National Park work, Photojournalism, and Consulting with Michael Smith

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Michael Smith, the Director of Environmental Process & Policy with WSP USA, about working in a National Park, Photojournalism, and Consulting.   Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 

2:09 Nic & Laura discuss career exploring

5:19 Interview with Michael Smith Starts

9:09 Michael talks about being a park ranger & bears

18:58 Accidental photojournalism

26:08 Env. impacts of legalizing marijuana

35:12 Michael talks about env. consulting & current projects

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Michael Smith at https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsmith84

Guest Bio:

Michael Smith is a nationally-recognized leader in environmental policy and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance, with more than 28 years of experience in environmental impact assessment, environmental justice analysis, project and program management, policy development, land use planning, business development, group leader, and training/education with the federal government, private sector, academia, and non-governmental organizations. He is currently a Director of Environmental Policy and Process at WSP USA, an arm of one of the world's leading engineering and professional services consulting firms. His technical areas of expertise include environmental justice analysis; socioeconomic analysis; greenhouse gas emissions and climate change/climate adaptation analysis; cumulative impact analysis; and designing strategies for streamlining NEPA and related permitting processes and reviews. 

Michael has managed and provided environmental compliance review for some of the nation's largest, most complex, and highly controversial projects, including major energy, transportation, and water resources infrastructure projects, approval of genetically engineered plants, commercial space transportation operations, legalized cannabis regulatory programs, and approval of new fuel economy standards for all vehicles operated in the United States. He frequently provides training and strategic advice for NEPA compliance for public and private sector clients through the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP), and as a faculty member at the University of California Los Angeles Extension Environmental Studies and Sustainability Programs, the University of California Davis Extension Land Use and Natural Resources Program. He has also served on a White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Task Force on National Environmental Policy Act training.

 Music Credits

Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa

Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Nic 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiast Nic and Laura, on today's episode, Laura and I discuss exploring your career, we talked to Michael Smith about how cool he is. Or you know about his time as being a photo journalist, park ranger and environmental consultant. It's a lot of fun, really good interview really engaging stories I'm sure you guys are gonna enjoy it. And finally, raccoons hunted by touch more than any other sense. They have about four times as many sensory receptors in their front paws than their back ones, and are able to distinguish food items in the dead of night. I promise I won't make a joke about their hands. But is it weird to kind of try this like a little bit like I don't know.  Blindfold me and a raccoon and then we'll see. We'll see who wins Right? Like I can. I can do this. I can tell you. That's an apple. That's an orange. You know, I'm in, I got it. No. It is weird. Okay, it's definitely weird.

Laura 
It's definitely weird. And I don't think you would win.

Nic 
You don't think so? I feel like I know what food is. Just by touch.

Laura 
No, because remember raccoons are mapache?

Nic 
They are cool. They have of course they have the absolute coolest name in Spanish. That is 100% correct. Well on that awkward note. Let's hit that music.

[Shout outs]

Laura 
Alright, NAEP is accepting submissions for the NAEP's annual conference and training symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It's gonna be awesome. May 16 through 19th this coming spring. Submit your proposals today for the session posters, panels and more naep will be accepting the abstracts through November 15. Sign up at www.naep.org. And an NAEP is also hosting a free webinar with Esri designing resilient transportation networks with GIS that will be November 16 at 10am Pacific Time and 1pm Eastern Time. Nick and I love doing the show. If you love it too. We would love you to help us keep doing it by sponsoring, head on over to the www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com website and check out the sponsor form for details. Now let's get to our segment.

[Nic & Laura's segment]

Nic 
So I was just wondering if there's anything from Michael's discussion that you would want to talk about even it is short.

Laura 
Well like just like career exploring, like how important it is. That's what I preach in my career coaching is like your not just gonna look online or take a test or personality test or what your skills and strengths are and go oh, that's the profession for me. You have to get out there and try stuff Yeah, you know, you might think something looks amazing on paper and you've spent 100 grand going to school and then I see it all the time. People are coming to me going. I didn't really get the degree I wanted. This isn't what I thought it would be. Get out there and volunteer, do stuff talk to people before you spend that money. Yeah, you know, like, you know, a guidance counselor is going to go let's take this test and see where you fit in. That's their job to get you signed up for classes. There's not their job to find out your best path because they just want you enrolled in the school. It's your job, to take the time to volunteer and do stuff and figure out what you like and what you don't people ask me all the time. Well, can you let me know when you think there's something I'm like, I don't know what you would like but I like I like and what you like is what you like even if we are identical twins. We're going to be into different things. Yeah, so I love that Michael's path was all about just career going wherever in the world's interest took him.

Nic 
I mean, I'm glad you said that. Because like when I went to college, right, they did. That's exactly exactly what happened. Guidance Counselor's like, well, you're really smart. So you should be an engineer, right? I know how to do math. I can do it. It's just I hate math. I hate it. Guess What's In every engineering class and nothing but math something. I don't like this. I'm not I don't want to be an engineer. I don't want anything to do with it. And it's just not for me. There's people that love that stuff. And it's great. But it took me like two years to figure that out. And I'm like oh, like we talked about my mom going fine. Just do biology big dummy. Anyway. Yeah, you're totally right. I loved hearing him say that too. And he had like great jobs. But he's like, you know, these were fun. I really enjoyed them. But my passion showed up and I followed it. You know, as he went from one job to the next. That's really really cool.

