ANITA SMYTH

Anita is one of Winterbrook Planning’s skilled Senior Wetland Scientists. She focuses on federal, state, and local agency permitting related to wetlands and waterways, and occasionally delves into long-range and land development planning. Her favorite part of her job is finding planning, engineering, and permitting solutions that maximize the benefit for everyone involved, while ensuring that the costs and burdens do not fall disproportionately on any one party. Her specialty, and source of inspiration and motivation for her work, is getting involved with the Oregon Goal 5 process (protecting natural resources and conserving scenic and historic areas and open spaces).

“I enjoy being a guide that reduces the stress of the [wetland and waterway permitting] process.“

Her career began in Clackamas County Department of Transportation & Development, where she worked in the Engineering Design Team. She was deployed in an array of situations, including on construction projects, environmental permitting, guardrail design, and public meetings. She went on to work with WH Pacific, working full time in the Water Resources Group with Phil Quarterman (another one of Winterbrook Planning’s Wetland Scientists), gaining proficiency and judgement with experience on many different water and wetland projects. Seeking to work with a broader suite of ecologists, she then struck out as a sole proprietor. Alone and on small teams, she gained further expertise in project management, field practices, and permitting as the lead professional. She was recruited by one of her clients, Tim Brooks. Since then, she has worked on a number of large public capital improvement projects and has enjoyed participating in long-range and local-agency planning work.

In her free time, she can still be found outside. She likes hiking, working at her Dad’s or brother’s farms, gardening, quilting, or sitting by a river. 

Representative Projects:

Klamath Falls Airport Environmental Assessment and Bird Strike Hazard Abatement
Anita prepared and environmental assessment to determine the optimal manner to reduce wildlife hazard conflict potential at the Klamath Falls Airport. Anita, with Phil Quarterman, conducted wetland delineation and habitat assessment work, including developing a customized matrix used to prioritize sites for abatement measures and assisting with the Environmental Assessment and Joint Permit Application (JPA) processes. During the JPA process, she assisted in the identifying potential mitigation sites and recommending a preferred site.

Nike
Anita has performed several wetland-related investigations and permitting actions for Nike, Inc. Most recently, she executed supplemental wetland field investigation work to populate the wetland inventory for their World Headquarters campus. This information was then used to inform Nike’s 10-year master planning effort. Anita co-authored the permit application for Phase 1 of the approved master plan. The alternatives analysis portion was a complex evaluation of variables including environmental impacts, effects on employees and the regional transportation system, and technical and operational factors.

Microprojects around Oregon
At the other end of the spectrum, Anita has worked with hundreds of homeowners to assist them in project due diligence, natural resources assessments and permitting, and working with engineers, planners and others to facilitate the permitting processes pertinent to their developments. As these projects tend to be for personal use rather than self-funded through sale or other economic revenue generation, the focus is often on how to gain the greatest utility to the homeowner while minimizing permitting.