EPR Live from Anchorage with Anna Kohl, Carolyn Nelson, and Fred Wagner

We’re LIVE from NAEP 2026 in Anchorage! Nic leads a special on-stage episode featuring Anna Kohl, Carolyn Nelson, and Fred Wagner as they dive into Alaska’s unique environmental landscape, NEPA challenges, and the realities of project delivery. With candid insights, legal perspectives, and memorable field stories, this live recording captures the humor, complexity, and energy of environmental work in action.

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

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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 Anna Kohl at https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-kohl-cep-8184159/

Guest Bio:
Anna Kohl was born and raised in Anchorage and left for college before realizing there was much to explore back home. She obtained a BA in Geology from Mount Holyoke College and worked in coffee shops and remediation before landing at HDR Engineering in 2004, where she has been ever since. Anna’s technical background is in the NEPA and impact analysis/environmental science fields, though she currently is the Operations Manager for 150 engineers, planners, scientists, GIS professionals, and other smart folks who make up HDR in Alaska. An active member of NAEP and a Trustee of ABCEP, she obtained a certificate in NEPA from the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment in 2012 and her CEP in 2017.

Connect with Carolyn Nelson at https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-nelson-p-e-02768977/

Guest Bio:
Carolyn Nelson is responsible for providing technical assistance for NEPA compliance and other related environmental laws and Executive Orders as Director of Environmental Analysis & Compliance Division of PHMSA.  Carolyn has over 30 years’ experience as a geometric design engineer and NEPA practitioner.  She was Co-Chair of the White House Interagency Council (IAC), NEPA Committee and is recognized as a national expert for NEPA compliance. Carolyn has worked at Headquarters of the FHWA and also in the FHWA Michigan Division Office. Prior to FHWA, she worked for the Michigan DOT and CH2M Hill (now Jacobs).

Connect with Fred Wagner at https://linkedin.com/in/fred-wagner-59043019

Guest Bio:
Fred Wagner focuses on environmental and natural resources issues concerning major infrastructure, including surface transportation, energy, mining, and commercial project development. Fred advises clients on environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act or equivalent state statutes. He also helps secure permits and approvals from regulators under a variety of federal programs, including Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. Fred provides strategic counseling regarding implementation of the full spectrum of federal environmental programs, as well as U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) surface transportation grant management and safety regulations. 

Prior to joining Jacobs, Fred represented a wide variety of developers, public entities, and businesses in environmental, land use, and natural resources litigation in federal trial and appellate courts across the country, from citizen suits to government enforcement actions and Administration Procedure Act (APA) challenges. Most recently, Fred was counsel of record in the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition NEPA case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

How many of you have listened to at least one EPR live podcast? Cool. Pretty good. Pretty good. OK. Uh, how many have listened to at least 10? Dangerous game OK. So here's your, here's your market growth potential. So, uh, with no further ado, I'm gonna turn it over to half of the normal hosts of our EPR podcast, Nic Frederick, and he is gonna kick it off. So go ahead, Nic.
 All right, uh, Dennis asked me to do this. I don't know if it's work, but here is our theme song as we enter the stage. Sick. Guys, hello, Anchorage. How are we doing? So we're all tired, is that what that is? Is that what that was? Uh, no, thank you very much for being here. Uh, the show is always a joy to do. Um, we have a lot of fun with it, um, and I do have my, my co-host Laura here with me. Um, she looks a little different than I remember, but if she knows how to remember, yeah, she doesn't remember how to use her mic actually is what the. It's not on.

Well, we have 2 mics. So the joy of doing something thing live is that it does, uh, make us improv a little bit, doesn't it? So, uh, we are gonna spend some time with some of our very special guests. We're gonna start and end with Anna Kohl, who many of you have seen. Um, if you like this anyway, she had a huge hand in it, so please give her a round of applause. Thank you. We also have Carolyn Nelson from the uh federal government here to help us answer questions about what we're great at and what we're not, um, and then uh we have Fred Wagner whom many of you know as well, uh, to answer the age-old question, um, what would happen if Gene Wilder was a lawyer?

And without further ado, um, Anna, I do wanna start with you, uh, we're in Alaska for many of us this is a unique and wonderful space, um, but what don't we know about it? When I hear, you know, we're unleashing American energy. Uh, OK, my first thoughts, OK, so Alaska, Alaska comes up almost every time, and in one way, it's this big wild place, and then another way, it's so big, it's hard for us to understand. So why don't we talk about that?

