John Morris Counsel

John Morris helps businesses navigate regulatory, project development, and transactional matters arising under federal, state, and local environmental and natural resources laws. He represents public and private companies, private equity (PE) firms, developers, financial institutions, joint ventures (JV), public agencies, public-private partnerships, nongovernmental organizations, and other landholders. His experience spans programmatic areas of environmental and natural resources law and policy, including water quality, remediation, waste management, air quality, and natural resources management.

In his regulatory practice, John has significant experience handling environmental regulatory matters in California before federal, state, and local regulatory agencies, including the State Water Resources Control Board (State Board), the Regional Water Quality Control Boards (Regional Boards), the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regional air quality management districts, the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle), the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In this capacity, he counsels regulated entities in response to administrative enforcement actions, brownfields programs, and other compliance matters spanning all programmatic areas of environmental law.

John’s project development practice involves the representation of industrial and commercial project developers throughout California in site selection, entitlement, permitting, and risk management matters. His experience includes various brownfields redevelopments, major infrastructure projects, stadium projects, and academic and corporate campuses. He helps project proponents obtain environmental clearances under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and the California Coastal Act.

In his transactional practice, John helps businesses identify and structure commercial solutions to environmental, health, and safety (EHS) risks arising from corporate mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, financings, and real estate investments. In this capacity, he provides counsel to PE firms and public companies doing business across multiple industry sectors, including manufacturing, food and beverage, agriculture, energy, bioscience, and hospitality.