees, and I am always on the lookout for speaking or moderator opportunities at conferences.
Q: For those who aren’t familiar with your background, what brought you to specialize in water treatment vs. other areas of water/wastewater engineering? What intrigues you the most? What do you find challenging?
Jeff: I gravitated toward treatment pretty early, starting in undergrad and grad school. I had a professor who was passionate about water treatment, and that stuck with me. While wastewater treatment is more physical and biological, water treatment moves into chemistry, and I connected more with the chemistry side.
At this point in my career, what really fascinates me is disinfection byproducts. There’s a constant balancing act between adding enough disinfectant to control pathogens while not creating byproducts that can be toxic or carcinogenic. We’ve been discussing this for decades, but it’s still a major research focus, especially as we discover new, unregulated byproducts that are much more toxic than the regulated byproducts. That ongoing balance is what I find so fascinating.
Q: Which professional organizations do you belong to, and what roles have you played within those organizations? If applicable, do you have plans for greater involvement within these organizations or others?
Jeff: Over the years, I’ve been involved with the usual engineering organizations: the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Water Environment Federation (WEF), and the American Water Works Association (AWWA). I’ve really focused on AWWA because it covers everything around drinking water, not just treatment, but also supply, distribution, storage and the bigger picture.
I’ve been active in the state section, working my way from junior trustee to chair and have been on several committees over the years. The section is a small group, maybe 150 to 200 members, but that makes it easy to stay connected and involved.
On the national AWWA side, I’m on two committees. One is very technical and a little nerdy, which I love, and the other focuses more on big picture design and construction. I try to balance both because they offer different perspectives. What I really like is how welcoming these committees are. If you’re willing to raise your hand, there’s always a way to contribute.
It’s refreshing to know that even coming from a mid-size firm in Montana, you can still have a voice and make a meaningful contribution alongside much larger firms and utilities.
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Christine Pearcy, left, Jeff Ashley, center, and Breanne Cline celebrate their engineering excellence award for a the Lockwood, Montana, water treatment project.
Q: Thinking about the future of water treatment, what are some of the topics and discussions you’re currently having with your peers?
Jeff: What really interests me are things like disinfection byproducts, which I mentioned before, and other emerging contaminants, like PFAS. It’s fascinating to see how these show up on both the drinking water and wastewater sides. Anything new that researchers find to be harmful to health is really at the forefront right now.
The regulation process takes years, sometimes decades, so I spend a lot of time keeping up with the industry literature and watching how these issues develop.
Q: Will there be opportunities to share these discussions and topics? If so, who with and how do you plan to do that?
Jeff: I think it really comes down to continuing to talk with our clients, asking them what issues they’re dealing with, and having open conversations about potential regulations they’ve been hearing about. From there, we can figure out how we might help. I’m having those conversations with current, past, and new clients all the time, just looking for ways to support them.
On the internal side, there are lots of day-to-day opportunities to learn from each other, whether you’re working with newer staff or more experienced folks. One thing I focus on is the design process, falling back on our tried-and-true approaches and looking for ways to improve our processes.
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