Great, thanks Nic. Um, hi everybody, thanks for thanks for having me on EPR. Um, OK, so I wrote I had to look up some stats because, uh, I had to do a little fact checking of myself and my understanding of Alaska with Wikipedia slash state of Alaska Alaska.gov, very complicated website. So, uh, what you might not know or what you might think you know is that, uh, everything runs on oil and gas. How many people think that's true? No 10122 people think everything around 3, OK, so, uh, our major employer by industry is the oil and gas industry, but that's by dollars. What you might not know is that our major employer by staff is the federal government.

Um, although I don't know when that was updated, it might be different this year than it was a few years ago, but, uh, Alaska, as I hope you know, is the largest state in the union. We are the 49th state. Who knows, Dennis, you're not allowed to answer this. Who knows who the, what, who the 50th state is. Hawaii, right, so like your two outliers or the, the last to the party, but we, we bring game, um, OK, so we have over 225 million acres of federal land which is between 60 and 65% of our state.

If you listen to Becky Win Pearson's, um, keynote yesterday, uh, she described the complexity of land ownership in Alaska. There are some lands that we don't actually. Even know who owns it, so the federal government owns most of it, which also means that we have a huge and outsized influence over environmental policy because we have lots and lots of federal actions in Alaska and therefore we have lots of litigation on those NEPA actions and permit approvals and denials, etc. so, um.

When I first joined NAEP many years ago, my research project slash poster or presentation was about how Alaska really is north to the future because what you all do or what you all used to do, uh, was until NEPA has, you know, recently been changed, uh, was influenced mightily by case law determined for Alaska projects. Do I need to stop? I could go all day, no, keep going, keep going. This is great. That's why you're here. OK, great, um, so I also, you also gave me some, some stats on how big Alaska is, and I, I want, I wanna hear them.

OK, first I have one for Mike. We have more lakes than you. We haven't counted all of our lakes, so we don't know. 10,000 is a rough estimate. Yeah, but no, we're like an order of magnitude. OK, so, um, Alaska is 6 approximately 665,000 square miles. We are, as I said, the largest state in the union. If you take the 2nd largest state in the union, which we're going to next year for the conference, Texas, and then you add the 3rd, California, and you add the 4th, Montana, we're still bigger than those 3 together, that's great, um.

Yeah, we're we're massive we have the most coastline of any state in the rest of the country and I think hopefully there's some hydrologists or someone out there that knows this. I think we might have more coastline than the rest of the United States combined. Anyone wanna fact check me on that? Yeah, yeah, someone said yes, that must be true. OK, please do.

Very good. All right, so I wanna make sure we get uh some of our information from our other panelists too, and we're definitely coming back to Anna, don't worry. But Carolyn. Uh, I still want to talk lakes, so we have to go back to Anna. Um, so Carolyn, um, uh, you're up here, um, you work for the federal government, you have, um, a, a long career, and you've worked with Fred some, so I'm, you know, and now I'm, I'm doing that. So first of all, what advice do you have for me working with Fred, um.

And uh how have you gotten to where you are today? Um, history of me, um, history of me, I basically started in, um, as an, I'm an engineer. I started off actually in design engineering and geometric engineering. And um I was working at the state DOT and you know I tell people a lot of the plans that I designed, beautiful plans, we would lay them out, you do the cross sections, blah blah blah, and then we would get hit by at that time was called the route development, which is Project Development Group or the NEPA Group telling us to move our road because of a bird or a fish or a tree or something else like that or heaven forbid bats and.

I'm like, OK, and then we would move the road based on those parameters and then we'd put it somewhere else and you know, and I tell people basically what really got me into NEPA, which I called it NEPA many, many years ago, this was in the 90s, was we designed a bridge and I'm more of a road, uh, road designer, geometrics though, and we did our approach work and we had to move the entire thing because we were shading fish. And that just floored me. I'm like we're shading a fish, so we have to move our, and it was because of the NEPA thing again.

So, and I know some people are like, well, I was kind of forced into NEPA. I will honestly say I don't know, 30 years later it's something that I chose. I wanted to do it, so I went to the private industry for a while. I worked at Federal Highway with Fred. Fred was our chief counsel there. Um, I was there for close to 20 years and then I moved on to FEEMSA, which is Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. A lot of people don't know what that means at DOT, and we do, you know, pipeline, uh, regulations across the United States. So, uh, very interesting. So I've been with the federal government total for about 25 years.

