Municipal Water Law Policy (POL-2030) Update With Dan Haller and Austin Melcher
Municipal Water Law Policy (POL-2030) Update With Dan Haller and Austin Melcher
In this video, Dan Haller and Austin Melcher discuss the latest issues in Washington Water Law during the 2024 Water Law in Washington Conference, hosted by Law Seminars International. The video was recorded by Law Seminars International.
About Dan Haller, PE, CWRE:
Dan Haller of Aspect Consulting, a Geosyntec company, is a Senior Principal Water Resources Engineer based in Washington with more than 25 years of experience focused on water rights, water-system and watershed planning, water-system design, and water banking across the western United States.
Public agencies and private partners turn to Dan to convert their water savings into multi-million-dollar assets while meeting both instream and out-of-stream project objectives. With fluency in Washington’s water code and expertise in many other western states, Dan helps clients effectively manage their water-rights portfolios. He has worked on Washington’s largest water banks and water-right transfers in the last 20 years, including for state (Lake Roosevelt, Sullivan Lake), industry (Transalta), county government (Kittitas, Chelan, Spokane), and agriculture clients (Auvil Fruit, Selah-Moxee Irrigation District).
Government agencies, tribes, and private stakeholders trust Dan to apply his technical expertise to facilitate and lead large multidisciplinary watershed planning projects. Key watershed planning and infrastructure projects include the Icicle Strategy (Chelan County), Walla Walla 2050 (Washington), and the Little Spokane Watershed Restoration Plan (Spokane County). Dan is also the regional lead for environmental impact statement development, having led such work for a range of storage, watershed recovery, and private development projects.
Dan is a recognized Washington water rights expert at the forefront of innovation in the state’s water resources arena, advancing multiple initiatives for water-bank formation, water audits, and water auctions. He is a sought-after speaker at law and engineering conferences. Dan shares his knowledge in this growing field by mentoring junior practitioners to support them as they strengthen their technical and consultancy skills.
About Austin Melcher:
Austin works on water planning and policy in the Water Resources program at the Washington State Department of Ecology's Northwest Regional Office. He supports the Skagit River Water Supply investigating water supply and demand and developing innovative policies, mitigation strategies, and projects to support streamflow restoration and water supplies. Additionally, he administers grants and manages projects to support streamflow restoration and salmon recovery in Northwest Washington.
He graduated with a Master’s from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management where he was a Walton Family Foundation Sustainable Water Markets Fellow investigating the use of market mechanisms to create ecological water quantity and quality benefits. Additionally, Austin was an Imagine H2O Water Policy Fellow and developed a strategic policy plan for promoting water efficiency trading and offset programs to meet the sustainability goals of both California and local communities. He also worked as a Clean Water Fellow at Willamette Partnership in Portland, Oregon developing technical tools for floodplain restoration and water quality credit systems, quantifying water quality benefits from urban natural infrastructure projects, and evaluating water utility workforce issues in the Pacific Northwest.
Prior to coming to the Bren School Austin worked for over five years as an environmental consultant providing planning, analysis, and permitting expertise on recycled water programs, seawater desalination plants, renewable energy projects, and conservation plans throughout California. He graduated from Michigan State University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering where he worked on water supply and renewable energy community engagement projects on four different study abroad programs and at the Institute of Water Research at Michigan State University.
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