Laura 
That and regardless of like, where he ended up, he has great experiences. And always why banging your head against the wall trying to like I need this career. This is what I do. And just like hate every moment of it, like do some things that you really like and you'll have some nice stories reflect on and meet some cool people probably

Nic  
and like a new doorway up and it always does. It's it's an incredible thing about this, you know, it's like who would have thought photo journalist, park ranger, environmental consultant, right like those are all very different jobs completely different. That's really cool. It's really really cool. So yeah,

Laura  
 I bet he had some other secret missions in there. He didn't talk about.

Nic 
Yeah, yeah. When we have him back we'll have to ask about it.

Laura 
Yeah, but let's get to it as his interviews fantastic.

Nic 
Yeah. Perfect.

[Interview with Michael Smith starts]

Nic
Hello, and welcome back to EPR. Today we have a very special guest, Michael Smith, who is the Director of Environmental process and policy with WSP, USA. He's also a California AEP board member in a NAEP liaison and has been an at large board member with NAEP for several years as well. Welcome Michael.

Michael Smith 
Hey, thanks. It's great to be here. And thank you for the invitation.

Nic  
Yeah, really excited to have you on. I mean, I think honestly, we could spend the whole interview talking about all the cool stuff you've done over your career. But yeah, let's let's start with your current role. What do you do?

Michael Smith 
Yeah, so WSP we have a lot of people who do environmental planning, environmental Impact Assessment kind of across a number of different divisions, and we will focus in particular sectors like transportation, energy, but I'm in a small group, kind of a specialized group, that we named ourselves environmental process and policy as part of our advisory services practice. So it's kind of focused and it's actually aligned with the management consultancy part of our company. So it's kind of interesting. So we provide kind of high level strategic advice, particularly on larger more complex projects, programs. And we have a big focus and we have several people in the group who have, you know, worked at CEQ or worked with the Department of Transportation over the years, particularly in the Obama administration, when there was effort on streamlining and I know that can be a bad word to some people. Maybe we'll say improving the efficiency. There.  Yeah, not only NEPA but the environmental permitting process, but without hopefully compromising quality and compliance, which we might say might have been different in an unnamed later administration that came along. Maybe in some ways. So yeah. So we focus on helping our own staff as well as clients which can be federal agencies, sometimes even state agencies, local governments and get wrapped into the NEPA process. And then also private sector clients as well. Again, it's a helping to navigate which of course we all do for all of us who are consultants, you know better through the environmental review and permitting process, but again, our focus tends to often be very large, very complex projects that have you know, just so many different pieces and challenges to them. So it's a great place to be we get to work and I get to work on so many just really cool and groundbreaking and fascinating projects. That's fun.

Nic 
Yeah, for sure. And we'll definitely dive into some of those as we go through. So like when you're doing like your analysis, your support. Here, you're telling teaching project managers how to comply with what's going on with NEPA. Is that at the beginning of a project process, are you there the whole time as a consultant for because as large projects, I'm assuming you've got to be involved beginning, middle, end?

Michael Smith  
Yeah, that's a great question. And it does vary. But to your point, you're exactly right. It's best when we do get involved early, but sometimes for various reasons. We don't and then you're kind of coming in partway through the process, and that can be difficult obviously to you know, steer a train back on the tracks or however you want to say it but sometimes when we do get the opportunity, which we often do at the start and through scoping, and even pre scoping and internal conversations and an agency or an applicant might be having about this kind of strategy for navigation. Oftentimes, we will follow that all the way through the process to the kind of the bitter end and you know, a NEPA decision documented a lot of projects that we do work with are at the EIS level, not not all but many of them are larger programmatic comparable indexes.

Nic  
And it's just really, really great answer. Love that.

Laura
It's exciting work.

Nic
Yeah, it really is. And like, you know, you have quite a career so I don't know Laura, you want to you want to dive into these these questions here. They're pretty fun.

Laura  
I do. I also, you know, talk strategy and continuous improvement, and business strategy all day long. I love those words. But we want to help our younger listeners and our listeners who are trying to change careers, you know, learn a bit a little bit about our environmental professionals and NAEP members and how they got where they are and looking at your history. There's just a ton of questions about how you got where you are, but some of the previous work that you've done, and I made my first visit to Glacier National Park last year during the pandemic and it was so amazing. So when I saw that you actually had worked there before. As a park ranger totally envious, but also just curious, how did you get that job? And why did you leave that job?

Michael Smith  
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, of course, there's a long backstory, but I'll give you the very short version. I actually started working in national parks first in Yosemite National Park and I was going to college in California undergraduate college and University of California in Santa Cruz. And I shifted over from kind of a prior career and interest in journalism to environmental policy. And as part of that, I saw a announcement for an internship program actually at Yosemite to work with the park rangers and the staff there through program they have within the park service within the park. And so I did that for one summer between my years in college, and I loved it. And so I was like, I want to now I want to go do this for real. And maybe to part of your question I found out then, the people loved being in the park and they were like, Yeah, we'd love to hire you. But there's probably a very low probability that we will because it's this incredibly honorous application process and you know, there are veteran preference points that often kind of skew the system and so it's tuff, and so I applied to Yosemite, and that was on the top of my list I wanted to go there. I grew up in the Bay Area, and spent a lot of my childhood there and then also even in the Central Valley closer to Yosemite for high school. But at the time you had to apply for two parks for a summer Ranger, as a naturalist, that's what I wanted to do and what I had done before, and so I didn't know where really else to apply. I had actually spent very little time at that point in my life outside of California, but I thought about the other California parks, but you know, it's like I want maybe the other one, I'll just do something really kind of wild. I'd always wanted to go to Alaska. I'd never been so I was like, Okay, maybe Denali, and then I was having a conversation with somebody, actually one of my professors in Santa Cruz, and they started talking about Glacier National Park and they had this lifelong love. huge mountains and I was like, okay, that's where I'm going to apply. So I applied and miracle miracles, I got the job and then I spent three summers a Glacier while in college, both undergraduate and then when I went on to graduate school, and they also do your point Laura Yeah, best job I've ever had. Believe it or not even more than you know spreadsheets for costing on a proposal for EIS. I know it's shocking,

