Join the Witkin State Law Library and Professor Dave Owen for a free live webinar on “Environmental Law and the Things We Need to Build” on Tuesday, June 11, 2024 at 6PM. Is environmental law keeping us from building important things—and from building things that would be good for the environment? Recently, that question has received heated debate, with much of the discussion focusing on housing in California and renewable energy nationwide. In this talk, Professor Dave Owen will explain where that debate is coming from, what light academic research sheds on the debate, and what governments are doing, and could be doing, to facilitate construction of important housing and infrastructure. Professor Owen teaches courses in environmental, water, land use, energy, and administrative law at UC Law San Francisco, where he is also the Associate Dean for Research. He went to Berkeley Law, where he served as editor-in-chief of Ecology Law Quarterly, and then clerked and practiced water law. In 2007, he began teaching at the University of Maine. He joined the UC Law faculty in 2015.  His research focuses primarily on water resource management, and recent projects have addressed water district governance, environmental negotiations, takings litigation, groundwater-surface water interactions, the environmental consulting industry, the roles of federal regional offices, stream protection under the Clean Water Act, and policies to expedite dam removals and hydropower upgrades. Several of his articles have been recognized as among the top environmental-law articles of their years, and he has won UC Law’s highest award for teaching.