Adell Amos, School of Law Environmental & Natural Resources Program

Adell Amos, Clayton R. Hess Professor of Law

Professor
Executive Director, Environment Initiative
aamos@uoregon.edu
Practice Areas: Drought, Environment, Natural Resources, Wilderness, Conservation, EPA, Policy, Law

Faculty bio | 541-346-3826

Adell L. Amos' research emphasizes the jurisdictional governance structures that are deployed for water resources management in the United States and internationally. She focuses on the relationship between federal and state governments on water resource management, the role of administrative agencies in setting national, state, and local water policy, the role of law in developing water policy and responding to change, and the impact of stakeholder participation in water resource decision-making. She is currently working on a multi-year project which focuses on the integration of law and policy into hydrologic and socioeconomic modeling for the Willamette River Basin through a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary effort funded by the NOAA and the National Science Foundation. Amos previously served in the Obama Administration as the deputy solicitor for Land and Water Resources at the U.S. Department of the Interior where she oversaw legal and policy issues involving the nation’s water resources and public lands. She worked directly on water resilience and planning, wilderness policy, the National Landscape Conservation System, renewable energy and its associated water footprint, low-impact hydropower, dam removal efforts including the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, and many others.

Recent Media: 
Dam removal restores flows to historic Klamath River canyon (Geographical, Nov. 23, 2023)
Oregon could glean lessons from Colorado River compromise (Oregon Public Broadcasting, July 11, 2023)
Reclaiming our public waters after the Supreme Court’s devastating decision (Washington Monthly, June 9, 2023)
Race to the bottom: How Central Oregon groundwater sells to the highest bidders (Oregon Public Broadcasting, July 19, 2022)
Montana Water Court decides tribal water rights in first-of-its-kind decision (Montana Free Press, July 27, 2021)
Will history repeat in a dry Klamath Basin this summer? (High Country News, June 14, 2021)
New study: Drought response must begin early, upstream (The Register-Guard, July 15, 2019) 
Study offers new approach for Willamette River drought fixes (Around the O, July 11, 2019)
The future of water in Oregon (1859 Oregon's Magazine, Summer 2016)
Why the BLM’s decision on the Cadiz project was the right one: Guest commentary (Los Angeles Daily News, Oct. 31, 2015)
EPA’s Clean Water Rule: What’s at stake and what comes next, (The Conversation, June 3, 2015)