Academic Credentials
  • M.S., Geophysical Science, Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), 1972
  • B.S., Geology, Oregon State University, 1968
Additional Education & Training
  • Post-graduate course work in Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California, 1975–1976
Professional Affiliations
  • American Chemical Society
  • Geological Society of America

Mr. Gary Bigham is a Principal in Exponent's Environmental and Earth Sciences practice who specializes in the evaluation of water quality and the transport, fate, and effects of contaminants in the environment. He has managed and been the principal investigator of field, laboratory, and theoretical assessments of a wide variety of contaminants in lakes, rivers, estuarine waters, ocean waters, groundwater, and air.

Mr. Bigham has been designated an expert in litigation involving the effects of phosphorus runoff and mercury bioaccumulation in the Florida Everglades. He has also served as a consulting expert on a major litigation involving impacts of phosphorus, nitrogen, and other compounds from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Oklahoma and Arkansas. He has completed numerous assessments of eutrophication and contaminant transport employing a variety of numerical water quality models. He has recently applied EPA's state-of-the-art Environmental Fluid Dynamics Model to 39 miles of the Lower Fox River, Wisconsin to simulate sediment transport and deposition of PCBs historically discharged from multiple paper mills.

Mr. Bigham's international experience includes leading the technical development of a natural resource damage claim for the Kingdom of Jordan to the United Nations Compensation Commission for damages arising from the first Gulf War. He evaluated potential human exposure to spilled oil and produced-water discharges in the Amazon basin of Ecuador and completed an assessment of potential human exposure to mercury vapor from a spill in the Peruvian highlands. He also applied water quality models to predict conditions in and downstream of a proposed reservoir in Bolivia and to assess water quality and greenhouse gas emissions for a proposed reservoir in Guyana. He evaluated the potential impacts of dredging and related modifications to a container port facility in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In Brazil, he evaluated water quality monitoring during construction of the Santo Antônio Dam Project on the Madera River for mercury-related impacts.