At Friday’s Sustainability committee meeting, the new Director of Environmental affairs, Beth Evans, was introduced.
This week Ms Evans took over for Pat Sesto, who retired at the end of 2022, having started in 2015 as the town’s Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Director and then become Director of Environmental Affairs when the job of Conservation Director was folded in.
Previously Ms Evans ran Evans Associates, which she founded in 1988. She holds a Masters in Regional Planning and a Masters of Science in Geology from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Biology from Cornell.
“I am a wetlands scientist, field biologist, wildlife biologist, soil scientist – all sorts of technical things that have let me run a consulting business for the last 35 years,” Evans told the committee and attendees, who included members of the Greenwich delegation. “I thought I was going to retire, but then I saw the announcement for this position in Greenwich.”
She said she thought the job would be a good fit for someone winding down an active consulting career.
“Perhaps I can help continue the momentum that Pat had generated for the department. It’s exciting for me to do a variety of projects,” she said.
During Q&A, sustainability committee member Susan Foster asked Ms Evans what had been her most challenging project.
Evans talked about her role as consultant to the town of Bedford, NY for 35 years.
“The kinds of applications that came into Bedford – everything from multi-lot subdivisions on environmentally sensitive parcels to, more recently, everybody they thought they needed a pool regardless of whether they had wetlands on their property or not.”
Also, she said, as a consultant, “I had a couple very large sites – one in Shawangunks where a developer wanted to turn into housing and one in Dover, NY that was an old institutional facility, and developers had a multi-use idea in mind. Both of those projects ended up going primarily to conservation groups. I think the hardest thing for me over 35 years was to try to be patient and not rush the process. Let the process work so properties were properly preserved in the end.”