Houston Branch Meeting Technical Speaker #2

An attorney for more than 30 years, Jim Blackburn is a partner in Blackburn Carter, P.C., a firm devoted to environmental law and planning where his current case load includes litigation over the future of the whooping crane, environmental impact of Corps permitting on Galveston Island, and the failure of the State of Texas to regulate carbon dioxide and flooding on White Oak Bayou. Blackburn is also a Professor in the Practice in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University, teaching courses in sustainable development and environmental law. He serves as Director of the Interdisciplinary Minor in Energy and Water Sustainability at Rice and is a Faculty Associate for the SSPEED Center studying “Lessons Learned from Hurricane Ike” and at the China-U.S. Center at Rice University. Mr. Blackburn is active in community issues and is the co-founder of Houston Wilderness, the Matagorda Bay Foundation and the Galveston Bay Foundation. He was the recipient of The Barbara C. Jordan Community Advocate Award presented by Texas Southern University in 2007, the National Conservation Achievement Award in 2001 from the National Wildlife Federation and the Bob Eckhardt Lifetime Achievement Award for coastal preservation efforts from the General Land Office of the State of Texas in 1998. He was awarded an honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects for legal work associated with urban quality of life issues in 2003. In October 2004, Texas A&M press published his manuscript titled The Book of Texas Bays, which focuses upon the current environmental health of bays in Texas and the efforts undertaken to protect them. In 2009, Blackburn co-authored a compilation of art and poems titled Birds: A Collection of Verse and Vision. Blackburn received both a B.A. in History and a J.D. at the University of Texas at Austin and an M.S. in Environmental Science at Rice University.