2010 NETWORKING® MAGAZINE’S DAVID AWARD HONOREE.

JOHN D. CAMERON, JR., P.E.

Founder and Managing Partner, Cameron Engineering & Associates, LLP.

Under John Cameron’s leadership, Cameron Engineering & Associates is celebrating its 25th year as one of Long Island’s premier consulting engineering firms. Cameron says that he began his company with a part-time secretary, Donna Sinram, now his assistant, as a vehicle to fulfill his personal dreams and goals to bring innovation to the engineering field. “While engineering is typically a very conservative profession, I wanted to develop different solutions to societal and technological challenges,” he adds.

Cameron’s love of nature and the environment “goes back to when I was growing up in Long Beach,” he says, spending much of his youth working on the beach and at beach clubs. He got his first surfboard when he was 14, and surfing remains a passion. An engineering graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, he spent a year at the Academy sailing around the world. “The experience exposed me to different cultures and environments in Europe, Africa and Asia and gave me a unique opportunity to see the beauty of those world environments.”

Following the Academy, he worked in the construction of the upstate Indian Point nuclear power plant. Inspired by Earth Day, he moved on to become a public health and environmental engineer at the Nassau County Health Department. Pursuing his love of the environment, he earned a Master’s degree in Environmental Science from Long Island University. He worked for an environmental engineering consulting firm and was a manager of a resource recovery and wastewater treatment plant complex that burned garbage and made electricity to run the plant, and taught environmental courses at Nassau Community College.

As a licensed professional engineer, Cameron’s expertise lies in various disciplines in which the company specializes—planning, sustainable design and civil, electrical, mechanical, security and environmental engineering—though his personal area of specialty lies mostly in environmental engineering and planning, particularly in wastewater treatment and solid waste management, recycling, land use planning and environmental preservation. He and his firm hold seven U.S. process and apparatus patents for recycling technologies. The firm also employs 25 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Accredited Professionals, facilitating the company’s prominence in green building and sustainable design.

“As engineering designs evolve,” says Cameron, “you’re always learning and working to make designs more efficient. We developed a series of designs that accomplishes recycling in a more cost-effective manner, enabling us to reduce the amount of material that is rejected for disposal and improve the quantity and quality of recaptured materials for higher levels of recycling.”

A leader in waste management, Cameron Engineering has completed some of the more innovative and larger projects on Long Island. The company designed and built the Town of Islip’s Materials Recovery Facility over 20 years ago, as well as the privately-owned Omni Recycling Facility in Westbury. Fifteen years ago, the company designed and built the Sanitary District #1 Materials Recovery Facility in Inwood—their most advanced facility, which actually processes recyclables out of mixed garbage. The firm will be designing improvements to the process train this coming year. Cameron says, “Europe is much more progressive in waste management programs. Through their pricing structure, they provide incentives for waste minimization and recycling and employ resource recovery. With land at a premium, financially they discourage landfilling.”

“Cameron Engineering has always tried to push the envelope and stay ahead of the curve,” notes Cameron. A speaker at the 2009 Sustainable Development Conference, he says he follows a pathway in his career and business where “development on Long Island should work in consonance with the environment rather than in conflict with it.”

For over thirty years, Cameron has been an active member of the New York Water Environment Association, a member organization of the international Water Environment Federation, serving in various state and local elected positions, and ultimately, State President. In recognition of his accomplishments, Cameron was inducted into the Association’s Hall Of Fame in 2007.

Cameron serves as chairman of the Long Island Regional Planning Council, which is also a leading advocate for public policy. The Council focuses on major issues affecting sustainability—affordable housing, transportation, environment, economy and social equity. He says the Council is developing a Sustainability Plan, entitled “LI 2035,” assisted by national, regional and local consultants. A strong supporter of the work of non-profit organizations, Cameron gives prominent exposure at Council meetings to various groups to advance their agendas.

Cameron is vice chair of the Long Island Chapter of Legatus, an organization of Catholic CEOs that meets monthly with their spouses to discuss common issues. Supporting public education, he is vice chairman of the SUNY College of Old Westbury Foundation board, supporting the mission of the college, and currently exploring the possibly of creating affordable housing for young faculty and administration staff on the college campus. He served as State Vice Chairman of the New York League of Conservation Voters, and board member of Sacred Heart Academy High School and the St. Agnes Cathedral parish and school. With his wife Loretta, he supports Catholic Charities (she’s a board member), Wounded Warriors for physically or psychologically wounded veterans, Erase Racism, Rockville Centre Community Fund, his local church, and other worthwhile organizations. Cameron’s company supports numerous charities and nonprofit organizations, and because he’s a big “anti-litter bug,” the company adopted a two-mile stretch of Peninsula Boulevard in Rockville Centre, where they have the roadway cleaned bi-weekly and plant seasonal flowers and shrubbery.

Cameron has received numerous awards and recognitions in the area of community and environmental stewardship, among them, the Catholic Charities’ Caritas Award (along with his wife), the Anne and Charles Lindbergh Award, SUNY Old Westbury’s Ellie Simpson Award and the Business Person of the Year by the Long Beach Martin Luther King Center. He was selected Consulting Engineer of the Year in New York State and Entrepreneur of the Year for Long Island by Inc. Magazine, Ernst & Young and Merrill Lynch, and received the Alumni Outstanding Professional Achievement Award from his Alma Mater, Kings Point.

Rockville Centre residents, the Camerons have two children: Andrew, who works in real estate and construction, and Christine, who’s in the retail/fashion industry. He and his wife attend concerts, visit museums and travel internationally. Cameron is “into sports big time,” recalling that when he was ten years old, he won an NBC contest to be a Yankee Bat Boy, working along side Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and other Yankee greats for “the day of a lifetime.” He considers music and art “two of the great elements of life; they’re something that expands the human spirit.” Cameron says he has spent hours studying Michelangelo’s extraordinary work, The David, at the Academia Museum in Florence, Italy, which gives special meaning to his receipt of Networking magazine’s 2010 David Award.

NETWORKING® January 2010