Mr. Christensen is a senior civil engineer and fish biologist with R2 Resource Consultants in Seattle, Washington, USA.  He has 30 years of experience providing fisheries science and design engineering consulting services to the hydroelectric industry and resource agencies throughout North America, with recent consulting services in Europe.  The major focus of his work involves the design of upstream and downstream fish passage facilities at hydroelectric facilities, and fish protection screen facilities at water diversions. His experiences have also included the design of small powerhouses and dams.  

Peter has served as project manager and lead design engineer on large successful fish passage projects including the 26 meter (86 ft) high upstream passage fish ladder and the 14 cubic meters per second (500 cfs) downstream migrant collector and bypass facility at River Mill Dam Oregon State.  He also served in this same management and lead design capacity for the designs of the large floating surface collectors for providing downstream migrant collection and safe bypass at North Fork Dam in Oregon State and Swift Dam in Washington State.  He has also provided conceptual passage designs for large new hydroelectric facilities along the Columbia River in British Columbia, Canada.

Prior to entering the engineering profession, Peter worked for five years in the 1980’s as a field fish biologist for state and federal agencies on both the east and west coasts of the United States.  This hands-on experience with fish trapping and handling in the field provides great benefit when designing fish monitoring and handling components of his designs.  From 1999 to 2004 Peter served as a technical committee member for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Hydropower Turbine Systems Program, assisting in the design and development of more fish-friendly turbines, and has more recently performed additional consultation services to the D.O.E. concerning review of fisheries related projects being funded by the department.