Nic 
Stunning.

Michael Smith 
That it was my job to be to take people out on hikes, you know all day hikes for eight hours. And see glaciers and grizzly bears and all that kind of stuff. But it was wonderful, but it was a seasonal job. And I knew a lot of people who were trying to make the route into permanent jobs with the National Park Service. And it's tough and you often have to go to a not so desirable park unit and there were jokes about places like the and not to offend anybody from St. Louis. But the Gateway Arch was one or in lower Manhattan, one of the historic parks there and I just I was kind of really getting the policy left when I wanted to go to graduate school and then eventually that led to some other thing. So that's the short version of how I ended up in one of my favorite places on earth.

Laura  
Awesome. Do you have like at one or two quick stories to share from that time?

Michael Smith 
Sure. Yeah. You know, there were a lot of bears there and coming from California, where we don't have any grizzly bears at least anymore. We have one on the state flag. But the last one was killed here, unfortunately, in 1923, I think was the year. Unfortunately, there were 1000s of them. I mean, they went from the Pacific Ocean, on the beaches, you know, in San Francisco, right in San Francisco, and then all over the state and the valley and up in the mountains but unfortunately, they were removed. I think partly because obviously the danger, but you know, Glacier, as you know and went there, Laura? You know, it's one of those few places where we still have moment a place big enough wild without protected enough. And Glacier has a very healthy population probably inside Second only to Yellowstone and the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem to the south and that really was a game changer in terms of just being there including in the housing I lived in and we the valley I lived in was on the East side of the park was actually a major bear freeway and maybe intersection there were five valleys that all came together so you know you were told like at night like you know have a flashlight and you make some noise be really careful. But then going out on the trails and we would see that very frequently. And you know, you have to make noise I mean at least if you didn't want to have a bear encounter. And in so yelling or singing or you know some people use bells although

Laura
Hey bear.

Michael Smith
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But the bells you know, they always had the jokes about the bells that you know what happens to the hiker with the bells and the bear and you know, you find it in the bear scat you know, and things like that. But yeah, yelling and I'm not really much of a singer. At least anybody would be hiking with would want to see and I might even anger the bear so I would Yeah, yeah. Hey bear, and it was just so weird right to be in this wild landscape of solitude and have to yell all the time you know, and I have the kind of inside knowledge I mean, we had training or orientation training my first summer I remember this, you know, like this two week Crash Course right? And everything about the bears and all the resource specialists and scientists in the park and come in and give presentations on you know, mountain go biology, grizzly bears and all this species and hydrology and fish. I mean, it was absolutely amazing. It was like better than college, but the bear management who then the Rangers had a bear management came in and like gave me a history of all of the bear attacks in the park and there had been a lot and you know, and with details and photographs, and so yeah, we kind of like right away of like, okay, this is gonna be different. I feel very lucky in my four summers there. I never had a troubling encounter. I did encounter many, many bears. And I you know, one funny story I had a group of 50 people that I was taking on a hike in this beautiful part of the park, you may have gotten there called a mini glacier Valley. And we would take people on these boats on these beautiful lakes and then take them on a pretty short hike. And so you'd get a lot of kids and a lot of senior citizens because it was a flat trail not very long because some of the trails glacier are quite steep and rigorous as you've probably experienced. So anyways, we're on this hike. I've got at least 50 people strung behind me. And up ahead, I hear somebody yell, "Bear Bear", and I look and here's a very large mother. Well, well, I knew it was a mother and a second because it was a bear coming at me. And then two cubs are in behind it. And I turned around and I yelled everybody I was like get off the trail. And there was the funniest part of the story, I think is there was another Ranger actually a mere managing Ranger on a trail was about 500 feet above me and saw the whole thing. And so I didn't even really know what happened but he recounted it to me and he called it he still calls it today. I ran into him in the park when I went back about five years ago. He says oh, you're"the parting of the waters" Ranger down the trail and people just scattered  aside, and no one got injured or encountered the bear. They just all three of them. The other two cases ran through everybody and just went on their merry way. And but I have to say it was incredible just to be in their presence and once I learned that they really weren't like waiting behind every tree to jump out and get you that they really just wanted to leave you alone. And it was really scaring them you know or startling them surprising was really the problem. And so you make noise and yeah, I never had an encounter. And unfortunately, you know, some people did and I was involved in helping a number of visitors be medivaced out who were some cases very severely injured by bears including actually after I left the park I think two summers later Ranger I knew very well was actually attacked in the in the fall which was typically the most dangerous time because they're, they're out they're nervous. They're stressed because they want to eat as much as they can before they go into hibernation. But anyway, that's that's one bear story. But there are others.

Laura 
Wow, that's fascinating to talk to someone who's actually had this experience because I think a lot of us just kind of dream about it.

Nic
Yeah.

Michael Smith 
Yeah, it was incredible. They're incredible creatures. I have enormous respect. One summer we had this is not a story, but quickly we had one. We had a mother who had four cubs, which happens very, very rarely. Even three is pretty rare. One or two are much more common. And we could spend the whole summer we had a one Ranger program where each of us there were seven of us. So one day a week, you'd have like a three hour programming setup, a very powerful telescope and a parking lot of a little motor in there and that Valley and the bear and the cubs were almost always in like three different locations. So you can just go out and immediately set up and oh, are not there. They're over. There. And oh man, visitors just love and then you know, the cuts are so playful when there was snow early in the season. You know, bears are just like they're just so both smart but playful. They would literally the counselor would walk up the mother would lead them walk up to the top of the snowbank and then they'd all slide down and then just doing it over and over again. And they just looked like they were having the greatest time. Yes,

Nic
That's incredible.

Laura 
Such great experiences, but then I have to ask you were photojournalists before this experience. So did you take a lot of pictures during your time?

Michael Smith 
I did actually yeah, that's a great question. And yeah, I did have like probably a lot of people and, you know, it's funny over the years, I've been working with colleagues and, and and conferences, but also with some of the NEPA training that I do, you know, asked a lot of people like how did you get into doing NEPA environmental review permitting work, and so many people seem to say, and I think this is true for some of your podcast guests that I listened to kind of by accident, you know, and that was kind of true for me, including Yeah, starting kind of coming right out of high school, actually into the start of a career as first photo journalist and then eventually a newspaper writer as well. And I did that for several years down in the San Joaquin. Valley when I was down there for a couple of different one a weekly paper and then eventually, the big daily paper in the city south of Fresno that I lived in, and it was really amazing. And I really thought that that was what I was going to do. But at Santa Cruz, my intention I had decided that I wasn't going to get a journalism degree, because I had a number of mentors to say, you know, you may want to be a journalist, don't get the technical journalism degree, specialize in something, you know, some kind of topical area, and I had taken this right around that time I took this college class with a professor and this is kind of more ironic, maybe the wrong word, but there were some big fire or a big fire in Sequoia National Park this summer just a little over a month ago. I think it's now out with some snow. But it you may have seen the images even threaten some of the largest tree in the world, the General Sherman tree and the sequoias and he had done his PhD research on some of the very first science and studies leading to recommendations to do control burning in quiet rooms. And his work that he started actually led to eventually that fire having very little effect on those main groves because they had been doing this controlled and prescribed burning program for decades really. But anyways, he had us read books like Sand County Almanac and even I think some Wallace Stegner and Barry Lopez and some of these guys kind of key environmental writers and I just got hooked on it and so I decided I'm going to major in environmental policy for my undergrad, which I eventually did. And then somewhere along the way as that was happening, and maybe when I started rangering Somehow the you know, the journalism just kind of fell away. And I just got more interested in wearable policy in graduate school and eventually that led to other things. That brings me here today.

Laura 
Yeah, that's amazing. And that is just a true testament just follow your passions. They'll take care whether it's through photography or something else to where you're meant to be. And I didn't know we shared that I my first love was photography, my first two years of college or photography design. So that's really awesome.

Michael Smith 
Yeah, you know, and on that note about your following know your passion, but you don't need me, I think you ended up with now when I look back these decision points in your life, even if you don't know that they're happening at the time. I actually got a job right out of high school working for this new three times a week paper, and it just started up from actually a disgruntled employee who had gotten fired from the the main paper in town. And he and another high school colleague of mine we had just graduated was the summer that we graduated high school before going on to college and he let us do anything. We got to be you know, experienced reporters because there were no other reporters or photographers for that matter. And he would just be like, well just think of a story. And yeah, so I was, you know, here I am, like 18/19 years old. I'm like, I've never flown a helicopter. So I'm going to call up the highway patrol in Fresno and say, I want to do a story on your helicopter and all the great things you do and you know, so turn it up. Yeah, come on down and we go up, and they fly me and it turns out there was like this, these armed people on a freeway down in the valley and we landed while, I was with them. And they landed the helicopter. They drew their guns and it was like a Hollywood movie. You know, like the Rock was telling me like stay in the helicopter. Don't go out. You know, we got like, come on Rock. I can help out. Yeah. But I did. And they ran out and apprehended this person. And it was it was nuts. And then another demo was like, you know, I've never flown in a small airplane. So then I called up the sheriff's office and they had an airplane and I went up with them and you know, just crazy stuff like that. And I got to cover wildfires. I get to go to the landing out in the desert at Edwards Air Force Base for the space shuttle, the first one that came back after the Challenger accident, right, I think which was what an 86'. And there was a year or two delay in the program while they figured out of course what went wrong. And so it was a huge deal and you know, out in the desert and all these giant booths were erected out where they land the shuttle and all the main news anchors and the timer there. You know, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw And all those people it was super exciting. It was just amazing to see this little dot and you're the sonic booms and then the thing looks like it's gonna literally it's falling out of the sky. And you think it's just gonna land on the on the desert hard pan and just blow up because this is like dropping so fast. And then just amazingly last second, it glides in and they land. Anyway, so it's just yeah, it was amazing experiences. And that, you know, in a lot of ways that was the hard part to leave that particular career, but I've been I've got to have a lot of other good experiences too. But yeah, I you know, I made that decision. Oh, but the point of that sorry, was really quickly. One day while working in the paper in this amazing job that I should not have had as an 18 year old. The photo editor for the real paper and the daily paper in town contacted me and said, Hey, we have an opening for a photo lab technician. You want to come work for us. And I just remember being so torn because it was way you know lower step of a job but the photo editor was like this. I mean really a world renowned photo journalist. And then one of the best sports photographers on Earth in our paper was owned by Gannett. And so he would go do assignments for USA Today covering the Olympics all every four years or two years, winter and summer and the Super Bowl and he would you know, I knew it'd be amazing to go work for him. And I remember talking to my mom and just struggling like what should I do? And then finally, you know, my mom was like, You should go work for that guy, you know, even if it's a lower job and I did and quickly turned into a photo journalist and photographer on the staff and then a writer and even I don't do that today so much of what I do and he really helped me out with my photography skills as well because he really was and he eventually moved down to Los Angeles and became a staff photographer for USA Today and for like 20 years all the Hollywood star portraits were done by him and all the big sporting events. He was Robert Hanashiro.  He was an amazing, amazing mentor but the hardest boss I've ever worked for if you didn't you've had the experience someone who really never gives you praise, but you learn you're doing okay if they're not yelling at you, and mad that like all as well because he just he was such a perfectionist he has such high standards. So that was a little challenging but you know of course I just learned so much.

Laura 
That's great. And then switch gears a little bit because there's something I want to ask you about because we have not surprisingly had a conversation on the show yet about this topic. So which is the environmental impacts of legalizing marijuana? Wondering what the current laws are in California because you know what, I'm we're both over here on the East Coast. So a little bit removed. And then are you involved in any of those types of projects?

Michael Smith 
Yeah, no, thanks for asking. Yeah, not now, but I was several years ago, and some folks may not be in California I think was good. This goes back 10 years or more, was the first day to legalize medical cannabis or marijuana or whatever you want to call it. And that was in place for several years, but then there was a movement to legalize commercial cannabis cultivation as well as selling and we weren't the first state to do that. I think Colorado if I remember right. But that triggered a lot of people may know that California is one of about 20 states that has a state kind of baby NEPA a little those are often called our law CEQA, California environmental quality act. So this was not a NEPA project, but it definitely did trigger a very extensive essentially very similar to a NEPA EIS except they're called the EIRs, environmental impact reports in California and I worked on the one that was programmatic for really cultivating, growing and then transporting commercial cannabis statewide. So it was an incredible project to work on and very challenging but and I led the analysis and the team for greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Which you know, you might think about first blush like, you know, we're talking about the emissions from somebody smoking, which we actually didn't look at, but it turns out that especially growing cannabis indoors has a tremendous amount of energy usage and electricity usage, and not just for lighting but for as I learned ventilation and carbon dioxide, pumping it in which helps plants grow a lot faster and and we have we got to go with the state by the way, I was blown away because, you know, people were still illegally growing at the time we're working on this right to legalize it. And state would reach out our client, the State agency, which was the agriculture agency, and they would just ask these growers you know, we're trying to learn more as we put this, both the policy together, but also the environmental document, and we'd like to come visit your operation. And some of these are where I used to live for a while when I taught up at Humboldt State University in northwestern California up in the Emerald triangle as it's called in Humboldt, Mendocino, Trinity counties up there and you know, a place where like, when I first moved there, people told me, you know, like, stay on trails, don't go off if you see, trip wires probably turn around and you know, just a lot of people defending with firearms and other things. So I was amazed that people were like, yeah, come on up, we'll give you a tour. And so we just saw the most amazing and people were so open and frank and some of them let us take pictures and these enormous grow operations. I remember one outdoors up there and then another one out in the desert in Southern California, that I mean, they had just hired like some guy who had been like in the management team in the C suite at Pepsi and was, you know, organized and they wanted to sell like the most high end cannabis was kind of their business model. And they had all these scientists figuring out you know, the optimal level of oxygen and carbon dioxide lighting and all this stuff in these enormous warehouses. So they had constructed this kind of in the Palm Springs area out of the desert, and they were tapping into wind power because there's an enormous set of wind turbines out there. As you drove out to Palm Springs from Los Angeles. Anyways, yeah, it was crazy. And it was just absolutely fascinating to work on. Public meetings were interesting. We had them all over the state. And, you know, sometimes people in they were set up like informational booths. So I had one on my impact topic for climate change, and people would come by and then sometimes they you chat with them for a while and then they walk away and there'd be this lingering odor. I'll let you kind of think about what that might be. And then things were actually hasn't really heavily police patrol we would have armed California Highway Patrol and sheriff's officers at the door and I'm not I never was quite sure exactly what the expectation of violence was or issues, but fortunately, we never had any. But yeah, it was very different than any project that I've ever worked on both from you know, from all that kind of craziness, but also just from the analytical challenge of the issue. And one of the issues was, how do you do a full blown environmental impact analysis, when a lot of the people despite what I said about someone invited us that was a very small percentage. You didn't have data on what was going on, you know, your baseline your effective environment, because of course, people were doing mostly that illegally and had no interest in sharing with you what they were doing. And so you know, again, like trying to calculate emissions, what's the baseline for, for instance, people using the power grid or diesel generators in outdoor grow? Or remote grow operations? So that was a kind of an interesting aspect of the project analytically as well.

