The Puget Sound Institute is pleased to welcome Nicole Faghin as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Urban Waters. Faghin serves as a Coastal Management Specialist at Washington Sea Grant, and will act as a bridge between the two organizations, strengthening and developing potentials for collaboration. She will also coordinate the third National Working Waterfronts and Waterways Symposium in Tacoma scheduled for March 25 – 28, 2013, which is co-sponsored by the Center for Urban Waters.
At Sea Grant, Faghin oversees the Green Shores for Homes project, an effort funded by the Environmental Protection Agency to develop an incentive program for development of “green” or soft shore shorelines as an alternative to bulkheads. Nicole has been involved in the Green Shores for Homes project from the start and very involved in coastal and shoreline issues in Washington for many years. She will work part time at the Seattle Sea Grant office and part time at the Center for Urban Waters.
Ms. Faghin is a trained land use and environmental planner and lawyer specializing in coastal zone management and waterfront planning issues. She has been a project manager for a wide variety of complex land use planning and development projects for ports, industrial, commercial and municipal clients, with her primary focus on the shoreline arena while at Reid Middleton and AECOM. She is a trained facilitator in Coastal Resiliency and Sea Level Rise and frequently lectures on these issues, receiving training from the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center at the University of Hawaii. She has prepared land use plans, feasibility studies, secures local, state and federal permits and provides advice for her clients on a wide range of land use and environmental issues associated with shorelines.
In addition to planning experience, Ms. Faghin practiced law in the field of land use, environmental and real estate development and is trained as a land use mediator. Nicole received her Masters in Urban Planning from MIT and her law degree from Northeastern University.