Marshland Restoration & Enhancement History

Cooper Crane & Rigging, Inc. is a state licensed, bonded and fully insured contracting firm that has long focused its contracting efforts on marshland restoration and enhancement. We have been involved in sensitive habitat work for over 25 years and concern ourselves with achieving the "projects" objective while minimizing the construction impact. We have also extensive experience doing floodgate changes, pile driving, levee capping, channel cleaning, and dry land excavating.

B.K. Cooper founded the company in 1974. It began as a one-man shop with Mr. Cooper operating the business from seat of his crane. His main clients at that time were in the agriculture industry. He built levees and cleaned ditches for the hay farmers and cleaned stock water ponds and manure pits for the dairymen. He serviced these clients by using dragline and clamshell bucket arrangements on his crane to reach out beyond the normal working range of either a bulldozer or a front-end loader.

At that time Cooper also began to take advantage of the unique abilities of his cranes and expanded his customer service to also include pile driving, hoisting and soft ground excavation. The business continued to grow and began to bid jobs as a subcontractor and a primary contractor. In 1978, Cooper received his state contractor's license.

 

During the 1980's, Cooper crane expanded into the area of marshland restoration and enhancement.
Cooper ability to achieve desire project objectives within a sensitive habitat while minimizing construction
impact allowed him to established a good working relationship with such agencies as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, the California Department of Fish and Game, the California State Coastal Conservancy and the Audubon Society. In addition, the company has a very good rapport with many cities, municipalities and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The expansion of the company into marshland mitigation required the addition of personnel and equipment.
This new equipment included low pressure bulldozers and a unique amphibious crane.

Cooper Crane & Rigging, Inc. offers services on a labor and material basis, as a subcontractor and as a
primary contractor. Our equipment and skilled operators allow us to perform general construction work as
well as specialized work in marshland mitigation and/or restoration. Operated equipment rented by the hour
and performs a variety of task including: hoisting, pile driving, rip rap rock placement, concrete demolition,
and clamshell and dragline excavation. The company is licensed, bonded and insured as required by
contractors working for all federal, state and privately help companies.

The environmental movement has successfully ushered in laws that require developers to mitigate any loss of wetlands caused by their projects. Generally, mitigation includes returning some upland areas back to wetlands.

Many environmental groups and agencies now recognize Cooper Crane as a leader in the field of wetland restoration. The company is often requested to provide consultation on projects undertaken by environmental groups and agencies such as the Department of Fish & Game and the Coastal Conservancy. Cooper Crane has a long list of projects

B.K. Cooper, President and founder of the company, has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from San Jose State College in communications and he also completed 3 years of graduate work in mass communications. In addition, he has spoken at Chico State, Cal Berkley, Stanford University and Army Corps of Engineers.

Pile Driving History

Cooper Crane & Rigging began driving piles as a service to our existence clients and as an additional market for our equipment. Working from this small but established market, we began to penetrate other, related, pile driving niche markets: soft ground and congested sites, sheet pile driving, small bridge foundations and North San Francisco Bay commercial building foundations. Our company philosophy of immediate and direct management attention to the problem of our clients has earned repeat business for us as well as a gratifying stream of proposal requests. Cooper Crane & Rigging is now a recognized competitor in each of these markets.

We plan to continue to avoid the mainstream pile driving market, concentrating instead on the problem projects: wetlands and other environmentally sensitive areas, railroad right of ways, congested or hard to reach locations, aggressive schedules and so on. These projects are attractive to us for several reasons. First, our equipment tends to be slightly different from that our competitors and we are frequently able to use this to our advantage. Second, because we focus on "problem projects". Third, and most importantly, problem projects are where we can best apply our philosophy to be "part of the solution".

Russ Barnes, Vice President of Pile Driving, has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Mathematics from Pomona College, a Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering and Applied Science from California Institute of Technology, and a Master of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from Stanford University. He is a registered Professional Engineer in California & Arizona. Russ has worked in pile driving, deep foundations, and marine construction since 1983.