Very cool. So, so you've worked with a lot of different people. uh, what advice do you have for consultants who are trying to work for the federal government, um, and maybe, uh, staff at the federal government working with consultants? Right now, as one reason that why we're here is understanding NEEPA and really understanding how it applies. Reading the NEPA, you know, the regulations and the law itself is great, but understanding how it applies and how it can be used, I think is crucial and it is critical.

Um, I work a lot with, um, agencies that, you know, now CEs are the big thing. I'm, I'm sure some of you have seen me talk, have presentations about a categorical exclusion, and it's not that the government is trying to make everything a CE, wink wink. But it is more about streamlining the process because the overarching feel for over the past few years is that it's just taken way too long to do NEPA projects and honestly I remember being in the consultant community. I used to work at um CH2M Hill which is now called Jacobs for those that don't remember CH2M Hill, um, and we would have projects for, um, redesigning a roadway that would drag on for about 15 years or as an EIS.

Um, and again, many years ago, however, the whole point is to make sure that you are streamlining your process but you are following NEEPA and you're understanding the case law which defines how we implement NEPA. I love talking to people and they can read everything verbatim of what it means and I. I'm like great, but do you know how to apply it? Do you know what implementation is? I think that's what's really important demonstrating that you can take the words from the page and demonstrate it and and make it so that we can implement it from a federal perspective and that we can help our federal partners, our state partners, our local partners really understand what we're doing and why we're doing it even with categorical exclusions and I won't get into that but it's important to understand.

The proper way to use them and you can use them for major projects but you really need to understand the law well enough to know how to implement it, not just reading the words on the paper.

Yeah, and that's actually, I don't know why that reminded me of this. Do you have any pet peeves? Because one of mine is when I see somebody, it's like, we're gonna utilize this area, and I'm like, you could just use it, you know, it's fine. You don't have to seem smart, and that's always a tough one for me. I don't know. Do you have anything like that?

Well, for me, I, again, starting at Federal Highway and, and I, I will honestly say, um, when I was at FHWA I really felt like our environmental program was, was pretty much a well-oiled machine. So going to an agency that did not have an environmental program, I actually started and my team is back there, Fpi and, and the rest of my team. Um, shout out to them. They've been with me since I started it. They would say, Well, Carolyn, we need to do a Fonzie for this project. Oh no, you don't. It would just drive me crazy.

You, you, you need to do an environmental review. No, Carolyn, I need you to do a Fonzie. OK, that's just not right, so you, you're, you're bypassing a, a ton of stuff that you need to do, but that's part of people kind of understanding NEPA but not really understanding it. And that's why I even threw myself in that years ago because I called it NEPA. And as a designer, as an engineer that used to do design, geometric design, my main thought was there comes those route location people again. What now? A bird, fish. What you know, a bat grass, what do we have to move now?

You guys are getting on our nerves because you don't understand the process and that's why I think it's very important, you know, like, so a pet peeve of mine was, yeah, we need to do a Fonzie for this action. How do you, how do you feel about issuing or, or requests for NEPA permits?

That was a setup. didn't. I don't know why he did that to you.

Hey, hey, Nic, can, can we talk about the, the most pressing issue that we haven't talked about yet? Sure. It is the most pressing issue. What is up with the movie Hoppers? Have you've seen, have you seen the animated movie Hoppers? It is the story of you. It is all about environmental consultants. You haven't seen it yet. It's an animated movie and it's about this little girl who protests the building of a highway because it's gonna take.

The Glade, the Glade, a bog, and it's gonna interfere with all the animals and it's all about our work and I think we should have a field trip to go see this movie Hoppers. If you have a child. You must take them to see this movie Hoppers because you can then explain to them what you do. Cause it is, that is what the movie's about and it's, it made me feel terrible and you terrible because the, the enemy was the highway. It was, it, it was extending a highway, and this is an actual quote from the movie.

Actual quote from the movie where they said, um, the mayor says, I'm so flat, we're gonna connect this beltway around our state and drivers are gonna say 4 minutes, which is of course what we said all the time, the Federal Highway Administration, but we were gonna take the Glade, we were gonna take the Glade, and of course the premise of the movie is that the animals come to life. And they talk and it's, and it's wonderful. So I think next year we get the director of the movie Hoppers to present to us and make us feel better about our profession because it's a little issue.

