Tony Comerio, P.E., CFM

Tony Comerio joined Hanson in 2006 and serves as an assistant vice president, as well as the firm's environmental practice lead and chief water resources engineer. During his career, Tony has been responsible for the analysis, design and permitting of numerous water resources projects throughout the U.S. and abroad. He has provided water resources services for projects including the spillway gate rehabilitation of City Water, Light and Power’s Spaulding Dam in Springfield, Illinois; lock capacity and water-control improvements at the Stratton Lock and Dam over the Fox River in McHenry County, Illinois; CapX2020 Mississippi River transmission line crossing from near Wabasha, Minnesota, to Alma, Wisconsin; the Tanana River Bridge in Salcha, Alaska; and McClugage Bridge over the Illinois River in Peoria, Illinois, which included a 2D hydraulics model, one of the first of its kind for the Illinois Department of Transportation.

His expertise involves conducting water-supply studies for municipal and industrial clients, performing hydraulic analyses and permitting for typical bridge structures and large-span river bridges, as well as the permitting and design of levees, dams and other flow-control structures. Tony has extensive experience with hydrologic and hydraulic modeling and their integration with geographic information systems for dam breach and flood risk mapping.

Tony participated as a technical expert at the request of the National Academies of Sciences for the Urban Flooding in the United States 2017 workshop in Chicago. Information was gathered from government agencies and subject matter experts to understand the cause and effect of urban flooding and was compiled into a report.

Tony provided technical assistance to the recovery division director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Region I and FEMA’s headquarters for an evaluation of Vermont’s Stream Alteration Rule. FEMA chose Tony as an expert in the field of water resources to determine if Vermont’s rule met the five criteria of 44CFR Section 206.226(d) and the Stafford Act regarding upgrades to the predisaster design of public facilities. He also was selected as a subject matter expert in the field of hydrology and hydraulics to perform an independent external peer review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Buffalo District’s Blanchard River Watershed project in northwest Ohio.

Tony is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers; Association of Conservation Engineers; Illinois Association for Floodplain and Stormwater Management; Illinois GIS Association; Society of American Military Engineers; and the Upper Mississippi, Illinois and Missouri Rivers Association. He is past president of Downtown Springfield Inc.’s (DSI) board of directors and received DSI’s 2013 Volunteer of the Year Award. He was named the 2018 Civil Engineer of the Year Award by the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Central Illinois Section.

PROFESSIONAL CREDENTIALS
Professional Engineer: Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia
National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying

EDUCATION
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Bachelor’s degree, agricultural engineering