PSEG Vice President Joins Morgan Lewis as Senior Counsel

• date: 03/13/2008
• news source: Firm

PRINCETON, March 13, 2008: Morgan Lewis today announced the addition of Christopher J. McAuliffe—formerly the vice president of environmental, litigation, and employment at PSEG Services Corporation—to its energy practice, resident in the firm's Princeton office. Chris's arrival reflects Morgan Lewis's continued commitment to meeting the growing legal needs of clients in the energy industry.

The Energy Practice at Morgan Lewis represents clients in every major segment of the energy market—electrical, nuclear, oil and natural gas, renewable energy (including wind energy), and water. The firm—which recently added three corporate partners focused on international energy transactions to its Houston, Los Angeles, and New York offices—provides a broad range of regulatory, transactional, and litigation services to major domestic and foreign energy companies, public utilities, financial institutions, private equity firms, independent power producers and generators, project developers, and Department of Energy contractors.

Chris focuses his practice on environmental matters. He provides advice and representation with respect to environmental restrictions on new development, climate change laws, compliance with water pollution control and air pollution control requirements; solid and hazardous waste, site remediation and environmental cleanup cost recovery matters. Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, Chris provided legal advice and representation to the electric delivery, gas delivery, and electric-generating business of a corporation with regard to matters arising under environmental law, real estate, land use, intellectual property, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). Chris has an extensive background in environmental due diligence for the acquisition of assets and companies.

Chris's practice highlights include negotiating one of the first voluntary consent decrees in the utility industry to resolve allegations of non-compliance with new source review (NSR) and prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) requirements, negotiating the only amendment to a utility NSR Consent Decree that allows for additional time to install air pollution control technology, representing clients on land and water body environmental cleanup sites including claims for natural resource damages; obtaining the environmental approvals needed for New Jersey's largest utility to divest its electric generation business into a new affiliated company without triggering site remediation obligations under New Jersey's Industrial Site Recovery Act (ISRA), and providing environmental compliance assistance for facilities located in five states. He has also published and spoken on environmental compliance issues.