The River Comes Back to Life | EEA Grand Conceptor Award Winner: McMillen Engineering

What does it take to undo 100 years of harm to one of America’s great rivers? In this episode of Engineering Influence, we sit down with the team winner of ACEC’s 2026 Grand Conceptor Award, McMillen Engineering.

McMillen, Inc. earned ACEC’s top honor for the Klamath River Renewal Project, the world’s largest dam removal and river restoration effort. Once the third-largest salmon-producing river system on the West Coast, the Klamath had been blocked for over a century by four aging hydroelectric dams.

McMillen coordinated among six Tribal nations, more than 21 agencies, and dozens of public, private, and nonprofit partners. They turned decades of division into a unified path forward.

The results speak for themselves: within months of final dam removal, salmon and lamprey returned to upstream reaches not accessed for generations.

Hear how precision engineering, Indigenous-led collaboration, and a bold vision for restoration came together to set a new global standard.