Elizabeth E Mack

Career

Elizabeth offers clients award-winning practical experience, technical and scientific knowledge, down-to-earth explanations, and a reasonable, business-oriented approach to environmental issues.

Elizabeth represents developers, manufacturing concerns, energy companies, and other institutions in a variety of transactions with a focus on analyzing and managing environmental risks and liabilities. Known for practicality and keeping business interests in mind, she also advises clients regarding the environmental issues associated with the purchase, sale, and development of all types of real estate, including contaminated brownfield sites. Elizabeth works on all aspects of contaminated property ownership, from identifying environmental issues to assessing risks, developing methods to manage risk, addressing environmental issues and achieving regulatory closure, to developing and implementing transactional structures to mitigate the potential for environmental liability.

As part of her client work, she regularly analyzes environmental insurance policies and secures appropriate insurance. During ownership, clients also turn to Elizabeth to oversee remediation, work with regulatory agencies, manage environmental audits, and assist in resolving property conditions issues from PCBs to LBP to radon.

Elizabeth regularly works with the USEPA and environmental agencies (and licensed site professionals in privatized states) across the U.S. to resolve clients’ environmental issues. She assists clients with pursuing brownfield tax credits and similar incentives, where available and desired. Elizabeth also advises clients and works with resource agencies regarding protected waters permitting and endangered species issues.

Elizabeth is equally at home in the courtroom, in arbitration, and in dispute resolution. Among other matters, she resolved a major pipeline jet fuel sub-surface release on Cape Cod, MA, against the U.S. Department of Justice and private parties. She was lead counsel for an electric co-generator company in the appeal of the TCEQ’s negative use determination denying a pollution control exemption for heat recovery steam generators in electricity production, obtaining a unanimous decision to overturn the determination. Following a USEPA-issued emergency order under the Safe Drinking Water Act and subsequent appeals to the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Tenth Circuits, Elizabeth negotiated a resolution of alleged impacts from oil field operations on drinking water sources in Native American tribal lands. She also was co-lead counsel for Fina in Fina, Inc. v Arco, 200 F.3d 266 (5th Cir. 2000), which established the standards for environmental indemnities in the Fifth Circuit. Elizabeth was co-lead counsel for Cooper Industries in the federal district court and Fifth Circuit (including en banc) for Cooper Industries, Inc., in Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Aviall Services, Inc., 543 U.S. 157 (2004), which is a seminal case associated with CERCLA Sections 107 and 113 liability.

Elizabeth regularly represents clients on NEPA issues. She has represented gas pipeline owners, transportation authorities, and airlines in preparing and/or consulting on environmental assessments and environmental impact statements. She also works with consultants, federal and state resource agencies, and citizens groups to bring consensus, order, and speed to the NEPA process.

Professional Memberships

Chair, executive committee member, Harvard Alumni Real Estate Board (2024-present)

Executive committee member, Dallas Regional Chamber (2021-present)

Former chair, State Bar of Texas Litigation Section (2008-2009)

Personal

Board member, Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) of Texas

Board member, University of Texas College of Fine Arts, Advisory Council

Board member, Texas Appleseed (2007-present)

Former board chair (2016-2018)

Former member, Texas Supreme Court Task Force, Expanding Legal Services to the Poor (2006-2017)