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Kevin M. O'BrienPartner Contact Info: Practice Areas: Additional Areas of Expertise Bio Kevin O'Brien is at the center of efforts to solve California's water crisis. He has negotiated multi-million dollar deals to transfer water from one region of the state to another. He has litigated major water right cases in state and federal courts. And, he has choreographed the complex regulatory approval process for major new water supply projects. Kevin is currently an integral part of efforts to fix the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta—the hub of California's water supply system. Described in Sacramento Lawyer magazine as a lawyer who "advocates principled positions that reflect the law and are intended to achieve a solution for all the parties, not just his clients," Kevin is a solution-oriented lawyer with a track record of success.
One of Kevin's principal clients is the Monterey County Water Resources Agency. Since the 1930s, the Salinas Valley, known as the “salad bowl of the world”, has had a major water quality problem—seawater has been intruding into the underground aquifers underlying the Valley at increasing rates. For more than a decade, Kevin worked with his client to design, evaluate, permit, finance and ultimately build a major new water project—the Salinas Valley Water Project—that will reduce groundwater pumping in key areas of the Valley and ultimately halt seawater intrusion. The construction of this project is one of the great success stories in California water resource management over the past quarter century.
Kevin has special expertise in groundwater law—a highly technical subset of California water law. He has served as trial counsel in the adjudication of the Santa Maria groundwater basin in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties and the adjudication of the Seaside basin in Monterey County. He has orchestrated numerous water transfers involving the substitution of groundwater for surface water. He has advised developers, wineries and ski areas on various aspects of groundwater development. For the past nine years, he has taught a popular course in groundwater law through the University of California, Davis Extension.
Kevin has received the highest peer rating, “AV”, from Martindale Hubbell. He has served as chair of the American Bar Association's Water Resources Committee and as a member of the Executive Committee of the Real Property Law Section, State Bar of California. Early in his career he served in the Solicitor's Honors Program at the Office of the Solicitor, U.S. Department of the Interior, in Washington, D.C.
Within Downey Brand, he is a member of the executive committee and former chair of the water practice.
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Copyright 2010 Downey Brand LLP. All rights reserved. |
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