Through nearly four decades, Elisabeth has focused her practice on permitting and entitlement of a wide range of projects, compliance counseling, and environmental aspects of business transactions, under state and federal law.
Elisabeth’s experience and practice areas cover the major federal environmental statutes, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund), and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). She has worked in private practice and for public agencies, and most recently represented one of the largest public university systems in the nation, spanning ten campuses, five medical centers, and a national laboratory.
Elisabeth particularly focuses her practice on entitlement and compliance with California’s complex and wide-ranging environmental laws, statutes, and regulations, and has experience before the Regional Water Quality Control Boards, Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), and local and regional air quality management districts. She has significant experience entitling complex projects under the California Environmental Quality Act. In addition, she is knowledgeable regarding California’s extensive regulations for hazardous materials, occupational safety and health, solid and medical waste, and biosafety and laboratories, as well as regarding local land use and zoning laws and the protection and preservation of historic and cultural resources, including Native American artifacts and sacred sites, coastal development, and wetlands and streambeds.
Elisabeth’s experience in private practice, as well as her public agency work, informs her unique insight on the California regulatory landscape and strategic approach to project entitlement and regulatory compliance counseling. She has represented a range of clients, from major industrial firms, such as energy and petroleum companies, to public institutions, commercial and residential developers, and alternative energy companies. And she spent 16 years working within a large public university system advising on the entitlement and operation of the campus facilities, laboratory buildings, medical center facilities, infrastructure, and on-site and offsite housing. Elisabeth was the lead in-house attorney on one of the largest P3 social infrastructure projects in the nation, delivering a campus expansion entailing 17 facilities and infrastructure within a critical four-year window. As a public agency attorney and chief counsel to a developing university campus, Elisabeth provided advice on the entire range of campus legal and regulatory matters, including compliance with public records and privacy laws, business and real estate transactions, procurement, construction, employment, research, cyber-security, governance and first amendment issues.
