Key Staff

NANCY SCOTT- Principal Scientist
The Earth Resources Team’s project manager, Nancy Scott, has more than 30 years experience supporting public agencies, and Ms. Scott is the President of Earth Resources, Inc. based in Tampa, Florida. She has managed all aspects of environmental projects including coordinating teams of multi-disciplinary professionals. Ms. Scott supports all aspects of client management and is involved with marketing, strategic planning, contracting, management and project development activities. She has a demonstrated ability to identify and troubleshoot critical issues. She is also responsible for coordinating the staffing and workload of the project staff. She frequently manages multiple projects and personnel. Her extensive experience includes long term wetland health assessments and monitoring, state and federal environmental permitting, protected species surveys and permitting, wetland delineation, UMAM, preparation of NEPA documents. She has diverse professional experience with interests in wildlife ecology, permitting and wetlands ecology.

Ms. Scott has experience working in both the public and private sectors. She has built excellent relationships with regulatory staff, scientists and engineers that increase the potential for successful collaborations.

She worked at the Southwest Florida Water Management District in the Resource Regulation Department where she was responsible for approving jurisdictional lines and reviewing projects for conformance with the Environmental Resource Permit regulations. Her tenure at SWFWMD gives her a unique insight into the permitting process. She is an expert in both the State of Florida wetland delineation method and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Regional Supplement.

MICHELLE RUTISHAUSER – Chief Scientist/NEPA Lead

Michelle Rutishauser is a Chief Scientist with 20 years of experience in environmental consulting and has spent the last 10 years of her career managing complex PD&E Studies and environmental contracts, which included preparation of task work orders, scope and staff hour estimates, and invoicing. Michelle’s PD&E project management experience includes completing National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents including Environmental Impact Statements (EIS), Type 2 Categorical Exclusion (Type 2 CE), and Type 1 CEs as well as state and local documents including State Environmental Impact Reports (SEIR), Project Environmental Impact Reports (PEIR), and Non-Major State Actions (NMSA). Ms. Rutishauser’s experience also includes completing re-evaluations for major design-bid-build and design-build state and federally projects. Additionally, Michelle has extensive experience in state and federal environmental permitting, threatened and endangered species surveys and relocations, Section 7 consultations, jurisdictional wetland and sea grass delineations, Section 4(f) coordination, wetland mitigation design and monitoring, and GIS analysis including habitat mapping, spatial editing, and aerial photo interpretation.

MELISA REITER – Chief Scientist
Ms. Reiter is a Chief Scientist with Earth Resources, Inc. based in Tampa, Florida. She has more than 31 years of experience in marine, terrestrial, vegetative, and aquatic ecology. Her specialized expertise includes regulatory permitting; marine studies; habitat assessment and evaluation, water quality studies; seagrass mapping; aerial photo-interpretation; land use mapping; ecological assessments; threatened and endangered species studies; and wetland mitigation design and monitoring. Her regulatory experience includes marine-related projects for docks and large-scale marinas, seagrass assessment and coral reef monitoring. State and federal regulatory permitting experience includes roadway and pipeline corridors, large-scale subdivision permitting, and project development and environment (PD&E) and habitat restoration studies. Components of these projects involve field sampling and agency coordination. Melisa has extensive expertise with permitting and coordinating with FDEP, SWFWMD, ACOE, USFWS, NMFS as well as other local, state, and federal agencies. She is proficient with all major environmental regulations and policies as well as state and local level regulations. Her permitting expertise includes marine-related projects including single-family home docks, canal dredge projects, large-scale marinas, seagrass mapping and assessments, and coral reef natural resource damage assessments.