As Gay Sigel walked through the doors at One IBM Plaza in Chicago, fresh out of law school and ready to launch her career as an attorney at Jenner & Block, she could not have envisioned the tremendous impact she would have on her clients, her colleagues, and her community over the next 39 years. Gay started her legal career as a general litigator, but Gay and Bob Graham were quick to realize how the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) was creating a new and exciting area of the law that was increasingly important for the firm’s clients: Environmental Law. Gay and Bob saw an opportunity to specialize in that area and founded Jenner & Block’s Environmental Health and Safety Practice. Gay has been an ever-present force in the EHS community ever since.

Over her 39-year career at Jenner & Block, Gay has worked on some of the most significant environmental cases in the country for clients ranging from global Fortune 50 corporations to environmental organizations to individuals. For more than a decade, she taught environmental law at Northwestern University, helping shape the next generation of environmental lawyers. She has worked on issues of global impact, like those affecting climate change, issues of local impact like those related to combined sewer overflows to the Chicago River, and issues of individual impact like those involving employee safety and health. No matter the subject, Gay has always been a tireless advocate for her clients. We often describe her as the Energizer Bunny of environmental lawyers: she is the hardest working attorney we have ever met. 

Gay’s true passion is to make this world a better, more just place for others. So, throughout her career as an environmental, health, and safety lawyer, Gay has devoted her time, energy, and emotional resources to innumerable pro bono cases and charitable and advocacy organizations. Her pro bono work includes successfully protecting asylum applicants, defending criminal cases, asserting parental rights, and defending arts organizations in OSHA matters. Among her many civic endeavors, Gay was a founding member of the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago (n/k/a as the Legal Council for Health Justice); she was the Secretary and active member of the Board of Directors for the Chicago Foundation for Women; and she was on the Board of the New Israel Fund. Gay continues to promote justice wherever she sees injustice, including as an advocate for women’s rights, particularly for women’s reproductive rights.

In both her environmental, health, and safety practice as well as her pro bono and charitable work, Gay is a tremendous mentor to younger (and even older) attorneys. She is curious, committed, exacting, fearless, and demanding (though more of herself than of others). We all give Gay much credit for making us the lawyers we are today.

Gay is leaving Jenner & Block to embark on her next adventure. She is returning to public service as Assistant Corporation Counsel Supervisor with the City of Chicago's Department of Law where she will be focusing on environmental issues. The City and its residents will be well served as Gay will bring her vast experience and unparalleled energy to work tirelessly to protect the City and its environment. We will miss working with and learning from Gay on a daily basis, but we look forward to seeing the great things she will accomplish for the City of Chicago. We know we speak for the entire firm as we wish Gay bon voyage—we will miss you! 

Steven M. Siros, Allison A. Torrence, Andi S. Kenney

In honor of the fifth anniversary of our entry into the blogosphere, we are excited to announce a major revamp of the Corporate Environmental Lawyer’s design. In addition to the blog’s sophisticated new look, our readers will enjoy:

1. Mobile and tablet responsive technology
2. A trending-categories cloud list
3. Easy-to-use social sharing buttons

4. Streamlined navigation menus

5. Access to all five years of posts

In the five years since our Environmental and Workplace Health & Safety (EHS) practice created the Corporate Environmental Lawyer, we have written more than 500 posts, provided critical updates and insights on issues across the EHS legal sectors, and been ranked among LexisNexis’s top 50 blogs. As we wish to continue to grow the blog and provide our readers with the information they want to know, Corporate Environmental Lawyer editors, Steven M. Siros and Genevieve J. Essig, encourage you to participate by suggesting new topics.  We look forward to continuing to provide content covering the issues that are driving changes in environmental law.

By: Robert L. Graham and E. Lynn Grayson

In 2010, Jenner & Block's Environmental and Workplace Health and Safety Law Practice launched its Corporate Environmental Lawyer blog. We hope that you have found our updates and insights on critical environmental, health & safety developments to be helpful and informative. Now, on the occasion of our 500th blog, and as Jenner & Block celebrates its 100th anniversary, we wanted to provide a brief overview of our practice, highlight some key themes that we intend to focus on in the Corporate Environmental Lawyer blog in 2014, and wish you a Happy Earth Day.

Jenner & Block's Environmental Health and Safety Law Practice was founded in 1978. As environmental, health, and safety ("EHS") law has evolved over the past three decades, so too has our practice. Our attorneys are recognized authorities on environmental, health, safety, transactional, and energy matters. We offer comprehensive solutions to complex EHS problems, drawing on our collective past experience as environmental prosecutors, in-house counsel, and environmental law teachers since the 1970s.

As evidenced by our 500 plus blog entries, we have now embraced social media because it allows us to provide timely information on EHS issues of concern to our clients. Our Twitter account (JennerBlockEHS), created in 2012, further enables us to communicate real-time information on breaking EHS issues important to U.S. business, in-house environmental counsel, and EHS professionals.

In 2013, our blog focused on several key issues, including water scarcity and climate change. We also implemented a weekly feature that provides an overview of current EHS cases pending before the United States Supreme Court. In addition, we focused on evolving regulatory issues concerning TSCA reform, green chemistry, and CERCLA and RCRA liability.

We would like to thank you for your past support and hope that you will continue to rely on the Corporate Environmental Lawyer blog for timely EHS news in 2014 and beyond. If you have any suggestions on how we might improve our blog or our overall EHS communications, please feel free to contact us.

In celebration of Earth Day, and on the occasion of Jenner & Block's 100th anniversary, we are also planting 100 trees this summer to commemorate improvements in environmental quality. For more details on the Firm's 100th anniversary, please visit www.jenner.com/about/history.

Robert L. Graham ([email protected]) and E. Lynn Grayson ([email protected]), Co-Chairs, Environmental, Workplace Health and Safety Practice Group

By Robert L. Graham

Bob Graham co-authored a leading environmental law textbook in use at many U.S. law schools titled Environmental Law and Policy: Nature, Law and Society. The Fourth Edition of this textbook was launched in 2010 and includes two Teacher's Manuals as well as annual professors' updates. More information about the textbook and supplementary materials are available at www.aspenlawschool.com/plater3.

The 2012-2013 updates will soon be published and include new insights, case law summaries and guidance on key developing areas. One topic addressed is bee colony collapse disorder (CCD) and EPA's management of this concern under FIFRA.

Below is a summary of CCD as updated in the textbook:

Colony Collapse Disorder and FIFRA. During the winter of 2006-2007, a number of beekeepers throughout the United States, and elsewhere, began to report unusually high losses of 30-90 percent of their hives. As many as 50 percent of all affected colonies demonstrated symptoms inconsistent with known causes of honeybee death. These symptoms involved the sudden loss of a colony's worker bee population, with very few dead bees found near the colony. The queen and the brood (young) often remained, and the colonies had relatively abundant honey and pollen reserves. But the hives could not sustain themselves without worker bees and would eventually die. This combination of events, resulting in the loss of a bee colony, has been labeled Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

CCD in honeybees, and pollinator declines in general, have become serious environmental concerns. Because of the importance of bees in the pollination process, CCD could ultimately threaten the functioning of our natural ecosystems and affect the production of many important crops in the United States. Pesticide use has been identified as a potential contributing factor to these declines, along with other potential factors such as new and reemerging pathogens, habitat loss, pests, bee management practices, and nutritional stress.

Researchers leading the effort to determine the cause of CCD are now focused on the following factors: