Edward Garvey, Ph.D.

Edward Garvey (Ed) is an environmental geochemist and a technical vice president with WSP, Inc., an international consulting firm. He has over 40 years of experience and is a licensed professional geologist in New York and Pennsylvania.  

For more than 30 years, Dr. Garvey has served as the chief scientist for the USEPA on the Hudson River PCB Superfund site. He has also directed the Superfund investigations of the Lower Passaic River and Newark Bay (NJ), Onondaga Lake (NY) and numerous other sites throughout the U.S. He is currently providing technical direction for the City of New York on investigations for the Gowanus Canal and Newton Creek, pertaining to combined sewer overflow discharges. Dr. Garvey has also testified as the lead expert witness for the government of Ecuador in its litigation against Texaco/Chevron regarding legacy petroleum contamination in the headwaters of the Amazon rainforest.  

Dr. Garvey began his career conducting greenhouse gas research for Exxon in a cooperative program with scientists at Columbia University. This work has been in the news recently in light of Exxon’s subsequent positions on global warming. 

Dr. Garvey’s research interests include the integration of geochemical and geophysical data to establish sediment and contaminant transport, the geochemical study of persistent organic pollutants (e.g., PAHs, PCBs, dioxins), and the geochemical study of heavy metals, (e.g., lead, mercury). He has co-authored numerous presentations, government reports, and articles on the application of environmental forensics, sediment core dating, and high-resolution analytical techniques to investigate and remediate major Superfund sites across the U.S.