John Pendergrass

John Pendergrass

John Pendergrass

Senior Vice President
(202) 939-3846

Mr. Pendergrass is Senior Vice President at ELI. He oversees all programmatic activities of the institute, including the Research and Policy Division, which conducts legal and policy research and analyses of pressing environmental and natural resource issues in the U.S. and globally. He also oversees the content of the institute's Educational Programs and its Publications Division, which produces the Environmental Law Reporter, the Environmental Forum, and books. He manages a staff of more than 35 lawyers, scientists, and other professionals, plus Visiting Scholars and other volunteers.

Media Guide
Expertise
  • Climate Change: UNFCCC, energy subsidies
  • International: governance, enforcement, sustainable development, natural resource management
  • Judiciary: judicial education
  • Law: Superfund enforcement
  • Pollution: Superfund, brownfields cleanup and redevelopment, hazardous substances, nanotechnology
  • Water: national pollutant discharge elimination system permit system and state programs
Education
  • J.D., Case Western Reserve University, 1979
  • B.S. in environmental science, Michigan State University, 1976
Selected Publications

“Reimagining the Future,” in The Environmental Forum, July/August 2021 (with LeRoy Paddock).

"Environmental liability litigation could remedy biodiversity loss," Conservation Letters (DOI: 10.1111/conl.12821) (Phelps et. al.)(2021).

“Environmental Rule of Law: First Global Report,” UN Environment (2019) (co-author).

“CLEARING THE PATH: Citizen Science and Public Decision Making in the United States,” James McElfish, John Pendergrass, and Talia Fox (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 2016).

“Addressing the Risks of Nanomaterials under United States and European Union Regulatory Frameworks for Chemicals,” chapter in Assessing Nanoparticle Risks to Human Health (2d Ed.) (Gurumurthy Ramachandran, Ed) (Linda K. Breggin, Robert Falkner, John Pendergrass, Read Porter, and Nico Jaspars) (Elsevier 2016).

Environmental Law Reporter, Tropical Conservation and Liability for Environmental Harm, November 2015 (Carol A. Jones, John Pendergrass, Jacob Phelps, and John Broderick).

John Pendergrass, Life-Cycle Costs of Institutional Controls, in Amy Edwards, ed., Implementing Institutional Controls at Brownfields and Other Contaminated Sites 2d Ed. (ABA, 2012).

Linda Breggin and John Pendergrass, Regulation of Nanoscale Materials under Media-Specific Environmental Laws, in D. Bowman, G. Hodge, and A. Maynard, eds., International Handbook on Regulating Nanotechnologies, (Edward Elgar, 2010).

John Pendergrass, Guidance Note on the Judiciary, in Pollution Prevention and Abatement Handbook, (World Bank 2010).

Linda Breggin, Robert Falkner, Nico Jaspars, John Pendergrass, and Read Porter, Securing the Promise of Nanotechnologies: Towards Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation (Chatham House 2009)

John Pendergrass, Legal Background to Off-Site Contamination, in Robert A Simons ed., When Bad Things Happen to Good Property (Envtl. L. Inst. 2006).

John Pendergrass & Katherine N. Probst, Estimating the Cost of Institutional Controls (2005).

John Pendergrass, Robert A. Simons & Kimberly Winson-Geideman, Quantifying Long-Term Environmental Regulatory Risk for Brownfields: Are Reopeners Really an Issue?, 46 J. Envtl. Plan. & Mgmt. 257 (2003).

Around the States (column), Envtl. F. (1991 to 2010).