Law School – Publications

My article, titled “When Desal in California Gets the Green Light: A Comparison of Four Projects,” was published in the Environs Environmental Law and Policy Journal in May 2025. Thank you to the Environs editors for giving me this opportunity and for their thoughtful feedback throughout the editing process!

This article began as my final paper for Water Law, which I took my last semester of law school. Living in Los Angeles, in a region which is particularly impacted by record-setting droughts, wildfires, and climate change, I was interested in learning more about desalination and whether it could be a feasible solution to the water scarcity problem in California. While desalination has historically been a small contributor to California’s water supply, drought conditions and water shortages have spurred cities to build desalination plants along the coast. Thus, desalination will likely play an increasing role in meeting growing water demand in the State, in conjunction with other sources including brackish desalination, recycled water, and stormwater. However, desalination remains economically and environmentally costly, particularly for low-income, minority communities. Thus, in this paper I sought to understand the factors behind whether a desalination project is approved or denied, using four recent projects in California as case studies: Carlsbad (in operation since 2015), Huntington Beach (denied May 2022), Doheny (approved October 2022), and Marina (approved November 2022). Analyzing four factors—permitting process, environmental impact, cost on the local community, and dependence on desalination—these case studies highlight the importance of using desalination as a last resort option, mitigating a project’s impacts on marine life and the environment, and involving the local community in the decision-making process. Based on these case studies, I suggest some best practices that California can adopt as the State continues to develop desalination projects.

My student Note, titled “Shelby County to Clean Air Act: Evaluating the Constitutionality of California’s Clean Air Act Waiver Under the Equal Sovereignty Doctrine,” was published in the Southern California Law Review in January 2024.

In my Note, I analyze the constitutionality of the Clean Air Act waiver provision, section 209(b)(1), that allows California to promulgate motor vehicle emissions regulations. When choosing a topic, I started off with a broad interest in environmental and energy law. California had recently passed a regulation in August 2022 requiring all new cars sold in the state to be electric by 2035. Upon looking into this further, I found that California’s authority to regulate vehicle emissions comes from a waiver exception in the Clean Air Act, and that there was a pending lawsuit, Ohio v. EPA, challenging this waiver provision. The Clean Air Act provision thus seemed like a timely and interesting topic, and my Note advisor, Professor Craig, helped me narrow down my topic to addressing one issue in the lawsuit, which has implications on California’s ability to remain a leader in motor vehicle emissions and accelerate the nation’s transition towards a clean energy future.

This was probably the largest research and writing project I have ever taken on, and while the writing process was a long journey, I enjoyed the process of diving deeper into a topic that interested me. It was especially rewarding to see what started out as a tangled mess of research transform into a coherent work, and getting published was like the icing on the cake! I’m very honored and grateful to the Law Review for this opportunity.