The Environmental Ladies Who Lunch, a networking group comprised of women professionals in the environmental field, recently held its annual luncheon and fundraising event in Austin. Emily Rogers and Susan Maxwell, partners in the firm’s water law practice group, were among the hosts of the annual event.

For more than 13 years, this networking group has hosted an annual holiday fundraiser which benefits local nonprofit organizations. The featured beneficiaries of this year’s event were the Women’s Storybook Project, a program that helps incarcerated mothers maintain contact with their children through literature, and Foster Angels of Central Texas, an organization that works to improve the lives of children in foster care. To learn more about these organizations and their missions, click on the links below.

Women’s Storybook Project

Foster Angels of Central Texas

The 88th Texas Legislature resulted in a variety of enacted bills that affect aspects of environmental, water, and utility law practice. In their article featured in The Texas Bar Journal’s Legislative Update Issue, Claudia Russell and Susan Maxwell provide summaries and highlights of some key bills that are effective as of September 1, 2023 (unless otherwise noted).

Read the full article here.

BHDA partners from the litigation and water practice groups, Doug Caroom, Susan Maxwell, and Gunnar Seaquist, represented Pape Partners, Ltd., petitioners, in a water rights case heard by the Supreme Court of Texas on March 24, 2022. Counsel from the Office of the Attorney General of Texas (OAG), on behalf of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), also briefed and argued in support of the reversal sought by the petitioners. On Friday, May 20, 2022, the Court issued its opinion, ordering the lower courts’ jurisdictional ruling reversed and remanded. An overview of the Court’s opinion is below, and the entire opinion can be found here. Oral arguments by Mr. Seaquist and the OAG before the Court can be watched here.

On May 20, 2022, in Pape Partners, Ltd. v. DRR Family Properties LP, the Supreme Court of Texas delivered its opinion, which held that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) does not have the authority (under its general jurisdiction over water and water rights adjudication) to decide conflicting claims to ownership of already issued surface-water rights. The Court’s opinion stated the “adjudication of such claims is for the courts, not the agency,” and thus reversed the 2020 majority ruling by the Waco Court of Appeals affirming dismissal of plaintiffs’ claims based on TCEQ’s exclusive jurisdiction to decide private property rights disputes over surface water rights ownership. This clarification of TCEQ’s role in administering existing surface water rights has statewide impact for water rights owners and other stakeholders throughout Texas.

BHDA partners Claudia Russell and Susan Maxwell recently had an article on environmental law published in the Texas Bar Journal’s “The Legislative Update Issue” (September 2021).

In the article “Environmental and Water Law,” Ms. Russell and Ms. Maxwell highlight key bills passed during the 87^th regular legislative session that affect aspects of environmental, water, and utility law.

Read the full piece here.

BHDA is a proud sponsor of the upcoming 2020 Texas Environmental Superconference CLE program, offered online August 6-7 and presented by the State Bar’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Section (ENRLS).

Susan Maxwell, a partner in the Firm’s water law group and current Chair of the ENRLS, worked with the ENRLS Council to shift gears during the pandemic and continue the Section’s 32-year tradition of the Superconference. The conference planning committee has streamlined this year’s four-hour program to cover a variety of timely topics including ethics, air issues, climate change, and flooding and reservoirs. For more information or to register for this year’s Superconference program, click here.

Proceeds from the Superconference support ENRLS programs, including the Buck Wynne scholarship program, summer internships, and other programs for law students across Texas, and the Section’s publication of the Texas Environmental Law Journal.