Smith Partners serves as legal counsel for the Minnehaha Creek, Brown's Creek, Nine Mile Creek, and Rice Creek Watershed Districts. Other water resources clients have included the Mississippi River Watershed Management Organization, Red River Watershed Management Board, St. Paul Water Utility, City of Woodbury, City of Stewart, Thirty Lakes Watershed District, Placid Lake Association, and the Minnesota Association of Watershed Districts.

Expertise in water resources law

• Counsel for three generations of water resource management planning;
• A careful understanding of roles and relations among watershed management organizations and other local units of government and strong, effective working relationships with key agency personnel in federal and state agencies;
• Policy analysis and drafting of water resources legislation, with central involvement in watershed legislative issues for the past ten years;
• Extensive experience in drafting permitting and enforcement rules for watershed regulation of erosion control, stormwater management, floodplain management, groundwater protection, shoreline alteration, dredging, structures in waterbodies, stream and lake buffers, and wetland protection;
• Expertise in wetland regulation and drainage system management under state and federal laws;
• Extensive experience in drafting construction contracts and surety documents, preparing requests for bids, and acquiring land and easements for water resource restoration and infrastructure projects;
• Counsel for major lakes improvement, stream protection and wetland restoration projects, including the largest urban lake restoration project in the United States (recipient of five environmental awards, including the CF Industries National Watershed Award and the Minnesota Governor's Award for Excellence in Pollution Prevention), involving complex multiparty negotiations, development of cooperative agreements to structure relationships with stakeholders and partners, consultation through environmental review and federal and state agency permitting;
• Overwhelming success in water resources litigation in administrative and judicial proceedings;
• Publishers of WaterLaws.com, an electronic journal for watershed law and policy;
• Authors of the Watershed Rulemaking Handbook, published by the Minnesota Association of Watershed Districts.