Experience

Our clients primarily consist of entities, both corporate and public, ranging from 400-plus MW hydro power developers to municipalities to whom we provide counsel year round and often opposite among the largest players in the “Cloud Storage” services industry. We represent our clients in all aspects of surface and ground water supply management (as further described on this page as well). We have also long worked with the hydro power industry. While initially assisting hydro project developers possessing projects with generation capacities of 10MW or less, it wasn’t until the increasing interest in developing large-scale closed loop pump storage hydro that we started to advise on projects possessing generation capacities of 400MW or more. The most recent of such projects we worked on also apparently resulted in our firm establishing a first in the industry regarding the most efficient means to secure construction and commissioning water supplies on site in a way that required little to no regulatory interface. Based on comments received from large scale developers in the pumped storage hydro space, our approach to offset such water demands is now being duplicated across the country.

We meet the legal needs of all such operations and others with our expertise in the relevant areas of environmental law, western (US) water law, real property law, and the generation of related, complex infrastructure development, mitigation, and other agreements that all such projects require to be successful.

REGION: WESTERN UNITED STATES

MWL possesses experience in:

1. Addressing all aspects relating to the purchase and sale of water and water rights to ensure reliable water supplies for commercial, energy (utility scale pump storage), industrial, and municipal uses.

2. Securing regulatory approvals, supported by litigation when necessary, to ensure our clients the ability to change both (a) the use, and (b) the place of use of their existing water rights;

3. Securing regulatory approvals, supported by litigation when necessary, for the permitting of new water rights including where such approvals require the completion of mitigation plans to avoid adversely affecting other existing water rights or the habitat requirements of protected listed species;

4. Preparing and negotiating multi-party agreements that, subject to state and federal permitting requirements, provide for the re-use of industrial wastewater (“IWW”) for additional uses including irrigation, mitigation, and, in some cases, distributive generation of hydro power. With such agreements, we can secure our clients not only the ability to maximize the utility of their water resources by helping them deliver legally compliant IWW for re-use opportunities benefitting both themselves and third parties, but we also further maximize that utility by generating an additional revenue stream via their sale of IWW for such addiitonal uses.

REGIONS: NORTH, CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA

Currently developing program under which our client will enter into domestic and international bulk water delivery contracts to meet third party purchaser demand for interim/short term and scheduled water supplies (“Gap Water”) when necessary to:

(1) advance construction/commissioning of commercial, energy (e.g., closed-loop pump storage), industrial, municipal, or other projects awaiting completion/commissioning of desalination plants or access to other more permanent water supply sources; and

(2) provide “Gap Water Insurance” policies to commercial, energy, industrial, municipal, and other private and public entities to mitigate lack of adquate private and public water resources during periods of drought or other water short conditions.

Our work for capital investment portfolios primarily focuses on water and water rights acquisition for long and short term investment strategies and advising on the development and selling of environmental mitigation credits. More recently, our office has been engaged by an international capital investment firm with offices in the U.S. and Europe to advise on the completion of bulk water supply agreements to meet demands for “Gap Water” within the western hemisphere to accelerate permitting, construction, testing, and commissioning of green tech manufacturing, and clean energy facilities in arid regions. By providing initial bulk water supplies, such facilities possess the ability to become operational on shorter timelines by avoiding the significant construction and startup delays now common in arid climes due to (1) lack of access to reliable surface or groundwater supplies, or (2) the time in years it takes to locate, permit, construct, and commission coastal desalination plants.