The Alaska thing also pisses me off too because.

Tell us how you really feel, Fred.

I grew up in New York. All right. I, I grew up in New York and I know for a fact that Alaska is in this little box just below Arizona. Yeah, yeah. And, and it looks really small. So when you're like rattling off these things, I know for a fact that Manhattan has to be at least 3 times bigger than Alaska. So I'm just telling you from me.

Who, who here is shocked that Fred is from New York? Not a single hand raise.

I have a stat that'll make you feel better or a number 737,000. That's how many people are in Alaska, which is much smaller than the number of people who live in Manhattan. Yeah, Brooklyn there you go.

But it's funny, like you were talking about highways, and I, you know, Fred and I live in the, the DC area, right? One of my favorite things is when you see a study and they're like, well, the traffic's already terrible. It's only gonna get a little more terrible. Uh, we do this fun thing where it's like, well, we have a scale. It's 59 still an F, but it's an F. We're just gonna say it's an F, so 59, 0. There's a difference. There is a difference, but I love that we do that.

Well, but the, the, the, well, I gotta answer this question, and I'm gonna let you go, Mr. New York, uh, regulations. I gotta say that this is just, this is my plug for us, uh, this is my plug for us NEPA people. It's not NEPA that's causing the problem, it's the regulatory permits that we have to get. Not the actual NEA process.

Yeah, no, I would, I would totally agree with that. I also would suggest that, um, in the past, right, the NEPA process started when you wanted to start developing a project rather than having a well-developed project and then starting the NEA process. So yeah, NEA process started lasted 15 years because you didn't know what you're gonna do on day one and you're still figuring it out, right? And so.

So it's a, it's a hard metric to go by because it's just the evolution of trying to come up with a proposed action description. So you should start the NEA process at that point rather than, you know, having a, and, and I think part of it, and I could be quoting this wrong, was like the, the regs initially were like, if you think you're gonna do something, issue a notice of intent to do something. And it was almost like, You know, getting advice like, well, you guys are planning to do something, so issue a notice of intent, but like, we don't know what we're going to do yet. We just generally have an idea. And so I think that is now going the other way, right? Um, in terms of timing and, and when you issue notices of intents and those types of things.

Well, they definitely didn't do Nipah in hoppers.

Yeah, they definitely didn't do that, but it's a happy ending because they come up with an alternative. I'm spoiling it. It's a.

All right. They do. They they, they do an alternatives analysis on the highway.

Do they really?

They do. That is incredible. It's in the movie. You think I'm making this up. The movie is about our jobs. If we see this movie and it's not good, I'm gonna have to come back. It's wonderful. Yeah.

Who who saw the movie? Who has kids? Who has kids? Who doesn't have kids and saw the movie? That's the question. Yeah, there we go. Two thumbs up from the two people who saw the movie.

Well, Fred, I mean, uh, now that you're here, we might as well roll on. Uh, so you, you, um, you were a lawyer before?

I was a, I, I was a lawyer.

Oh wow. So, so, so what are you now?

Uh, I am a reformed lawyer.

Oh, an ex-lawyer.

I am not a consultant. I am not, I don't even know how to pronounce it, but no, I, I'm an ex-lawyer, a reformed.

So how has the transition?

It's been great. Um, one thing about the consultant, you guys have really screwed me over. I thought I was leaving time sheets behind. You know, the, the law firm life and writing down time. There was, somebody said, oh, don't worry about time sheets, but no, no. Not only do I have to worry about time sheets, but you know what, the codes that you enter.

To fill in the time sheets are 4 times as long as the codes we enter at law firms. So like I had 6 numbers and I can memorize 6 numbers. I cannot memorize 8 numbers and then a task code which is a combination of 8 letters plus numbers plus punctuation. I am not happy. And, and, and so, and so I used to have a little cheat sheet and I remembered all the numbers. I didn't even have to think about it. And now I just like open up the last week's time sheet over and over and over again because like I don't want to remember the numbers, which is getting stupid because my last, I have now a time sheet that's 30 numbers.

and I have to figure out which one and the and the bar doesn't get long enough to get to the numbers. So it's very inefficient and I need a separate billing code for filling out my time sheets. So besides that, I'm liking it.

