Michael R. Lozeau
Michael R. Lozeau | Partner
Mike Lozeau has been practicing environmental law in the San Francisco Bay area for over twenty years. He graduated with Honors from Rutgers Law School-Newark in 1989 where he helped establish the Rutgers Public Interest Law Foundation. In 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle named Mike one of the Top 25 lawyers in the San Francisco Bay area. Mike sits on the Executive Committee of the Environmental Law Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco, as well as on the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate Audubon Society.
Mike has extensive experience representing public interest clients on matters involving the federal Clean Water Act and state clean water laws, including California’s Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act. He is equally at home before both federal and state courts as well as California’s regional water quality control boards and the State Water Resources Control Board. Mike also has handled cases involving numerous other statutes, including the federal Endangered Species Act, the California Endangered Species Act, CEQA, NEPA and the California Coastal Act.
From 1999 through the end of 2004, Mike was a staff attorney with the Earthjustice Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford and a Lecturer at Stanford Law School. From 1994 to 1999, Mike served as the Executive Director of Waterkeepers Northern California and served as the San Francisco Baykeeper. Mike was a founding Board member of the Waterkeeper Alliance from 1997-2001 and served as the Alliance’s Vice-President. Beginning in 1991, Mike maintained a solo practice in San Francisco, focusing on citizen enforcement cases and served as San Francisco Baykeeper’s legal counsel. His legal career began as an Associate Attorney with Earthjustice (then Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) in their San Francisco office. Mike has a B.A. in Zoology from the University of New Hampshire.
Mike has published a number of articles on Clean Water Act enforcement and implementation and Tribal authority under the Act.
Some of Mike’s more notable accomplishments include:
- serving as lead counsel in precedent-setting litigation to enforce the Department of Water Resources’ duties under the California Endangered Species Act to protect listed fish in operating the State’s massive Central Valley Project’s Delta pumps.
- representing the Committee To Save the Mokelumne in agency proceedings and state court that led to the clean-up of the New Penn mine by EBMUD and the Central Valley Regional Board;
- serving as lead counsel on a precedent-setting federal Clean Water Act case against the Pacific Lumber Company for discharging pollutants from its logging operations without a permit;
- while serving as the Executive Director of BayKeeper, developing and implementing a successful strategy to regulate water pollution from tens of thousands of Central Valley farms, including drafting legislation that terminated long-standing exemptions from California water quality law and advocacy for an effective regulatory program;
- numerous actions enforcing the CWA’s permitting and stormwater pollution requirements;
- representing several tribes and environmental organizations in federal court to help defeat a proposed low-level radioactive radioactive waste dump in Ward Valley, California.
Some interesting links:
Court Ruling Underscores Need For New Delta Strategy
Federal Court Reins In Logging Pollution
Regulating Agriculture’s Water Pollution