Roger R. Martella, Jr.

ROGER MARTELLA is a partner in the Environmental Practice Group at Sidley Austin LLP. He recently rejoined Sidley Austin LLP after serving as the General Counsel of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, concluding 10 years of litigating and handling complex environmental and natural resource matters at the Department of Justice and EPA.

Mr. Martella’s practice focuses on three primary areas. First, Mr. Martella advises companies on developing strategic approaches to achieve their goals in light of rapidly developing demands to address climate change, promote sustainability, and utilize clean energy. Second, Mr. Martella handles a broad range of environmental and natural resource litigation and mediation. Third, Mr. Martella advises multinational companies on compliance with environmental laws in the United States, China, the European Union, and other nations.

Mr. Martella was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate as EPA General Counsel. In that role, Mr. Martella served as EPA’s chief legal advisor supervising an office of 350 attorneys and staff in Washington and 10 regional offices. At EPA, Mr. Martella served as Agency counsel on six Supreme Court decisions, including Massachusetts v. EPA (climate change); Defenders of Wildlife v. EPA (finding no Endangered Species Act duty to consult when approving state water program); EPA v. Rapanos and Maine v. S.D. Warren (landmark decisions addressing federal jurisdiction over waters of the United States); Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy (addressing Clean Air Act enforcement against powerplants); and U.S. v. Atlantic Research Corp. (the Court’s most recent decision regarding CERCLA).

In particular, Mr. Martella led the team responsible for developing for the first time under the Clean Air Act the federal government’s climate change legal framework and options in response to the landmark Supreme Court decision Massachusetts v. EPA, which held greenhouse gases to be air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. His efforts included developing a full range of legal options for decision makers related to greenhouse gas regulation, alternative and renewable fuels, the development of regulatory carbon sequestration controls, and the intersection of climate change and natural resource issues including the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. Recognized for his knowledge on legal approaches to addressing climate change, Mr. Martella focuses specifically on dissecting the extraordinarily complex and interrelated ramifications of climate change on numerous provisions of the Clean Air Act relating to mobile and stationary sources, as well as other laws, such as the ESA and NEPA. Mr. Martella’s experience in this area enables him to work to forecast for clients the likelihood of upcoming regulations and controls in the area of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability, and to develop strategic approaches to be best prepared for such controls. Mr. Martella also focuses on international climate issues, working with Chinese institutes on climate and clean energy issues and advocating for conformity between United States climate rules with the European Union. Since the April 2007 Massachusetts decision, Mr. Martella has been invited to address climate change regulation more than twenty-five times in the United States and abroad.

In addition to climate change responsibilities, Mr. Martella focuses on the challenges in adapting existing and frequently outdated environmental law tools toward new and complex environmental challenges of national and international sustainability, including the increasing demands on industry to promote environmentally sustainable development protecting air, water, land, and human health.

Recognizing deficiencies in the China environmental law framework and the challenges for multinational organizations in understanding the laws on the books, Mr. Martella created the China Environmental Law Initiative in 2007. As part of the initiative, Mr. Martella created the only known website devoted to China environmental laws and organized with the State Environmental Protection Agency (now the Ministry of Environmental Protection) two separate symposia in China. Mr. Martella has served as a visiting professor at the Environmental Law Institute of Wuhan University and the State Environmental Protection Agency, and at Tsinghua University, working with academics, officials and students on developing environmental law frameworks for China. Mr. Martella has testified as an expert on this issue before the United States Congress, worked with numerous government officials at the national and provincial level in China, and has lectured with academics and students at leading universities and think tanks in both nations.

Prior to joining EPA, Mr. Martella most recently served as the Principal Counsel for Complex Litigation at the Justice Department’s Natural Resources Section, where he focused on defending federal decisions relating to public lands, national forests, minerals, federal and tribal water rights and allocations, endangered species, NEPA, and Native American property and reservations. During nearly eight years at the Department of Justice, Mr. Martella maintained an unbroken record of successfully litigating every case he brought to court. His first chair trial responsibility included a 12 week jury trial that returned a $36.9 million verdict, a seven week bench trial that resulted in a $247.9 million judgment, an unbroken record of successfully defending against numerous emergency injunctions brought against timber and mining projects, and successfully defending the Secretary of Interior from a contempt motion at trial. Mr. Martella’s responsibilities in the Natural Resources and the Indian Resources Sections related to federal land use decisions and policy; defense of federal statutes, regulations, and agency action under the APA, ESA, NEPA, and other statutes; competing assertions of jurisdiction and land use control among various government entities; federal programs relating to natural, cultural, wildlife, and marine resources; pollution control issues under Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, CERCLA, RCRA, TSCA, FIFRA, and EPCRA; and issues related to water, hunting, fishing, and treaty rights. Mr. Martella received among the highest honors at the Department of Justice including the John Marshall Award and the Assistant Attorney General’s Excellence Award.

Mr. Martella graduated from Vanderbilt Law School, where he was Editor in Chief of the Vanderbilt Law Review, and Cornell University, where he studied environmental science. Following law school, he clerked for the Hon. David M. Ebel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr. Martella, elected at large to the Warrenton, VA, Town Council, devotes significant effort to public service in his community and was recognized in 2006 as Citizen of the Year by the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors for his public service and volunteerism efforts.