Can I, can I suggest Microsoft Note.

What's that as a place to put all those codes and then you can just cut and paste them.

Cut and paste right into your time sheet. I'm a lawyer.

Cut and paste?

Well, you can analyze it too as you're cutting and pasting to make sure it's, you know, I can analyze it too.

I have a question for you though. Um, so the transition, first, like, you weren't billing every 6 minutes when you were in practice.

Every 6 minutes.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyway, um, as now, uh, this conversation just cost you $600. 0, no.

So, as a now reformed non-practicing attorney, right? Um, how have you navigated that fine line of, I'm, I'm guessing it's hard, right? Because you're an attorney, you, you know how to be an attorney and then provide legal advice, um, but you're not an attorney necessarily for who you work for now, right? Or the clients that hire you. And so how do you walk that line of providing sufficient information to them to make decisions, but not practicing law?

First thing is I have a, uh, like a big medallion, kind of like the wrappers. And I walk into the room, he says, I am not a lawyer. So that's the first thing. So people see that when they meet me, they know I'm not there.

Um, but, you know, the, the thing is that regulatory advice and strategic advice isn't necessarily legal advice. So that's the first thing. You know, and so the one thing that I did as a lawyer, as Carolyn remembers, I was also the ethics officer at FHWA and so one of the, you know, being serious for a moment, is, is one of the things that I'm actually kind of good at is understanding the lines about what's legal advice, what's not, what's practicing law without a license, and the best part is not only do I know the rules, but now I can impart those rules onto.

My colleagues, my biologists and cultural resources people and air modelers, so they're not practicing law without a license, and so it's just an awareness of, you know, presenting strategy but not a legal opinion, just presenting risk but not advice on how to, you know, present a case in court. And the other great thing after practicing for 40 years is that I know a bunch of great lawyers and it's easy for me to point people in that direction.

So that's the thing. I, I mean, I think one of the things I wanted to raise with this group and uh it's a serious reflection, which is what I've learned in making the switch is what the law is good at and what the law is not good at. And I've, I've had a lot of, you know, great, uh, experiences in the Supreme Court and otherwise, and, you know, I, I, I'd like to say that the law works and the law works most of the time, but there's instances where it does not, and I think in the environmental arena, and I'd love to hear the people's reactions to this is that I think the law has failed.

Not only has the law failed, but the law has created an environment in which the hostility to environmentalism has been fostered and encouraged. Why do I say that? Think for a moment about a lot of the cases that you read about in the paper where a group of children are bringing litigation about climate change or where there are state, uh, cases where they're trying to talk about constitutional rights as a right to a clean environment also dealing with, with climate change.

And a lot of these cases have been going on and on and on. They're going back and forth, up and down inside the courts, and this administration is now trying to intervene in some of those cases, trying to cut them off at the knees. You know, my position is whether you agree or not with the premise of the claims, is that the best way to promote the values and the results that we want to see in the environmental space.

Even if the kids win. Hands down. You win. There's, there's tort damages owed to you by big company XYZ because they weren't true about, is, is that where we wanna go? Is that the remedy? Is that the thing that we want? And one of the things that I love about this profession is that we can rightly focus on environmental outcomes directly.

On a project in the real world. 4 hoppers, we can move the highway. You know what I mean? And, and the, the, the legal case might have resulted in that or might not have. It just might have resulted in more paperwork. And then if you translate that to NEPA.

I think the premise of what we're seeing in a lot of the cases leading up to Seven County was that there was so much litigation, so many challenges that even in the Supreme Court, Justice Kavanaugh writes it has become the way to deal with projects and to raise objections instead of where it should be done through legislation, through the public discourse, through policy, not on a project by project basis.

So having stepped away now for a year, it's been unbelievable. It's been more than a year, Mike, and one of the things that strikes me is that I'm learning to accept more the limitations of the law for the things that we do, and I'm learning to appreciate more the benefits of what we do and what we could add to the outcomes that we really want and, and frankly, that's making me the happiest I've ever been.

Because I'm less worried about the fight. I'm less worried about the, the case. I'm less worried about the claims, and I'm more worried about the outcomes. And if I could do that for the rest of my working career, I'm gonna be one happy dude.

