Staff Qualifications

Kamie Loeser Senior Planner
Kamie has over 17 years of experience working in the environmental field, focused primarily on land use planning and CEQA/NEPA documentation, including the preparation of large scale environmental impact reports for specific plans, planned unit developments, water use and efficiency projects and utility and infrastructure projects. Having worked as a Senior Planner for other consulting firms, Ms. Loeser has developed unique methods for developing collaboration, managing staff, and maintaining the administrative record of each project. In addition, Ms. Loeser has experience managing projects using Axium’s Ajera and Deltek Vision software, specifically developed for accounting, budgeting, scheduling, and all aspects of project and business management. Part of Ms. Loeser’s approach to project management is to establish a project team contact list that identifies roles and responsibilities, and a communication protocol that provides guidance on the exchange of information for the duration of a project.

Christy Dawson Senior Regulatory Biologist
Christy has over 7 years of professional experience in natural resource management and regulatory compliance. She specializes in Endangered Species Act Compliance, Clean Water Act compliance and permitting, and mitigation planning. Ms. Dawson has been responsible for several large public and private development projects throughout northern California. Ms. Dawson manages sub-consultants, staff, data collection, budgets, and regularly meets with clients to communicate project progress. Ms. Dawson works closely with applicants, the USFWS, CDFG, and COE, to design projects that avoid impacts to the greatest extent possible while still maintaining economic feasibility and meeting local, state, and federal requirements. Ms. Dawson has worked closely with Caltrans, Federal Highways, and local entities in the preparation of single and multi-species Natural Environmental Studies, Biological Assessments and Preliminary Environmental Reviews for projects in Butte, Yolo, Shasta, Plumas, and Nevada Counties for bridge replacement, road widening, and road improvement projects.

Trish Ladd Regulatory Biologist
Trish has over 5 years of experience working in northern California conducting wetland delineations, biological resource assessments, biological assessments, vernal pool restoration monitoring, construction site monitoring, wildlife surveys including raptor surveys, giant garter snake surveys, western pond turtle, elderberry surveys and swallow exclusion. Under federal permit TE-54667A, Ms. Ladd is also permitted to survey for local, federally listed vernal pool invertebrates. She has also completed a bat ecology and field techniques workshop, as well as attended a workshop tailored to the current 2009 survey techniques for the California tiger salamander, California red-legged frog and the western pond turtle. Ms. Ladd has also conducted habitat assessments for the California red-legged frog within the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. In addition to conducting numerous wildlife surveys and construction site monitoring, Ms. Ladd is also actively involved in the preparation of environmental documents including: Delineation of Waters of the U.S., Biological Resource Assessments, Biological Assessments, Vegetation Management Plans and Biological Study Letters. She is also responsible for permit facilitation related to the California Department of Fish and Game Streambed Alteration Agreements (section 1600), Central Valley Flood Protection Board Encroachment permits, and sections 401 and 404 of the Clean Water Act.

Elena Gregg Botanist
Elena has over 8 years experience conducting botanical/rare plant surveys, wetland delineations, oak tree surveys, and valley elderberry longhorn beetle surveys. She has also classified and mapped habitat for the U.S. Forest Service. Ms. Gregg has acquired extensive knowledge of greenhouse management and exotic and native plant maintenance and identification through her many years working for the U.C. Davis Botanical Conservatory. Her areas of expertise include general botanical surveys, floristic inventories, plant identification, rare plant surveys, and wetland delineations. Mrs. Gregg is routinely called upon by agencies, mitigation banks, and private landowners to determine presence/absence of rare plants such as Butte County Meadowfoam. Mrs. Gregg has developed our internal cataloging and voucher specimen procedures and has working knowledge of the CDFG, USFWS, and CNPS survey protocols.

Peter Hansen GIS Technician
Peter has 6 years of experience working in Northern California performing GIS driven map production and analyses for various planning and environmental surveying and reporting projects. He works primarily with ESRI ArcGIS 9.3.1, ArcCatalog, Trimble GeoXH, TerraSync, and multiple ESRI extensions including Network Analyst and Spatial Analyst. He leverages field primary source GPS data, surveyor’s field notes, AutoCAD, government produced data, and assorted base data to produce maps in PDF format. He has the ability to create and edit geodatabases, shapefiles, geographically-referenced rasters, and export ESRI shapefiles to AutoCAD formats. Mr. Hansen has work experience with spatially-enabled queryable databases with web-based front end interfaces. He can utilize Google Earth/Google Maps JavaScript and KML languages for web display. He recently obtained ESRI certification for ArcGIS Server management and its Flash, JavaScript, and Silverlight APIs. Environmental mapping efforts include: maps and quantification for rare plant surveys, threatened and endangered species surveys, arborist reports with raster based remote sensing efforts, impact maps for sections 401 and 404 of the Clean Water Act, CDFG 1600 permits, habitat mapping, restoration maps, resource inventory, wetland delineation per USACE guidelines, and cultural survey reports.

 

Christina Winkle Planner
Christina has 20 years of experience working in the field of planning for both the public and private sectors. Her experience with the Nevada County Community Development Agency required her to perform the following job duties; land use entitlement review, process and issuance of land use permits and entitlements, research land use data and information, attend public hearings, construction plan review, attend contractor associated meeting, create public handouts and forms regarding County regulations, supervision, update agencies maps and documents. While working for NorthStar Environmental Ms. Winkle prepares property assessments and warranty reports, performs land use entitlements, title searches, consistency reviews, and marketing as her primary job duties. She has had experience processing annexation requests through LAFCO, Butte County, for both Subdivision maps and Lot Line Adjustments. She does initial research on proposed projects and once obtained, develops project applications for submittal to local jurisdictions. She is in constant contact with local authorities for updates and changes to codes, ordinances, fees and other regulatory requirements.