Professional Staff

“I enjoy working on renewable energy projects and helping make sure these projects are sustainable with minimal impacts on the environment.”

Rachel Russo is a Project Scientist and has been with Kleinschmidt for 9+ years. Rachel works in the Modeling and GIS Team in the Science, Regulatory and MGIST Group. Her work primarily focuses on FERC relicensing and compliance projects in several resource areas including water resources, fish and aquatic resources, and recreation resources. Her project work includes preparing PAD documents, study planning, conducting field studies, data analysis, and management, GIS analysis, preparing study reports, and helping with license applications for hydroelectric projects.

Rachel has acted as the water quality lead on highlighted FERC Relicensing projects. She performs field work for water quality studies to evaluate compliance with state standards; fish passage studies to assess presence/absence, eelway locations, and fish passage effectiveness; aquatic habitat studies to evaluate habitat suitability for aquatic organisms, and recreation studies to determine use and access to sites. She also prepares sections for NEPA documents, including environmental assessments and environmental impact statements, and analyzes hydrology and project operations data.

Rachel has a Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Science from the University of New Hampshire, a M.S. in Earth and Environmental Science from the University of New Hampshire and a B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.