Our team has a successful track record of work with non-governmental organizations, coalitions and philanthropic foundations, and private sector interests to shape law, policy, and public perception. This experience allows us to provide our clients with informed strategy development services on a wide variety of policy matters. Our attorneys have also been deeply involved in several complex, multi-party stakeholder negotiations related to water policy, municipal finance, and public lands issues, as well as with the management of a number of coalitions focused on policy advocacy involving multiple non-governmental organizations.
The skills we have developed through this work allow us to help our clients avoid many of the traditional start-up, relationship, and management issues that often hinder effective coalitions and stakeholder efforts, and to help our clients navigate the often complex tangle of legal, political, and cultural issues that can surround water and natural resource management issues. This experience gives our firm a unique perspective on working for change.
Representative Experience
- Leading and managing a national water policy and water advocacy program for a major U.S. conservation organization.
- Advising leading nonprofit conservation organizations in the design and deployment of a decade-long effort to restore the Colorado River Delta ecosystem and drive comprehensive reforms to the 1944 U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty, as well as efforts to drive key reforms to the Law of the Colorado River, including the development of the Conservation Before Shortage proposal for the 2007 Shortage Guidelines, the development of the 2012 Colorado River Basin Study, and the development and implementation of the Colorado River System Conservation Program.
- Managing a non-profit coalition advocating for the adoption of a groundbreaking environmental flow law and other water law and policy changes in the State of Texas.
- Representing a stakeholder group in the development of a comprehensive reform of Arizona's constitutional and statutory framework for the management of 9.3 million acres of state trust lands.
- Establishing a comprehensive program at a leading non-profit organization develop tools, legal mechanisms and agency capacity for state trust land management in eleven western states.
- Providing expertise and strategic advice to a collaboration of philanthropic foundations seeking to expand investment in western water issues.
- Advising a major municipal water provider regarding water policy and strategy matters related to the Colorado River, the development of water resiliency strategies to protect municipal water supplies from shortage risks, the allocation of water on the Central Arizona Project and development of water wheeling and exchange policies.
- Representing a statewide coalition of Arizona municipalities in the development of comprehensive reforms to Arizona's development impact fee infrastructure financing system and representing commercial developers with regard to infrastructure financing programs adopted by local municipalities and a Native American tribe.
- Advising The Nature Conservancy on the design, planning and operation of its seven-state and international Colorado River Program to promote conservation outcomes and sustainability in the Colorado River Basin.
- Advising Trout Unlimited on cooperative projects with producers and irrigation districts in the Upper Colorado River Basin.
- Advising The Nature Conservancy, the Sonoran Institute, and a major non-profit foundation on strategies to promote water sustainability in the water-scarce San Pedro, Verde, and Santa Cruz river systems.
- Advising Environmental Defense Fund on the development of various elements of its Western water program, water markets program, and groundwater management program.
- Working with the University of Arizona, several non-profit organizations, and the Arizona Department of Water Resources to develop a water supply and demand model for Central Arizona.