Water Law: How Public Policy Got Us Here And Could Get Us Where We Need To Be

HAMILTON CANDEE: Hal’s practice consists primarily of efforts to restore ecosystems, protect endangered species, encourage water conservation, and promote other environmental reforms in federal and state water policy.  He has briefed and argued numerous cases at the trial and appellate level.  Hal represents a variety of nonprofit conservation organizations as well as local public agencies.

Hal is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the NRDC Action Fund. For over twenty years, he served as a Senior Attorney in the San Francisco Office of the Natural Resources Defense Council and as Co-Director of NRDC’s Western Water Project. Previously he was a legislative assistant in the United States Senate.

Hal received a CLAY Award as one of California’s “Lawyers of the Year” in 1999 for his work pursuing restoration of the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam. He has also received the Bay Institute’s Carla Bard Bay Education award in 2008 and the Central Valley Joint Venture Conservation Award in 2015. Hal was a Root-Tilden Scholar and a Hayes Civil Liberties Fellow at New York University Law School.

BRIAN GRAY is a Senior Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center and is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California College of Law, San Francisco. He has published numerous articles on environmental and water resources law and has co-authored a variety of PPIC publications, including the 2011 interdisciplinary book on California water policy, Managing California’s Water: From Conflict to Reconciliation and an on-going series of studies of ecosystem-based management of water assigned to environmental uses. He also has argued before the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in cases involving wild and scenic rivers, water pricing reform, takings, and water rights and environmental quality.

FELICIA MARCUS is the William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West Program, an attorney, consultant and member of the Water Policy Group. She most recently served as chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, implementing laws regarding drinking water and water quality and state’s water rights, hearing regional board water quality appeals, settling disputes and providing financial assistance to communities to upgrade water infrastructure.

Before her appointment to the Water Board, Marcus served in positions in government, the non-profit and private sector. In government, Felicia served as the regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Pacific Southwest region during the Clinton Administration. Preceding the EPA, Marcus served as the president of the board of Public Works for the City of Los Angeles.

In the non-profit world, she was the western director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and prior to that the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Trust for Public Land. Marcus also has an extensive background as a private sector and public interest lawyer, as well as a community organizer, most notably as a founder and general counsel to Heal the Bay.