Dr. Rick Dunford founded EES in the summer of 2005 in order to better serve a wider range of corporate clients without the conflicts of interest that face many consulting firms. As an independent economics consultant, Dr. Dunford also can collaborate with a broad range of science and engineering consulting firms in serving corporate clients.
Prior to founding EES in 2005, Dr. Dunford was a Vice President at Triangle Economic Research (TER) in Durham North Carolina. Prior to co-founding TER in 1994, Dr. Dunford was a Senior Economist in the Center for Economics Research at the Research Triangle Institute in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Dr. Dunford was an Assistant and then Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, from 1977 to 1986. Dr. Dunford received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1977. He is currently a member of the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA), Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE), International Society for Ecological Economics, and the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis.
Dr. Dunford has led or worked on more than 80 natural resource damage (NRD) assessments, ranging from cooperative assessments to confidential, internal assessments to litigation cases. He has been deposed in several NRD cases and has provided trial testimony in three cases. Dr. Dunford specializes in the recreational impacts of oil spills and hazardous-substance releases, as well as groundwater damages from hazardous-substance releases. Also, he has provided technical support on several resource-equivalency and habitat-equivalency analyses. Finally, Dr. Dunford has led three investigations of potential economic gains to businesses from alleged non-compliance with various provisions of the Clean Water Act.
Updated March 2020