About Us:
The Public Trust Alliance is a project of the Resource Renewal Institute (RRI) www.rri.org, a national nonprofit organization that promotes comprehensive green planning on state and national levels, based on restoration and sustainable use of natural resources. RRI also devotes a percentage of its time to developing or helping new projects that can become useful institutions for improving or preserving public policies. The goal of The Public Trust Alliance is to build the capacity of the public and government representatives to use one of the most powerful tools available to preserve and defend valuable public resources. Guided by a group of advisors, the Alliance team led by Executive Director Michael Warburton, conducts education, networking and advocacy efforts to meet project objectives.
Key Staff
Michael Warburton, Executive Director, was the originator of the Pubic Trust Legal Project in 1996, advocating the application of the Public Trust Doctrine to the military base conversion process. From this base, he participated in the preparation of the 1997 Second Edition of the Coastal State's Organization treatise Putting the Public Trust Doctrine to Work: The Application of the Public Trust Doctrine to the Management of Lands, Waters and Living Resources of the Coastal States. He has served as a later established the Community Water Rights Project, and presently serves on the Steering Committee of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water. He represents environmental justice perspectives on the Public Advisory Committee supporting the 2003 update of the California State Water Plan.
Michael earned his JD at Boalt Hall Law School, UC Berkeley, in 1992, and was a law clerk at the Berkeley Community Law Center and Legal Aid Society of Alameda County working on CEQA cases. He assisted with the State of Alaska’s litigation of the Exxon Valdez oil spill case in 1990. For several years, he was a member of the scientific staff at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, where he worked with interdisciplinary scientists on solutions to environmental problems that cross national frontiers.
Patricia Nelson provides legal writing and advocacy to support the Public Trust Alliance and its members and clients in forums such as Water Right, planning, utility practice and environmental review proceedings.
John Hart, a nationally recognized environmental conservation journalist and poet, writes supporting literature.
An advisory committee shapes the work and advocacy of the Staff.