Laura
Yeah, that's fascinating.

Nic 
Yeah. I mean, I love that no question I can ask you after this is going to be nearly as interesting. So, you say that doing that NEPA, where you don't have all the information. How do you actually do that? How do you manage that?

Michael Smith 
Well, you know, that's a great question. And it turned out that there was one researcher at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, which was in the East Bay, San Francisco Bay Area, department Energy Lab, run in conjunction with the University of California, Berkeley. And this person was like an electric usage expert, and he like worked on things like trying to improve the efficiency of the transmission grid and all that but he had this personal interest in what was going on with cannabis and particularly its energy usage. So he actually both got some information, interviewed some people or talked to him, but then also went to the utilities throughout the state. And it turns out that you can find some interesting data and law enforcement have been involved in some cases when, like, why is this house out in the middle of nowhere, you know, using more power than a Costco and so yeah, they he basically then just kind of model created a model to estimate and we definitely did not have an exact number. And there were also it was also interesting on the economics of it all as well, and there was a team of the University of California in Davis led by one of their long standing economics professors, who also created an economic model that we use not only to calculate the baseline, but then the projections on you know, what would commercialization do and you know, how much tax revenue would come into the state or local governments, then so yeah, as we do in NEPA, right, you know, what do you do with incomplete or unavailable information, even though we were doing the state law, they kind of had some similar principles. So we, you know, we did the best we could. We also, by the way, had some data from Colorado, right, as they legalized. Some of that we extrapolated, right, which is also something we're supposed to do in NEPA, right? And so yeah, we put it together and we did we did the best we could, you know, I should say that today, which, you know, many years later, the program is having some difficulties. There's way more illegal activity continuing to go on and I've read recently some estimates that there's even more than before legalization in terms of Yeah, folks out on the ground, probably just because of pricing. And particularly, you know, it's very difficult to sell the cannabis in California, but if you're willing to risk transporting out of state, particularly the states that don't have commercialized legal cannabis, apparently that's really lucrative. So that's a problem. They're trying to address and they created such an onerous and this is interesting onerous environmental permitting program for individual projects going through the local government. So we did a programmatic document that kind of cover the big picture. But let's say you know, you had a 20 acre property and you wanted to legalize a commercial grow operation. You need to go to your usually a county government, sometimes the city and then go through the impact review process there in getting a permit. And it turned out that that ended up being much more costly than a lot of particularly smaller property owners could afford and that also led, I think, an unintended consequence, although some predicted it, though, I know in public meetings, when we're doing the environmental review that it would lead to kind of the corporatization that the people that would be able to afford to go through the permitting process would consolidate, buy up multiple grow operations and properties as a corporation and go that way. So there's also been a lot of talk about equity and commercialization or consolidation as well. So it's still an ongoing both issue and controversy in California and insurance, some other states doing this as well.

Nic  
I mean, like you say equity is everywhere. It's in every industry needs equity. There we go. I like that. And, you know, it's I can say it's it's tough to follow that up. But you know, you Frank Wagner and Pam Hudson, three have run the NEPA case last session for a NAEP's annual conference. It's honestly always a hit. It's one of the most viewed, watched, listened to panels that we have, and you've also done, NEPA training sessions all over the country and knowing you, there's got to be a good story or two that comes out of doing that kind of work.

