STEPHAN C. VOLKER

Biographical Statement

Stephan C. Volker is the proprietor of the Law Offices of Stephan C. Volker in Oakland, California. A 1974 graduate of Martin Luther King School of Law at the University of California at Davis, Mr. Volker is licensed to practice before the state courts of California and Alaska, as well as federal courts including the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Volker has litigated over 200 cases on land use, forest management, endangered species, clean water, oil and gas, mining, agricultural preservation, river protection, and other environmental cases from Alaska to California since 1974. He has been the principal attorney in numerous cases to protect wilderness and wilderness candidate areas in Alaska, Montana, and California, including critical grizzly and wolf habitat in Montana's Rocky Mountain Front and Alaska's Chilkat River Valley. He has secured injunctions against logging along the Wild and Scenic Trinity, Salmon, and Eel Rivers in California, damming of the Dry Creek fork of the Russian River, residential development on the slopes of the Sierra Buttes, and human harassment of killer whales. He secured the largest civil penalty ever awarded under the citizen suit provisions of the Clean Water Act, against Unocal Oil Company, for pollution of San Francisco Bay. He has also successfully prosecuted a number of cases to protect agricultural land and wildlife habitat from urban sprawl under California's Williamson Act, Environmental Quality Act, and Planning and Zoning laws; Washington's Growth Management Act and Shoreline Management Act; and other environmental laws.

Mr. Volker's practice has also led to the promulgation by the EPA of urgently needed water quality standards for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem, preparation of comprehensive management plans to protect the six Wild and Scenic Rivers within the Ozark National Forest, development of a comprehensive management plan for the North Cascades National Park and Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, protection of Puget Sound waters from salmon farm pollution, prevention of new water diversions in the Sierra Nevada that would dewater High Sierra lakes and harm downstream fish habitat, and comprehensive revision of the General Plans of El Dorado and Riverside Counties.

Mr. Volker's current docket includes litigation and administrative appeals to protect the Marin Headlands and Olema Valley from urban development, preserve Northern Coyote Valley from power plan development, redress oil pollution of wetlands adjacent to Suisun Bay, prevent overdrafting of groundwater underlying the Santa Clara River Valley, protect the Medicine Lake Highlands near Mt. Shasta from geothermal development, prevent increased water diversions from the Eel River into the Russian River, protect Lake Tahoe from harmful marina developments, protect the Lakes Basin near the Sierra Buttes from unplanned urban growth, defend the Cosumnes River and adjacent aquifers against dewatering due to excessive pumping, and protect Caples, Silver and Aloha Lakes in the High Sierra, the Navarro River in the Coast Range, and the South Fork American River, from harmful water diversions.

From 1974 to 1977 Mr. Volker maintained a private practice in Southern California, where he represented citizen's groups, cities, and school districts in plaintiff's environmental and land use litigation, and drafted growth control initiatives for several cities.

In 1977, Mr. Volker was named Director of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund's newly established office in Juneau, Alaska. From 1977 to 1980 he prosecuted environmental cases in state and federal courts in Alaska, involving forestry, mining and other public land law issues. From 1980 to 1998 Mr. Volker handled a variety of environmental and land use cases in state and federal courts in several western states from the Sierra Club (now Earthjustice) Legal Defense Fund's San Francisco, California home office. Since returning to private practice in 1998, Mr. Volker has continued to represent conservation organizations and public agencies in environmental litigation throughout the west. Mr. Volker is a recognized expert in several fields of environmental law including water rights, water pollution, forest practices, land use planning, environmental review, and agricultural land preservation.

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