Best of the Books: Reflections on Recent Literature in Natural Resources and the Environment

Oliver A. Houck is a Professor of Law at Tulane University Law School. His specialties involve environmental, natural resources, and criminal law. He is active in legal proceedings involving wildlife, wetland, coastal, and pollution issues and publishes regularly on these and related topics. Houck served as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., and as National Wildlife Federation general counsel and vice president before joining the Tulane law faculty in 1981. He has since served on the boards of Defenders of Wildlife, the Environmental Law Institute, and the Environmental Defense Fund, an advisory board of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and two committees of the National Science Foundation. He has also founded several public interest organizations in Louisiana and at Tulane Law School and has consulted on the development of environmental law in Cuba and other Latin American countries. He has published several books, including Taking Back Eden (on environmental lawsuits abroad), Down on the Batture (on the Lower Mississippi River), The Clean Water Act TMDL Program (pollution control), and most recently Downstream Toward Home (on rivers of North America). He also has written extensively for academic journals and general interest publications.

G. Tracy Mehan III is Executive Director of Government Affairs for the American Water Works Association. Mehan has a long and accomplished career in natural resources and environmental protection. For much of 2015, he served as Interim President of the U.S. Water Alliance and national Source Water Coordinator for the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities. He was a Principal with The Cadmus Group, Inc., an environmental consulting firm, from 2004 to 2014. He also served as Assistant Administrator for Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pursuant to presidential appointment and U.S. Senate confirmation, from 2001-2003. In that capacity he managed the National Water Program encompassing both the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts. He also has a distinguished career in state service having served as director of the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes and a member of the Cabinet of Governor John Engler from 1993 to 2001. He was director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and a member of Governor John Ashcroft’s Cabinet from 1989 to 1992. Mehan is a member of EPA’s Environmental Financial Advisory Board as well as the board of the Great Lakes Observing System and the advisory board of the Center for Environmental Policy at American University. He served on the Water Science and Technology Board of the National Academies’ National Research Council from 2007-2010. He was also a member of the board of the Potomac Conservancy from 2006 to 2014 and former chair of its Conservation Committee. Mehan is a past board member of the Great Lakes Protection Fund and a former commissioner to the Great Lakes Commission. He also served as chair of the Upper Mississippi Basin Association and member of the Missouri River Basin States Association. He is an adjunct professor at George Mason University School of Law and the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University.