Profile: Robert D Mowrey

Environment

Biography: Environment

Robert Mowrey is chair of Alston & Bird's environmental and land use group. He concentrates his practice on environmental law, including toxic tort litigation, state and federal hazardous waste matters, Clean Water Act issues, hazardous materials issues and corporate compliance and counselling matters.

Mr Mowrey has extensive experience handling hazardous waste and clean water enforcement and litigation matters. For example, he led recent negotiations between a group of foundry companies and the EPA, resulting in a unique precedent-setting administrative settlement that provides for the most extensive residential investigation and clean-up for lead in US history.

In 2006, Mr Mowrey argued and won a case on behalf of the City of Atlanta, before the Georgia Supreme Court, declaring a statute allowing counties to veto cross-boundary waste transactions unconstitutional. This victory averted a major waste management crisis in Atlanta and ensures free waste markets in Georgia.

Mr Mowrey served as common counsel at a set of seven sites in Georgia that involved multiple federal and state enforcement actions, toxic tort litigation, insurance-related litigation, cost recovery claims and the approval of a first-ever delisting petition by the State of Georgia allowing a clean-up approach that saved over US$15 million in clean-up costs. He has broad experience defending citizens' suits, cost recovery actions and enforcement actions, and has worked extensively with the Georgia Hazardous Site Response Act.

Mr Mowrey earned his JD, cum laude, from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a member of University of Chicago Law Review. He received his BA, summa cum laude, from Wittenberg University.