One of is this thing, um, I think one of the things you say, I don't know that the law has failed us as NEPA professionals, but I do think it can make things more confusing for those of us that don't speak the, the law legal language. I think in the next few years, uh, which is always important now, if the, the case law sessions that, um, for those of you that are, are familiar with TRB, which I'm always at.

Uh, NAEP, they are always the most impactful sessions that you have. They are packed, um, and they're going to get more so over the next few years, I think, because all of these decisions that are coming out. It's hard to NEPA is based on a law, and one of the things that all of the, the, the case law sessions have provided me from NAEP to TRB is that breakdown understanding of how does this apply to what I actually need to do in NEPA, not what I do, but what I need to do.

I always say and I tell my team that our role as professionals is to, um. Make sure that if we are litigated at our agency on a federal perspective, I mean, Federal Highway got sued every other day, but our job is to make sure that it can be defended in court. I don't need to understand legal, legalese. If I start talking to it, you guys will run me out of the room, but I need to understand how to make it sound, and I think that's what's important. That's what Fred helped us, as you can see, he's quite opinionated.

But he's very helpful in helping you understand literally what does all that jargon mean for us. My thing, and I'm gonna hear from you, I'm gonna hear from you guys is that I don't think that's the point. The point isn't to do something in a way that's defensible. The point is to do something in a way that's better and, and, and what my point is, uh, with, with all the litigation we became so focused on defensibility of the process itself that we lost track of the projects underlying the process and that's what I think Kavanaugh was saying in his in his ruling we, it's a pro.

Procedural statute he wasn't minimizing that he didn't mean that as an insult. Oh, you're just procedural. What he meant was it's a process to lead to the decision, not the decision itself, and I think defensibility overwhelmed the things that we needed to do. I mean, I, I think that, you know, we strive for environmental excellence in the analysis we do as environmental professionals, right? That's what we strive for.

What we have to make sure we Conclude with though, as much as we can in terms of excellence, we have to make sure at a minimum, it's defensible. Hello, I think I apparently I just got a. I think that Continue to strive for excellence with making sure because until, you know, uh, laws change and, and that process changes, we still have to make it defensible, uh, for our clients, right? But I have to make it excellent too.

Well, we've heard a lot. I've heard a lot today, um, and yesterday about uncertainty and what's happening in the federal space and how that's trickling down to agencies and to our projects and our clients and applicants, etc. and to me the, to your point, Fred, um, it, it shouldn't be about being legally defensible although we write that in scopes of work all the time, right? We will not get you a NEPA.

Uh, but we will work to provide legally defensible environmental documents to guide you through the NEPA process. But what our clients are asking for and what we really want is consistency and certainty of the process regardless of what the outcome is. The, the, the outcome is doesn't have anything to do with me. The outcome is an inherently federal action, right? Permit it. Don't permit it. See if it is within your jurisdiction, right? That is none of my business as a consultant, um.

Well it's my job to make sure that that decision maker has all of the tools and the information that they need to make that informed decision and to avoid getting litigated because that is the only avenue under the act, not a law, I think, um, like NEPA doesn't have any teeth, so violation of of the APA or you know you didn't do enough on this, you didn't study this, you didn't use the right data on this, those are the pieces that.

NEPA can be sued under and so as consultants it's kind of like we'll guide you through the forest and then what you do when you go out the other side that's up to you.

I 100% agree that should be how NEPA is because the thing that we say even from the federal perspective. And this is gonna sound crazy. I feel like I need to cover my pen. We don't care about the outcome. We care about you doing the, the process, making sure that it's right, but you're doing the right thing.

That's why I say understanding what needs to be done is so much more important than. The other stuff that I think that we're looking at, I think understanding what NEPA is, I think it's just gonna be a, a, a big thing for the next generation, this generation, because I think right now we're just going through a legal. Uh, up and down whack a mole process, my personal thought process, but eventually it will settle down and you do need to have those practitioners and those consultants that actually understand what this is about.

We're, we're, like you said, leading you through the forest. I mean, beautiful analogy there.

Yeah, and I, it's, I love there's a project I remember working on. Uh, where we get the design of the project and it's a car wash, right? They're building a car wash, and they're over top of a, a river or a stream that connects to a navigable waterway, and we're like, are you sure you wanna do that? They're like, yeah, cause it just because it washed right into the stream. Isn't that convenient? I thought you said that the conveyor belt put the cars into the stream. They're like, yeah, we just spray the oil right in, right in the stream. No, no big deal. I don't see what the issue is.

