Endangerment Finding  

Moderator

Fred Wagner
Principal Environmental Advisor
Jacobs

Fred Wager focuses on environmental and natural resource issues, associated with major infrastructure, mining, and energy project development. He has worked on complex environmental reviews from his very first day at the U.S. Department of Justice Environment Division in 1987 until his recent arrival at Jacobs in March 2025. Over the course of his career, he has partnered with public agencies and private developers across all major sectors of the American economy to help prepare excellent NEPA documents and to defend those documents in court. Fred has worked on the successful completion of environ-mental assessments and environmental impact statements for major highway, bridge, freight and passenger rail, and transit projects, proposals to expand domestic mining production, urban sports facilities and arenas, onshore and off-shore renewable and traditional energy development, forest and rangeland management plans, and the development of a new Presidential Center in Chicago. Most recently, Fred was counsel of record in the consequential Supreme Court NEPA case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, 605 U.S. ---, 145 S.Ct. 1497 (2025).

He served as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Federal Highway Administration from 2010-2014. In that capacity, he helped lead inter-agency efforts to reform NEPA reviews and project permitting. Those efforts led to substantial legislative and regulatory accomplishments reflected in transportation reauthorization bills (MAP-21 and the FAST Act)and the origins of the Federal Permitting Council. Fred also helps clients obtain federal permit approvals across the full spectrum of environmental and natural resources programs folded into NEPA reviews, including Clean Water Act Section 404/401 permits, cultural and historic resources analyses, Section 7 ESA consultations and approvals, Coast Guard navigability reviews, and petitions before the Surface Transportation Board. Fred serves on the Board of Advisors to the Eno Center for Transportation and as Chair of the Policy and Organization Group for the Transportation Research Board. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on a wide variety of environmental law and policy issues.

Speakers

Karen Burchardt
Senior Air Quality Specialist
HDR

Karen is a Senior Air Quality Specialist at HDR. She has worked in the environmental engineering and environmental compliance field since 2000, focusing primarily on air and water pollution control. She specializes in air quality permitting for a variety of power and industrial clients, helping them acquire and comply with construction and operating permits.

Karen serves as the national Air Quality Practice group lead for HDR. She has also been the Senior Air Quality Specialist or contributing author for multiple National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) projects. Her air quality experience also includes air pollution control system design, feasibility assessments, and cost estimate development

Karen earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a Professional Engineer licensed in five (5) states and has a passion for mentoring women in STEM fields.

HDR is a 100% employee-owned, global professional services firm specializing in architecture, engineering, environmental and construction services.

David Doniger
Senior Attorney and Strategic Director
Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate and Energy Division

David Doniger is Senior Attorney and Strategic Director in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate and Energy Division. As an attorney and policy advocate, David has worked for more than four decades to implement the U.S. Clean Air Act and to achieve international agreements to protect the ozone layer and the climate.

David started at NRDC in 1978. He served in the Clinton administration in the White House and at the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993 to 2001. Returning to NRDC in 2001, he has focused combatting climate change through the Clean Air Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and other legislation.

David has represented NRDC in many cases at all three levels of the federal courts. He argued Chevron v. NRDC and co-authored an amicus brief in Loper Bright v. Raimondo. He represented NRDC or other clients in the Supreme Court’s four cases addressing EPA’s climate change authority, from Massachusetts v. EPA to West Virginia v. EPA. He is currently representing NRDC in American Public Health Association v. EPA in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, challenging EPA’s repeal of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding and vehicle emission standards.

David’s work on phasing out CFCs and other ozone-destroying chemicals helped lead to the Montreal Protocol, the world’s most successful environmental treaty. More recently he helped expand that treaty to phase down the powerful climate changing pollutants known as HFCs.

David has a B.A. in history from Yale University. He has a J.D. and a Masters in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.