Marcella Burke, Esq.
Marcella Burke leads the Houston office’s Environmental Health and Safety practice. She specializes in energy and environmental issues and represents companies in a range of regulatory and enforcement matters. This includes air, water, waste, and toxic chemicals issues related to conventional oil and gas, hydraulic fracturing, coal decommissioning, nuclear, biofuels, solar development and offshore wind. She also leads the firm’s Energy Transition initiative and is a board member of the Houston ESG Council.
Marcella represents clients with products or services regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Interior (DOI) and state government agencies such as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
Marcella served at the EPA as Deputy General Counsel. She also served at the DOI as Deputy Solicitor for Energy and Natural Resources, and Senior Counselor to the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. In her roles at DOI, Marcella was lead counsel for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation (OSMRE), all of which oversee management of federal lands, rulemakings and comments to proposed rules, enforcement matters, decommissioning and other end of life asset liability matters, regulatory environmental appeals, and high-stakes, complex incident responses and disputes.
She served as Counsel to the Royalty Policy Committee and received appointments with the Regulatory Reform Task Force and as National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) team lead for all energy project approvals. In these roles, she worked closely with the Department of Justice, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Office of Management & Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other federal agencies.