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Who’s who at the Buford Dam Project
Management Office
By
Pamela A. Keene
Over the past year or so, the management at the
Buford Dam Project Office has settled in at Lake Lanier. Operations
Project Manager Tim Rainey has built a team that includes Assistant
Operations Project Manager Chris Lovelady, Natural Resource Manager
Nick Baggett and three Chief Rangers – Ernest Noe/Shoreline
Management, Chris Arthur/Park Operations and Jeff Emmert/Natural
Resources and Real Estate.
Tim Rainey officially came to Lanier in July
2009 from Allatoona Lake where he served as Operations Project
Manager there for a little more than two years. He previously worked
at the John H. Kerr Reservoir in the Wilmington District for the
Corps of Engineers.
He began his career working for the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and then the National Park Service before moving to
the Corps. His experience has taken him from living in a lighthouse
on the Massachusetts coast to working at Allatoona Lake, with stints
in Florida, Massachusetts, the Carolinas and Virginia. He was hired
in 1992 at Lanier to work as a park ranger, serving for eight years.
Rainey earned his bachelor of arts degree in Criminal
Justice from Memphis State and immediately joined the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service as a law enforcement officer.
Chris Lovelady has served at Lanier for more
than 26 years, starting in the trenches as a co-op student Park
Ranger in early 1985. In April 2010, he became the second in command
at one of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ largest and most-visited
lakes in the country, Lake Lanier.
Lovelady began his career with the Corps of Engineers
at Lanier while attending the University of Georgia. Upon
graduation, he served as a Park Ranger for 11 years, managing a wide
variety of recreation and land and water management programs.
In 1998, he was named Chief Ranger of the Land and
Water Management Division, responsible for natural resource
management, shoreline management and land use requests. In 2008, he
was named the lake’s Natural Resource Manager responsible for the
oversight of both the Recreation and Land and Water Management
programs.
Nick Baggett has returned to Lanier, this time
as Natural Resource Manager, a position he began in November 2010.
He has worked for the Corps for 20 years, including serving as the
Natural Resource Manager at the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway in
Columbus, Miss. He has also worked as Project Manager for the Corps’
Mobile District Regulatory Division for North Mississippi and North
Alabama, as Project Manager for the Corps’ Savannah District
Regulatory Division in North Georgia, and as park ranger at Lanier.
As Natural Resource Manager, he is responsible for
the development and implementation of a variety of complex natural
resource management and protection programs that include fish and
wildlife management, soil conservation, forestry and vegetation
management, fire protection, cultural resources protection, and
resolution of encroachments on public lands. He also oversees the
park management section, lakeshore management section, and the
natural resources/environmental compliance section.
Chris Arthur started his career with the Corps
in 1990 at J. Strom Thurmond Lake in the Savannah District. In 1991
Arthur moved up the Savannah River to work at Richard B. Russell
Lake located in Elberton. Looking for a promotion in 1994 he moved
to Lake Okeechobee in Florida. After spending three years at
Okeechobee, he moved to Lanier, where he has worked since 1997.
Currently, Arthur serves as Chief Ranger responsible
for providing technical oversight for programming, planning and
execution of the project's recreation, interpretive, public safety,
visitor assistance, public relations and security programs. He
reviews and provides guidance for policies and plans for the
operation of Lanier’s campgrounds and day-use parks.
Ernest Noe, who serves as Chief Ranger over
shoreline management, came to Lanier from Lake Seminole in 2003,
where he began his career with the Corps in 1992. Prior to that, he
was both assistant manager and manager of Elvis Presley Lake in
Tupelo, Miss. A graduate of the University of Mississippi with a
degree in Recreational Administration and Outdoor Education, he has
worked on the shoreline management side of the Buford Project and is
familiar with dock permitting, shoreline management issues, rip rap
and pathways.
Jeff Emmert began his park ranger career in
2001 at the Illinois Waterway Visitor Center, in Rock Island
District as a cooperative education student, while attending
college. After graduating in 2003, he accepted a position at Lanier
where he began working in recreation programs and then worked in the
shoreline management and natural resources programs.
Currently Emmert is the Chief Ranger over the natural
resources and real estate programs and is responsible for the
management of Lanier’s natural and cultural resources, land-use
requests, boundary maintenance, and employee safety. He also serves
as the environmental compliance coordinator (ECC) for lakes Lanier,
Allatoona and Carters, assisting the Corps offices in complying with
federal, state, and local environment laws.
More info:770-945-9531
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