Christopher J. McAuliffe

Senior Counsel

Christopher J. McAuliffe is senior counsel in Morgan Lewis's Energy Practice. Mr. McAuliffe focuses his practice on environmental matters. He provides advice and representation with respect to environmental restrictions on new development, climate change laws, and compliance with water pollution control and air pollution control requirements, as well as solid and hazardous waste, site remediation, brownfields, natural resource damages, and environmental cleanup cost recovery matters.

Mr. McAuliffe provides advice with respect to the environmental disclosures of publicly traded companies.  He also assists in obtaining the approvals required for projects within the Highlands region of New Jersey including defending those approvals in administrative and New Jersey Superior Court proceedings. Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, Mr. McAuliffe 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 OSHA. Mr. McAuliffe has an extensive background in environmental due diligence for the acquisition of assets and companies.

Mr. McAuliffe's practice highlights include negotiating one of the first voluntary consent decrees in the utility industry to resolve allegations of noncompliance with new source review (NSR) and prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) requirements; representing clients on land and waterbody environmental cleanup sites including the Passaic River and Newark Bay complex; 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); obtaining concurrence from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection that ISRA did not apply to the transfer of a petroleum refinery, terminal, tank farm and pipeline to a newly created company; and providing environmental compliance assistance for facilities located in five states. He is experienced in advising clients with respect to permits under the Clean Water Act for cooling water intake structures at power plants and compliance with the Clean Air Act's restrictions on engine manufacturing.  Mr. McAuliffe has published and spoken on environmental compliance issues, and regularly moderates panel presentations on renewable energy and green technology innovations.

Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, Mr. McAuliffe was vice president of environmental, litigation, and employment in the law department of PSEG Services Corporation. In this position, he managed a group of lawyers and paralegals that provided environmental, litigation, and employment legal services to the corporation.

Mr. McAuliffe received his J.D. from Boston College Law School in 1993, where he was editor-in-chief of the Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review. He received his B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross in 1990.

Mr. McAuliffe is admitted to practice in New Jersey and New York.