And we're like, maybe just a little further back, maybe just a little further back, right? And that's the job sometimes and as amusing as it is, you know, I, I, we've all had experience like that, or it's like, why does the tribe in Oklahoma care about what's going on on the East Coast? A real question asked to me. And you're like, well, they didn't used to be there. You know, here's a history book and there you go. But that's the job sometimes you don't want it to be, but it is.

So I don't know. I mean, I guess, uh, we're, we're you're getting closer to the end and we do have to make sure that we get, oh, I, I have a question that we don't have time to answer because this is, this is a big debate in Alaska. So just be warned. So we have 60 to 65% federal land in this state, which means it belongs to all of us, right? So how much weight should people who do not live in Alaska. Have over decisions that the federal government makes over Alaska's projects.

New Yorkers should have more say because we need our locks on Sunday morning when we get our bagels and so I think, I think that carries a lot of weight, lots of weight, a lot of weight. Blocks away.

Last time I received um lox from Zabar's from New York City, it was Atlantic salmon, which is verboten in Alaska and not even an oncorinus. It's a different species of fish. It's not a salmon.

OK, just, just, just sprinkle some capers on top of it, you.

Oh man, no, that's a great, I, I, I think maybe. Uh, this is the whole point of doing the show. This is why, why I love it.

Go ahead, Jen.

Oh yeah, that's right. The, the, the, the lakes, yeah, um, so sticking with the, the film kind of, uh, discussion, and I, I kind of think Hopper is a remake of Ferngully if what I'm hearing is right. So just saying, uh, I also just dated myself because half the audience doesn't know what I'm talking about. Um, anyway, so.

I have, I'm hoping you can say this and others out loud on the record, so that when I say it again, people will think it's right this time. But oftentimes, lately, we're working with some agency folks, and they're saying, well, we need to schedule for NEPA. Like, OK, well, why don't we assume we're doing an EIS go we'll schedule it out that way. Well, we can't assume we're doing an EIS because that'd be predecisional. Fred laughed. He snorted a little bit.

And so, I say, well, that's not actually what that means. And I, I just think of Indigo Montoya from The Princess Bride talking to Vasini, saying, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. It's inconceivable. Inconceivable. Exactly. And so, Fred, others, what do you, do you think that choosing an IA pathway, uh, is making a predecisional determination?

You wanna start? Yeah, Caroline, I said, do you want to start being a federal employee? She says, I don't want to be on the stage right now. I, I don't want to even think about that. Yeah, yeah, no, look, um, it, it, it should not be. It should not be.

The, the, the whole point of establishing your parameters for scheduling and whatnot is built in. To the framework of permitting counsel and the dashboard and things like that and each time that you go through some of those major thresholds of decisions, you know, that that's just one little decision is part of the overall thing and there's a thing in the law, uh, I'm still a former lawyer, but it's called finality.

You know, and, and it's just that you, you can't count on each one of those things as being a predecisional document, otherwise, you know, it would get stuck in the mud. I think what you're hearing and what Carolyn is thinking, but she can't say is, is that, that the federal government, you know, wants to do an EIS these days just like you and me wanna go get a root canal.

And so what are the ways to, to get around that? Thinking positive for a minute, Mike, one way to get it if you, if you're doing Fonzies is mitigated Fonzies. You're coming up with better outcomes, you're identifying resources, you're trying to reduce a significant uh impact, and that's a good thing.

The, the cynical view of looking at it is we're gonna squeeze it into a definition for something else no matter what, uh, just because we prefer 1 year to 2 years or, you know.

So, no, it's not, and I, I think what we're.

Yeah, and what we're hearing and what we're hearing from folks, I think is just the predilection to try to do the lower classes of action and then take it from there. So I think that's just an inarticulate way of saying that's what we've been told to do.

Yeah, well, I would say, um, I love that Mike was like, here's an old movie. Now let me reference an even older movie. That's what I, that's what I like about that.

So we are close to time and I do, first of all, thank you again for being here. Uh, but we do a part of the show where we love to hear field stories, and we have to end with a story from Anna about Alaska working in the field. Is that fair? All right, let's hear it, let's hear it. What's, what's my time? 5 minutes. Is that OK? Yeah, that's a safe one.

OK, this one we'll try this one. OK, so this is, this is kind of on Dennis's theme earlier of you can go to the ABSE CEP free drink hint hint thing across the street at the Blarney Stone at 4:30 to learn about the CEP certified Environmental Professional Program, and then you can go straight back over here for the emerging environmental professional mixer.

So for those of you that haven't been practicing NEPA. Or regulatory implementation for long and are kind of wondering what is this world of that I might be getting myself into. I wanted to share a story of um kind of the two ends of my, the two bookends so far in my environmental professional career, um, so I grew up here about 1 mile that way and I couldn't wait to leave and uh.

I just thought Alaska doesn't have anything for me, you know, I don't have a car and I don't have any money and what do I wanna go do? hike in the mountains? It's boring.

And so, um, my mom had lived in New York City for, I don't know, 10 years in the 60s and she had a lot of friends who still lived there and she worked for Time magazine and so when we would go back to New York and visit, you know, we would get. Tickets, free tickets to go see Cats, and we would get behind the scenes tours at the MoMA and we would stay in these fabulous apartments that like overlooked Central Park and I mean it was like if you've seen Friends you hopefully know that that is a fictional apartment, right?

So when I was growing up I thought like well this is what living in New York City is all about, right? Is living is doing this thing. All the time and so I had this vision that I was going to live on the East Coast. I went to college in Massachusetts and uh I got a geology degree and it was through that process that I realized oh Alaska is pretty cool and there's a lot that I would like to learn about Alaska and why didn't I bother learning any of it when I was growing up there.

Kind of that you know you don't know what you've got till you've gone kind of thing so I came back after graduation and lo and behold a undergraduate degree in geology that's a bachelor of Arts uh doesn't get you a job in the geological field um and so I waitressed for a year and then I got a job con uh sampling contaminated sites.

So soil and groundwater sampling, um, you know, environmental geologist one. I was very excited and I got to travel all over this great state to sample diesel tank farms. I went to a lot of airports and never left the airport property, um, but I had, I did that for about 3 years and, and I was, uh, I was sample.

I was in, let's see. I was outside of Dillingham. What is that? Tionic? Where, no, where do you jump off to go to Hitchinbrook Island? Somebody here knows that. What's that little tiny town? Anyway, it was a, I was at a cannery, a fish processing plant, and uh I was underneath the eggplant, which is where they strip the roe from the female fish and they send all the guts, you know, out a chute that literally is just a pipe underneath the building and the tide comes up and, you know, washes most.

of it away or maybe not most of it. I'm underneath and the pipe is like right next to my head and uh and I had this hand auger and I'm like trying to sample this muck underneath this eggplant and I just thought there's got to be more to life than this. I want a job that I am passionate about and is interesting and takes me to different places, not for these kinds of experiences but for something else and uh and shortly thereafter I decided to, you know, take the risk and I cold call.

Called uh someone I knew who worked at a consulting firm that I knew did this NEPA thing and I didn't know what NEPA was but that it always included some kind of hazmat analysis so we had the firm I was working for had done some work for this larger firm.

And I, uh, I went in and I, I talked to a couple of people who have now retired and, uh, and at the end of the conversation, uh, my contact said, well, we've have never gotten anyone in before who is curious about NEPA so. Let me know when you want a job.

And uh about 6 years later um after having joined that firm HDR I actually got paid this is legit. To go on a privately guided float trip down the Kenai River for Federal Highway Administration with their Washington DC attorney, um, because the Seward Highway milepost 45 to 60 project which you might have learned about in the wildlife crossings presentation earlier today.

Uh, the Kenai River is a state recreation area. It's also a, uh, protected management area. It has world class salmon and trout fishing. It is an archaeological district in the entire river area, um, up to 1000 ft elevation. I mean, you name it, it's got it. This project had everything.

And so in order for the decision maker, the Federal Highway Administration, to understand. The value of the recreation in this area, this is what they said they needed to experience it and so we spent two days floating down this river and I just remember kind of like kicking back on that raft and watching the, the eagles and the fish and it was amazing and just thinking, yeah I made, I made the right choice. This is this is where I wanna be.

There you go thank you, thank you. So that's how you do it. That's how you do it. OK.

All right. Well, again, thank you everybody for being here. Thank you for coming to the conference. This is always a pleasure and a joy. Enjoy the rest of it. Go hang out, make more friends. We'll see you later. Thank you.