He works, when he is in Edmonds, from a corner office on Main Street, overlooking the ferry dock and the shimmering Puget Sound.
But when Vladimir Shepsis, 58, isn’t in Edmonds, his job could take him anywhere — working, as he does, on some of the world’s largest shoreline protection problems.
Louisiana’s sinking and hurricane-battered delta? Check. He was there this week. Pakistan’s Port Qasim’s massive dredging effort? Check. That was September. One of Dubai’s massive, man-made islands in the Persian Gulf? Well. Shepsis never actually traveled to Dubai.
But in 2002, when Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum was planning Palm Jumeirah, Shepsis’s Edmonds-based company Coast &Harbor Engineering was tapped as a sub-sub-contractor.
Called in to help manage anticipated problems with ferry wakes within the island, Shepsis instead noticed that the island’s closed-crown design would prevent water from circulating. The water would stagnate, Shepsis said. It would be a mess.
The 3-mile by 3-mile island needed to be redesigned. It was, but the project was slowed considerably. Projects on the island are still under construction in 2008.
What did he think of helping raise a massive red flag? “Simple. I thought I will never buy property there,” Shepsis said.
From his office in Edmonds, and behind a thick pair of glasses and a thicker Russian accent, Shepsis has been involved in hundreds of important projects around the world.
He’s done a lot of it from Edmonds, where he moved his company and his home in 1996. Now, the married father of two spends about 80 percent of his time in town, and about 20 percent in the field or at one of Coast &Harbor Engineer’s other three offices in the United States.
He’s even testified as a coastal engineering expert for the U.S. Department of Justice.
It’s all a far cry from the Soviet Union, where he started his career, rising eventually to head a 35-person laboratory and living a cushy life in the port city of Odessa, Shepsis said. His position required an elevated security status, however, so he was unable to speak with his parents who had moved to the United States.
He followed them in 1992, leaving everything in Odessa except his family members and two suitcases. It wasn’t a hard decision, he said.
“I left everything,” he said. “But if you feel you are doing good, you can do it.”
Shepsis has also learned how temporary solutions on shorelines can be.
Louisana’s Department of Natural Resources hired him in July 2005, two months before Hurricane Katrina hit, to work on Grand Isle, a vacation town on a barrier island.
The hurricane helped highlight the problems the entire delta faces – the delta is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico as the ocean wears it down, and the replenishing sediments from the Mississippi River speed past without stopping.
“It is a starving system,” Shepsis said. “There are not enough sediments.”
But the people there don’t care. The government needs fixes — even if they only last 50 years.
“It is a tough project. Not the engineering, but you’re dealing with people,” Shepsis said. “They just want to save their land.”
It’s the sort of problem that — when solved — is extremely rewarding, he said.
Multiple cities and communities have honored him with plaques and honorariums after he’s designed shoreline retention systems that have saved communities, he said.
“They say I’ve saved their houses,” he said. “For an engineer, what could be better?”
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