A Note from the Committee Co-Chairs

Beth S. Ginsberg
Steven T. Miano

Welcome to the first publication of our Committee’s Newsletter this year! Thanks to Newsletter editor Tim Hagerty, we bring to you a first rate practical publication designed to update you on key developments under the Clean Water Act from an administrative and judicial perspective.

We are delighted to continue in our second year as co-chairs of the Water Quality and Wetlands Committee. This year we are excited to announce the appointment of six new vice chairs: Roy Gardner, associate dean of Stetson University College of Law (Publications), Lawrence Liebesman, a partner in the D.C. office of Holland & Knight LLP (Membership), Timothy Malloy, a professor at UCLA School of Law (Programs), Jeff Miller, a professor at Pace Law School (Technology), David Kurland, senior counsel at Sunoco, Inc. (Public Service), and Steve Neugeboren, an attorney in EPA’s Office of General Counsel (At-Large). We are also very fortunate to have re-appointed three outstanding vice-chairs who have previously served the committee, including Timothy Hagerty, a partner at Frost Brown Todd (Publications), Karen McGaffey, a partner at Perkins Coie (The Year in Review), and Peggy Strand, a partner at Venable Baetjer Howard & Civiletti (Programs).

This year has been even busier and more exciting than last year from a Clean Water Act perspective due to a recent spate of Clean Water Act regulatory activity within EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers. The Committee will continue to be a national forum on cutting edge issues arising from implementation of the Clean Water Act. We will continue to bring to your attention new and developing trends in this area of environmental law by sponsoring educational programs and national CLEs, and through the publication of timely news articles, The Year In Review, and a handy updated version of the Clean Water Act Handbook.

The activities sponsored by our Committee are geared for environmental practitioners of all levels of experience. Our Committee presented two successful panels at the 10th Section Fall Meeting in Portland, Oregon, including one on the intersection of the Endangered Species Act with water quality issues, and another on the jurisdictional boundaries of the Clean Water Act after SWANCC (the Supreme Court’s jurisdictional decision in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). We also co-sponsored with ALI-ABA our first annual two-day advanced Clean

Water Act Conference in Washington, D.C. and congratulate vice-chairs Peggy Strand and Steve Neugeboren for their fine organizational and planning work in that ambitious new Committee endeavor. We look forward to presenting an exciting panel on water quality trading at the 32nd Annual Environmental Conference in Keystone, Colorado in March, and in co-sponsoring the annual Wetlands Conference with ALI-ABA this May in Washington, D.C. And, in light of recently issued wetlands mitigation guidance and action plans, and on-going agency rulemaking regarding the scope of jurisdiction under the Act, the Committee held a national teleconference covering up-to-the-minute developments in these areas.

The Committee also will continue to follow other key emergent legal and policy issues, including stormwater enforcement and permitting trends, EPA’s awaited regulatory guidance on TMDL implementation, and the convergence of ESA and water quality issues in the Pacific Northwest and other geographical hot spots around the country. There are important pending developments within EPA headquarters and the Regions that will influence national policy on these and other issues, including the future of mixing zones, watershed pollutant trading and enforcement trends. We will be closely following key administrative developments on all these issues during the course of the year ahead.

We invite all Committee members to become involved in Committee and Section activities – and lucky for you, there are multiple ways to do so. The Committee is always looking for volunteers to contribute articles for our Newsletter. Sign up for our next issue by contacting Newsletter editor Tim Hagerty and vice-chair Roy Gardner. If you are interested in sponsoring a brownbag lunch or other innovative type of forum on a timely topic, contact vice-chairs Peggy Strand or Tim

Malloy who will be happy to explore creative ideas for future programming. For those of you interested in reaching out to youngsters through our public service project in the public schools, contact vice-chair David Kurland. Finally, if, after reading this Newsletter, you would like to join the Committee, we’d be delighted to invite you aboard and urge you to contact our membership vice-chair, Larry Liebesman.

We look forward to working with you this year.

• Water Quality and Wetlands Committee vice-chairs:
• Membership: Lawrence R. Liebesman, Holland & Knight LLP, Washington, D.C. (lliebesman@hklaw.com)
• Programs: Margaret P. Strand, Venable Baetjer Howard & Civiletti, Washington, D.C. (mstrand@venable.com)
• Programs: Timothy Malloy, UCLA School of Law, Los Angeles, CA (malloy@mail.law.ucla.edu)
• Technology: Jeff Miller, Pace Law School, White Plains, N.Y. (jmiller@law.pace.edu)
• The Year in Review: Karen McGaffey, Perkins Coie, Seattle, WA (mcgak@perkinscoie.com)
• Publications:Timothy J. Hagerty, Frost Brown Todd, Louisville, KY (thagerty@fbtlaw.com)
• Publications: Royal C. Gardner, Stetson University College of Law, Gulfport, FL (gardner@law.stetson.edu)
• Public Service: David C. Kurland, Sunoco, Inc. Philadelphia, PA (DAVID_C_KURLAND@sunoil.com)
• Vice-Chair At Large: Steve Neugeboren, U.S.EPA (Neugeboren.Steven@epamail.epa.gov)