Angela Morrison

Angela draws on over three decades of robust experience to assist clients with environmental permitting and compliance matters at federal, state, and local levels. Her thorough understanding of the Clean Air Act (CAA) enables her to provide clients with practical advice in this complex area of environmental law. And though she focuses a large part of her practice on air quality and climate change, Angela has broad environmental experience and counsels clients on matters related to wetlands and navigable waters, water use, endangered species, land use, contaminant release reporting, risk assessment, remediation, and solid and hazardous waste. Her projects span diverse industry sectors including steel, cement, phosphate, chemical, food processing, agriculture, oil and gas, mining, automobile, boat, electric utilities, renewable fuel, recycling, and waste management. Angela has capitalized on her comprehensive knowledge and experience in these areas to help site and license new greenfield projects, including power plants, waste-to-energy and renewable energy facilities, and large commercial and residential developments.

With her focus on the CAA, Angela routinely advises clients on a variety of air-related issues, including applicability determinations and compliance matters related to New Source Performance Standards, National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, the Good Neighbor Plan, and the regional haze program. She also defends her clients in enforcement matters and assists with notifications of contaminant releases. Significantly, Angela has worked on hundreds of New Source Review (NSR) and Title V air operating permits, as well as countless minor NSR permits and permit amendments for stationary sources being constructed, operated, expanded, or modified. More recently, her permitting work has included considerations of environmental justice and Title VI civil rights protections.

• Routinely represents and counsels a wide variety of industry, utility, and government clients in obtaining environmental permits and approvals for new or modified facilities, ensuring compliance with environmental permits and regulations, and defending enforcement actions.
• Lead and co-lead counsel on dozens of traditional power plants and associated linear facilities (e.g., rail spurs, transmission lines, natural gas laterals), as well as energy transition projects involving siting, licensing, certification (including 10 projects under the Florida Electrical Power Plant Siting Act), and compliance—with generation totaling more than 11,000 MWs. For certification-related projects, counsels and advises regarding construction and operation impacts, such as impacts to air quality; ecological resources, including endangered and threatened species and their habitats, sensitive lands, and areas of concerns (e.g., wetlands, lakes, rivers, floodplains); groundwater and surface water; waste generation and disposal; stormwater runoff; socioeconomics (including employment); traffic; and archeological and historical resources. For these types of energy facilities or other new, large developments routinely provides land use advice and counsel related to consistency with current land use and zoning designations and assists with obtaining any needed variances or special use authorizations.
• Routinely represents clients operating in the waste sector with siting requirements, environmental permits and approvals, and regulatory compliance determinations. Clients in this sector include waste-to-energy facilities, landfills, transfer facilities, waste transportation operations, medical waste incinerators, waste tire recycling facilities, and engineered alternative fuels operations.
• Regularly represents clients siting new renewable energy facilities by assisting with site selection and necessary environmental permits and approvals, including biomass, ethanol, biodiesel, renewable natural gas, blue and green hydrogen, ammonia, and solar facilities. Also represents industrial and utility clients converting from traditional fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, including biomass, plastics, and other secondary materials.
• Routinely represents clients in complex air permitting matters for stationary sources under the Prevention of Significant Deterioration, Nonattainment New Source Review, minor source, and Title V programs involving development of the application, negotiation of permit terms and conditions, and defense of third-party challenges; has represented clients from more than a dozen different industry sectors with air emission units falling within more than fifty different source categories on hundreds of permits.
• Routinely provides daily counsel on compliance with permit conditions and complex federal and state regulations implemented under the Clean Air Act (CAA), including New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPs), State Implementation Plans (SIPs), Section 114 requests for information, Section and 112(r) risk management plans, and on release reporting to federal, state, and local agencies under EPCRA and CERCLA.
• Regularly represents utility and industrial clients as well as trade groups seeking improvements to proposed new or existing state and federal rules implementing the CAA, including rulemakings to address residual and technology reviews under Section 112, to ensure that their interests are being appropriately considered, help raise awareness of potential consequences, and minimize unnecessary adverse economic or operational impacts.
• Routinely represents clients receiving warning letters or notices of violation, at both the federal and state level, through counseling and helping negotiate resolutions through dismissal or settlement, including assessments of consistency with penalty matrices, recent precedents, mitigating factors, and the potential for supplemental environmental projects.
• Regularly assists clients with community outreach efforts when appropriate, such as when a new power plant is being proposed, a proposed permit has become controversial, or in response to concerns raised by third parties, including claims related to Environmental Justice.
• Represents clients in determining compliance with EPA’s risk management plan regulations for chemical accidents under Section 112(r) of the Clean Air Act and in defending allegations of non-compliance by EPA.
• Routinely represents clients seeking Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) permits requiring the application of Best Available Control Technology (BACT) to greenhouse gas emissions. Advises clients regarding potential eligibility for emission reduction credits under various programs, including California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard and EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard.  Advised multiple clients regarding applicability of and compliance requirements under emission reduction, emission reporting, and state cap and trade programs. 
• Routinely advises clients involved with potential purchases of or seeking funding for new and existing industrial facilities and power plants (fossil-fuel-fired and biomass-fired) by confirming whether such facilities have all federal, state, and local environmental permits needed for construction and operation and are in full compliance.
• Routinely assists clients with responding to EPA requests for information tied to compliance requirements and development of new emission standards, including ones that require emission testing and significant data gathering.
• Represents clients regarding development or activity that may impact wetlands, navigable water, or endangered or threatened species, assisting with required authorizations and approvals, on- and off-site mitigation, and the establishment of mitigation and habitat banks that can provide offsets for future impacts. This work involves authorizations pursuant local, state, and federal law, such as Section 404 of the Clean Water Act and Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act.