Representative examples of Mr. Martella’s presentations include:

• Speaker, Joint US-China Cooperation on Clean Energy, China Energy Forum, Beijing (November 2008)
• Speaker, Defining Sustainable Development: Land Use, Climate Change, and Water Resources, Cornell Law School Sustainability Conference (November 2008)
• Keynote Speaker, Getting your Goals to Green: Global Sustainability Challenges (and Solutions) in the New Green World, Argyle Executive Forum, Chicago (September 2008)
• Speaker, China and the Environment, ABA SEER Committee on International Environmental Law (September 2008)
• Speaker, The Regulatory Roadmap to Addressing Climate Change, German Truman Foundation, Los Angeles (September 2008)
• Speaker, Upcoming Developments in Nanotechnology Regulation, Environmental Law Institute (July 2008)
• Speaker, The Regulatory Roadmap to Climate Change Regulations for the Next Administration: EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Sidley Austin Teleconference (July 2008)
• Speaker, Massachusetts v. EPA: One Year Later, D.C. Bar Seminar (June 2008)
• Visiting Lecturer, The Regulatory Roadmap to Climate Change: Domestic and International, Environmental Law Institute of Wuhan University and State Environmental Protection Agency, Wuhan Law School, Wuhan, China (June 2008)
• Speaker, Forest Sustainability and Climate Change, Conference on China and the Global Forest Products Trade: Trade of Legal and Sustainable Wood in China, Beijing, China (June 2008)
• Visiting Lecturer, The Regulatory Roadmap to Climate Change: Domestic and International, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (June 2008)
• Speaker, Climate Change and Air Quality – Cross Border Issues, 2008 National Environmental Energy and Resources Law Summit, Ottawa, Ont. (May 2008)
• Keynote, Climate Change: What’s on the Horizon, presented at Clean Air Act Information Network, Washington, D.C. (May 2008)
• Speaker, EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Why, What, and When, presented at ALI-ABA 2^nd Annual Course on Climate Change, Washington, D.C. (April 2008)
• Symposium Leader and Speaker, U.S. E.P.A.-China S.E.P.A. Symposium, Beijing and Shanghai, China (April 2008)
• Speaker, The Polar Bear: From Threatened Species to Greenhouse Gas Controls?, Sidley Austin Teleconference (April 2008)
• Speaker, Environmental Law: The Next Generation, Edison Electric Institute, Washington, D.C. (March 2008)
• Speaker, “A Lawyer’s Carbon Footprint (aka) The Greenhouse Gas Lifecycle of an Environmental Litigator,” Keystone, CO (March 2008)
• Speaker, Hot Topics: Air and Climate, Keystone, CO (March 2008)
• Speaker, Environmental Law and Climate Change Issues in China, American University Law School, Washington, D.C. (March 2008)
• Speaker, University of Virginia Environmental Law Panels 9^th Annual Conference, Charlottesville, VA (February 2008)
• Witness, Congressional-Executive Commission on China, “The 2008 Olympics: A Better Environment for Beijing but what About China,” testimony before U.S. Congress, Washington, D.C. (February 2008)
• Speaker, Climate Change and the Clean Air Act: Regulation and Litigation, BNA, Washington, D.C. (January 2008)
• Speaker, DC Bar sponsored Administrative Law and Agency Practice Sections’ General Counsel’s lunch, Washington, D.C. (January 2008)
• Speaker, Woodrow Wilson Center China Environmental forum titled “Restocking China’s Environmental Tool Kit: Improving Implementation of Energy and Pollution Control Laws,” Washington, D.C. (January 2008)
• Keynote, ALI/ABA Clean Water Act Law Regulation Course, Washington Hilton Embassy Row, Washington, D.C. (October 2007)
• Perspectives on Environmental Protection in China, DC Bar Forum, Washington, D.C. (October 2007)
• Environmental Law and Federalism in the United States and its Potential Relevance for China, Vermont Law School / Sun Yat-Sen University Law School Roundtable, Guangzhou, China (September 2007)
• Environmental Law and Federalism in the United States and its Potential Relevance for China, Shanghai Jiaotong Law School and Environmental Policy Center Roundtable, Shanghai, China (September 2007)
• Keynote, American Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Shanghai, China (September 2007)
• Environmental Law and Federalism in the United States and its Potential Relevance for China, Beijing, Tsinghua University Law School Roundtable, Beijing, China (September 2007)
• Keynote, Workshop on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Environmental Issues, Beijing, China (September 2007)
• After NAHB v. Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Law Institute’s Endangered Species Act panel discussion, Washington, D.C. (July 2007)
• Keynote, ABA Section of the Environment, Energy and Resources titled “Key Environmental Issues in U.S. EPA Region 1 Program,” Boston, MA (May 2007)
• Keynote, ABA Section of the Environment, Energy and Resources titled “Key Environmental Issues in U.S. EPA Region 4 Program,” Atlanta, GA (May 2007)
• Reflections on Federalism in U.S. Environmental Law, 4^th International Colloquium on Global Warming, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (May 2007)
• Environmental Sustainability: Three Guiding Principles, Sustainability Training, ASAE & Center for Association Leadership, Washington, D.C. (May 2007)
• Hot Topics in Environmental Law, General Counsel Roundtable - Legal and Regulatory Outlook in the Chemical Industry sponsored by Squire, Sanders and Dempsey L.L.P., Miami, FL (April 2007)
• Legal Tools for International Environmental Protection, George Washington University Law School National Assoc. of Environmental Law Association’s Conference – Lerner Hall, Washington, D.C. (March 2007)
• EPA’s Proposed Water Transfers Rule, at the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources 25^th Annual Water Law Conference, “Changing Values – Changing Conflicts,” San Diego, CA (February 2007)