Michael Smith  
Yeah, well, first off on the conference and thank you for mentioning Fred Wagner and Pam Hudson. And I, you know, I'm very honored for them even let me participate with them, because of course, they're both amazing masterful attorneys, and I'm not and so I get to sort of sneak in and then I try to disclose that fact every year of the conference and then also tell people that, you know, I view the court opinions as a practitioner, in terms of the lens of, you know, looking for lessons to learn and not the, you know, attorneys don't do that also, of course they do, but, again, it's a little bit different perspective, and that's what I try to share in the conference and then when we kind of write it up as well, and it's just been truly amazing to to work with them and for many years and Lucy Swartz that many folks probably know was also involved. Long time she worked at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also CEQ, which is retired now as a several years ago, but she was also just so wonderful to work with in terms of training. Yeah, it's been an amazing also experience to just Yeah, work with people, federal agency employees, other consultants, all sorts of other people as well, with you know, all sorts of different kinds of projects and agencies and places and some of the places I've got to travel to you know, one time with the Navy I did a workshop down in Key West at the Naval Air Station there. And in addition to being of course just an absolutely beautiful place to be in amazing Keylime pie and conch fritters also. By the way, I did reminds me actually work one winter season as a ranger in South Florida it was Biscayne national park which is the very northern part of the Florida key islands and I have some other stories sometimes when you have me on for podcast round two, I'll tell you about my time as a 20 year old driving confiscated drugs, cigarette boats, through Biscayne Bay with my sunglasses on pretending I was Don Johnson. As a 20 year old that was a pretty fun thing to do as part of again your federal government job. I thought it was the greatest scam. In the world, South Florida this was in just to date myself. This was in 1991 and it was kind of the wild, wild East maybe we'll call it back then and drug running was the big deal as it is now but it is It was a crazy place but but yeah, so it Key West back then for a quick second. So I remember that workshop because we were in this kind of almost like a hangar building right on the edge of the airfield. And they think I can reveal this. I don't think it's classified but one of the big things they do there is they train American fighter jet pilots to fly against the Soviets, which this might be a little dated. Maybe they're gonna replace it with Chinese, but they had MiGs there, not sure how they got them. And so the other American pilots would fly in the MiGs, and they did dogfights using these electronic WarGames systems where they actually shot each other but that was you know, ammunition live fire but it was all coordinated, you know, like a giant video game. But what I remember teaching the workshop other than that was really fascinating and learning hearing about that was about every two minutes they would take off, and it was pretty short runway. And so it was so deafening  loud. And I was actually with Pam Hudson, doing that training for the Navy and we would be whoever was talking. We just have to stop for like 30 seconds every round every two, three minutes, because you just could not hear a thing. So that was kind of nutty. And then you know, another time up in Alaska, which been so lucky to both work on projects up there as well as do a lot of NEPA training. One time with the army. We had somebody in the workshop that said one day it was like a week long workshop. They said, Hey, let's go over and I've got a buddy who let us in the Army Corps of Engineers has this permafrost research tunnel that they had drilled in to the ground. This was north of Fairbanks, Alaska, and it went in really deep and into the ice that was not far under the surface. And they had us were like these giant like spacesuits. So we wouldn't all freeze to death and giant moon boots and we went in and at one point the guy was like, I want to show you the coolest thing here and it goes to the wall which is like all ice and they would light it up Like yellow It was just incredible. See it, but he picked up this piece and and had a bug in it. And he's like, we really hope climate change doesn't melt this because we're really worried that bugs like this might have diseases or viruses from 1000s of years ago that we might not have any resistance to it. I'm like coming out of the tunnel now. I'm done. But that was the that was pretty cool. So you know Yeah, crazy things like that happen, which is pretty nice. But well being you know, working, working with agencies, a lot of times sometimes we would, you know, be in the start of a project and you know, sit down and really kind of brainstorm and similar to the work that I do now in you know, my consulting job, my horrible job to do that. It's just it's a lot of fun and you learn so much. At least I feel like I do maybe more than they do, which is maybe not fair, but hopefully it's hopefully it's equal. Right, right.

Nic 
Right. Yeah. And I love that you touched on that. Like, you know, having that practitioners perspective on things. And so you can see we've had Fred on the show a couple of times and you know, as he's told us there's there's so many wild changes coming before we even have this conference in May like what we say now this is going to be different than what will be going on then, which is really, really interesting. So but to that effect CEQ just released phase one. Of their proposed NEPA rulemaking changes. What insight can you give us from that practitioner side? On this phase one and what's coming in the future?

Michael Smith 
Well, that is both a fabulous question. And maybe it's also maybe that $100,000 question, right? And you know it from my perspective in working with so many different agencies. What happened in the previous administration, and of course, the revised regulations that came out after a several year process and went into effect last fall and September, you know, it just created an enormous amount of confusion. Maybe you might even say, chaos, and unfortunately, from my perspective, a lot just wasted. Time. Like, I can't even think of the meetings and some of the agencies I had, it was just like, well, what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to do cumulative impacts or not? And so in my mind, it's a good thing and you know, people talk about elections having consequences and boy if I didn't understand that before, from the lens of my work, things I think would be obviously different in a lot of ways very different if the presidential election didn't turn out differently, but because it didn't turn out the way it did. Obviously, the Biden administration CEQ has a very different view, related to a lot of the changes and deletions really as well as some of the additions that the Trump administration CEQ made. So the good news is, as you said, now, we have what CEQ is announced as phase one of their revisions to the regulations, I guess, the revisions to the revisions. And as you may know, it's very narrowly targeted. They kind of decided, I guess, you know, the three most important things that they wanted to kind of fix in the short term, what they call phase one, and one of the big things that of course, was just central to everything we do and impact assessment is restoring those concepts of direct, indirect and cumulative impacts and making it very clear, yes, you do need to look at that and analyze those types of impacts. And then also, there were some changes made related to applicant focus in relation to Purpose and Need and also in how that influenced your range of alternatives. And also a change that had kind of was read as prohibiting agencies in their own regulations from adding essentially requirements and so in a sense, setting a ceiling on what they can do by saying you can't do anything beyond what the government wide CEQ regulations say. So that's great and it will be helpful but there's so many other major changes that I'm sure a lot of people listening know on, you know, major federal actions huge. changes that happen to that definition to significance, and get some changes pretty big for Category Exclusions and all sorts of other things. So CEQ, you know, has told us of course, that there's going to be this phase two rulemaking it'll be much more comprehensive and I think what's interesting there's a lot of rumors as maybe the wrong word but rumbling expectations even that give it obviously the Biden administration's focus on what the President has said and the executive orders and other statements about the focus on equity, and we were talking about earlier and environmental justice, as well as climate change. So I think one really interesting thing to me will not just be maybe restoring some of the essential elements of NEPA but that you know, I think some folks below was taken out by the changes made by the last administration, but also, maybe for the first time will actually have in addition to guidance on those two topics, which I'm sure will have a revised guidance. We've already been told that, for instance, for climate change, but maybe we'll actually have those topics and maybe even some other priority areas, actually go into the regulations, which I think would be fantastic. Because if anybody's worked with climate change and NEPA over the last decade or more, I think it's kind of maybe about 10/15 years ago when I first came on the radar. He really hasn't advanced super far there a lot of confusion we had you know, what administration you know, the Obama administrations spent six years coming out with a really great guidance document 2016 And then President Trump rescinded the only CEQ guidance document ever rescinded and now we have you know the new CEQ saying we're gonna dust that off and and revise that which will be great as well, but yeah, I think that's a topic. It's obviously just so important. And we'll be hearing all about in the news right now, this week with the Glasgow Climate Summit that President Biden is traveling to. Yeah, it's hard to conceive that that should not be a fundamental part of NEPA in the year 2021 And going forward. So I'm looking forward to, you know, additional guidance and direction from CEQ. I think a lot of other NEPA practitioners are in other agencies as well.

Nic  
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And it's such a great interesting time. I mean, like, really, we could ask you 100 More questions about it. Really, really test the limits of your brain there, but we're close to time. I did promise that we at least get to a project of yours. So I want to give you the time to talk through is there any project in particular that you have found interesting that you're working on or that you've just completed in you know, it can be California or anywhere else?

Michael Smith
Sure.

Nic
Do you have one for us?

Michael Smith 
Yeah, it's hard. There's a lot of them as I know there are for mostly for NEPA practitioners, you know, one that comes to mind just because I am working on it right now. But it is an absolutely fascinating project is being involved on the enormous team that is preparing the NEPA and because it is here in California, the CEQA reviews as combined documents for the whole California high speed rail system. And you know, that's the apparently I read it's been deemed, you know, the largest infrastructure project, perhaps even in US history, although it may be single projects that maybe that's how they get out of it. There's the highway system, which seemed pretty big too, but either way, but it's enormous, you know, and it goes back for gosh, I think 15 years almost now to a programmatic NEPA document that was done for the whole system. But now I'm on a team where we are doing essentially eight segments for the whole route running from at least the Phase One routes running from San Francisco down into the central valley and then out over the mountains into into Southern California, eventually ending down in the Los Angeles Basin area. It's all divided up into segments that range from 40 miles to 120 or so miles. And some of them just have enormous challenges. You know, I mean, these are $10, $20 billion cost estimates. For many of the  each segment, including doing things like building some of the longest tunnels in the world under the San Gabriel Mountains to get from the high desert area in southern California over to the Burbank and Los Angeles area. And it's kind of a cool thing. I'm on something called the NEPA assignment team that the state of California has and my company is sort of a contractor for the whole kind of program called the Rail Liberty Partner. So as part of that the state decided to apply for and get NEPA assignment authority, which a lot of state DOTs for highways have done over the years sort of program Congress created now. Gosh, it goes back almost a decade ago. But this was the first time anyone had any state have been granted this authority from the Federal Railroad Administration, FRA that hadn't been the NEPA lead agency, so about two years ago, or so the state took that over and so it's kind of really cool is as a consultant I almost get to kind of sometimes we joke you know, we almost play like where the federal agency and FRA because our role is really to make sure that the NEPA requirements are being followed correctly and compliance. Even though you know, the state is sort of in charge, they've taken over that authority. So it's a really interesting role to be in and I just get to work with some of the top NEPA and CEQA minds and attorneys work on the project, some outside counsel, some that work for the State of California, some with the federal rail administration still has some involvement based on the way some of the statute language they retain authority, for instance, still for like general conformity determinations under the Clean Air Act and still work with them as well. And it's just you can't even I can't even Yeah, we'd have to take another six hours to tell you about all you know, sometimes it's crazy issues that come up on a project of that size and magnitude. So it's absolutely fascinating. Sometimes you want to tear your hair out. There's a lot of politics from you may have heard about the whole project. And the system and is it really going to happen behind schedule and you know, things like that, but it's just so cool to work on it. So I feel very lucky that I get to do that.

Nic 
Yeah, and you're totally right. We could ask you so many more questions about it. But honestly, it just means we have to have you back. We have to have you and ask those questions. Also, which is which will be so so fun for us. And I know, we're out of time here and Laura and I are so thankful for you to be here because it's really great to learn all these awesome things about you. Before we let you go, is there anything else you would like to talk about? And is there a place where people who want to reach out to you can do so?

Michael Smith 
Oh, yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, folks. Can I think we're good. I told you enough stories at least. Like I said, round one, by the way, let's do round two on the train where you guys will come out and go ride on the high speed train.

Laura and Nic
Yeah, yes, done. That would be awesome. So cool.

Michael Smith
That was the inaugural ride, right? Yeah. So to get a hold of me, you can get a hold of me with my work email, which is my name with my middle initial it because if you don't know, and you might heard my name is kind of common. So it's Michael.d, which I won't tell you what that stands for. I'll keep that secretive. But D as in David, which is not my middle name, David. Another D name. So michael.d.smith@wsp.com. And yeah, always happy to talk with people about NEPA and answer questions and like you guys know I don't know the answer, which is often the case or sometimes the case. You know, we had a big network and happy to help people out there and I feel very fortunate thank both of you and NAEP for inviting me. Again. It's so nice to have again by accident ended up in this career and not only working in the field, but also working directly with NAEP and being involved with the board, which has just been a really rewarding experience. So thank you again.

Laura
Awesome.

[Outro]

Nic 
Thank you, Michael. And that's our show. Thank you so much, Michael, for joining us today. A lot of fun, a lot of great stories. We're happy to have you back. So as always everyone please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Do not forget to subscribe, rate and review. See everyone

Laura
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai