Can you tell us a little about yourself and your work with American Rivers? 

My interest in environmental work revolves around the intersection of legal, regulatory, and cultural negotiations around how we manage our environmental relationships. This interest pushed me toward interactions with state and federal agencies around community and stormwater issues. I initially came to American Rivers as a consultant. My original work was to guide an organizational effort, and a broader collaborative effort, focused on an EPA National Stormwater Rule rulemaking process. From this initiative, I have been with American Rivers ever since. Much of this work and my work for the next five or six years focused on policy aspects of stormwater management permitting, local regulations, and encouraging green infrastructure at a local level. 

What is your recent focus at American Rivers? 

Efforts to push for better policies, regulations, and permits that require municipal governments to implement green infrastructure led us to consider how we could help them comply with and achieve these policy goals. Inevitably, this led us to consider how to help figure out how to pay for green infrastructure. So, for the past three years, my focus has really been on the economic and financial aspects of building green infrastructure. Recognizing that there just isn't enough public budget to create the resilient communities that we need, and to scale up their interventions that most municipal and urban areas require to make safer, better, greener, and bluer communities. We spend a lot of time trying to innovate payment structures, particularly by bringing in private capital and private property, or both into compliance programs. One example of this work is our efforts to build a stormwater credit trading program in Grand Rapids, Michigan, modeled after the work pioneered by the District of Columbia Department of Energy and Environment. The idea is to give developers an option to comply with regulations by creating green infrastructure elsewhere if that site will not suffice.  

What do you find most exciting about the work of American Rivers and about your work?

At an organizational level, one of my favorite programs is the River Restoration Program. The focus of the program is to remove dams wherever they can. Over the past 20 years, American Rivers has become a national leader in removing obsolete and dangerous dams – where the environmental costs of dams far outweigh their community benefit. The organization’s deep involvement in the removal of four dams on the Klamath River is historic. This positions us well to pursue similar projects elsewhere. We are in early conversations around taking down Snake River dams. It’s incredibly exciting work. 

Personally, the innovative finance work my team does is really exciting. Curiosity drives my work. When I look at the urban areas in which I operate, I don’t see a way in which a nickel and dime approach here and there is going to get us to the type of climate change resilient communities that will sustain healthy watersheds. We need to do more faster and better. We cannot rely on inadequate government dollars to achieve the progress needed to solve these complex challenges at scale. So, part of our role at American Rivers is to be the convenor in this process to attract alternative forms of investment to meet the current needs and growing this body of work to help communities become more resilient.

What are the great challenges you face? 

We might be the victims of our own success. We are a small team tackling large challenges across the country. At present we are conducting assessments of incentive programs that municipalities could adopt to encourage green infrastructure. We are currently conducting local level assessments in three communities across the United States, simultaneously. And it is a lot for a small team. We have a lot more work to do and, in many ways, it is a good problem to have.