Melissa helps industrial and utility clients understand and navigate complex environmental requirements, with a focus on real-world implication for their business. She focuses her practice on Clean Air Act and climate change issues and also advises clients on environmental justice and ESG matters, including greenwashing and climate-related disclosures and reporting.
Melissa counsels clients on an expansive range of issues arising under the Clean Air Act. She also regularly provides advice on environmental justice and environmental and social governance (ESG) matters, including greenwashing. Her practice also encompasses CERCLA and EPCRA release reporting requirements, emerging contaminants, such as PFAS, federal hydropower licensing and compliance, and state and federal dam safety regulation. Melissa's attention to detail, thoroughness, and ability to translate complicated regulatory schemes into easy-to-understand language make her ideally suited to help companies make sense of and stay on top of complex environmental requirements.
Melissa focuses her Clean Air Act practice on Title V permitting, NSPS, NESHAP, and MACT requirements; NAAQS development and implementation; New Source Review and state preconstruction permitting requirements; regional haze; interstate transport, and climate change policy and regulation. She represents companies at the local, state, and federal levels, helping them interpret and comply with regulatory and permit requirements, develop permitting and compliance strategies, and respond to agency inquiries and enforcement actions.
Melissa works closely with clients to help them not only to comply with current environmental requirements, but to anticipate and shape future requirements. She assists companies to work alongside environmental regulators in the development of permits, respond to agency and public concerns raised during the permitting process, and participate in rulemaking through development of formal public comments or preparation of background information and talking points to educate regulators and legislators about the potential impacts of their proposals. She also advises companies on the impacts of evolving environmental issues on their businesses, including environmental justice, ESG, and reporting requirements and litigation exposure related to climate change.
Melissa has assisted clients with compliance and enforcement issues arising under CERLCA and EPCRA release reporting requirements and has provided advice to client on navigating the patchwork of state regulations governing emerging contaminants such as PFAS. She has also counseled hydropower clients on all aspects of the FERC licensing process and has advised clients on dam safety requirements at the state and federal levels.
Melissa's pro bono work includes service as a pro bono ambassador for the firm's Atlanta office, preparation of estate planning documents and health care directives for cancer patients and veterans, and assisting pro bono clients to obtain gender-affirming legal name changes. She also helped staff the Election Protection voter hotline manned by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law during the 2020 presidential election.
Environmental Law and Policy Monitor
03.13.24
SEC Issues Final Climate Disclosure Rules, Paring Down Its 2022 Proposal, With Implications for Greenwashing Claims
Speaking Engagements
03.06.24
The Rise in Greenwashing Claims
Environmental Law and Policy Monitor
02.26.24
EPA Lowers Annual PM2.5 NAAQS, With Immediate Impacts for Air Permitting
Troutman Pepper Financial Services
01.29.24
With Delayed Federal Action on Mandatory Climate Disclosures, States and Regulators Fill the Void
Environmental Law and Policy Monitor
01.17.24
And so It Begins…EPA Issues First Disapproval of Regional Haze Round Two
Articles + Publications
01.08.24
Air and Climate Report: January 2024