• Named a Circle of Excellence Award winner for Environmental Law, Miami-Dade County Bar Association, 2024
• Recognized as a Best Lawyer, Environmental Law, The Best Lawyers in America, 2018-2024
• Selected as a Super Lawyer, Environmental Law, Florida Super Lawyers Magazine, 2019-2024
• Peer Review Rated AV Preeminent, Martindale-Hubbell, 2021-2025
• Named as a Legal Elite, Environmental Law, Florida Trend, 2018
• Recognized as an Honored Listee, Marquis Who’s Who, 2023
• Section Chair’s Award for Outstanding Contribution, American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources, 2017-2018
• Gold Star Speaker’s Award (for 26 years of excellence in professional environmental education), Alabama Section and Coastal Plains Chapter, Air and Waste Management Association, 2015
• Outstanding Alumnus Award, Law Review, Oklahoma City University School of Law, 2010

• American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources
  • Co-Chair, Clean Air Act Conference, 2023
  • Book Publishing Board, 2021-2023
  • Council Member, 2015-2018
  • Section Chair’s Award for Outstanding Contribution, 2017-2018
  • Trends Newsletter Editor in Chief, Board Member, 2009-2015
  • Fall Conference Planning Committee Chair, Co-Chair, Vice Chair, 2008, 2011-2012, 2014
  • Air Quality Committee Chair, Co-Chair, Vice Chair, 2005-2012
• The Florida Bar
  • State & Federal Government & Administrative Practice Certification Committee, 2020-2023
  • Grievance Committee, Second Circuit, 2021-2023
• Administrative Law Section of The Florida Bar
  • State & Federal Government & Administrative Practice Committee, 2018-2023
  • Continuing Legal Education Committee, 2018-2021
• Environmental and Land Use Law Section of The Florida Bar
  • Executive Council, 2019-2022
  • Continuing Legal Education Committee, 2019-2021
• Air and Waste Management Association
  • Coastal Plains Chapter, 1991-2018
  • Northeast Chapter Conference Chair, 2014
  • Florida Section Director, 2012-2013
  • Florida Section Conference Co-Chair, 2013
• Member, Florida Association of Environmental Professionals
• Member, Tallahassee Area Association of Environmental Professionals
• Florida Bar Foundation Fellow
• American Bar Foundation Life Fellow
• Member, Miami-Dade County Bar Association

• Cherokee Nation, Tribal Citizen
• Leadership Tallahassee, Class XIX
• Kids Voting Leon County, Past Chair
• Tallahassee Film Society, Volunteer Attorney
• Equality Florida Volunteer
• Friends of Rish Park Advocate
• Advocate for civil rights and antidiscrimination based on disabilities, sexual orientation, and gender