Chris' legal practice emphasizes the coordination and strategic engagement of lobbying services at the state and local level to support client efforts to secure new water supplies or better manage existing water supplies. Chris serves as special counsel and provides lobbying services for municipalities, utilities, private corporations, public agencies and associations on water supply and infrastructure development projects, groundwater, infrastructure and other regulatory issues.

Prior to joining the firm, Chris served as the Chairwoman of the Board of the San Diego County Water Authority, where she represented the City of San Diego for more than a decade. During that time she also served as Chairwoman of the water policy, finance and imported water committees of the board. She also represented the San Diego region on the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, where she served as Vice Chairwoman of the Board, chaired the water policy and audit committees and served as vice-chair of the engineering and operations committee of the board.

Chris' practice experience includes strategic planning, transactional counseling, negotiation and lobbying efforts on significant water-related and other infrastructure issues. She was a principal architect of the historic San Diego-IID water conservation and transfer agreement, which ultimately became the foundation of California’s Quantification Settlement Agreement and 4.4 Plan. That Agreement also included an Exchange Agreement with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California for transportation of water, and, $235 million state funding of Colorado River works. Chris was a principal negotiator of a Framework resolution of longstanding controversies over groundwater management in the Central and West Basin areas of Los Angeles. Working with environmental groups and other stakeholders, Chris negotiated historic water conservation recommendations for presentation to the California Public Utilities Commission. 

Chris is assisting her clients to navigate the many institutional and political challenges to the development of reliable water supplies and water-related infrastructure in a challenging economy and historic period of change in California water law. She works closely with key policy leaders and decision-makers in legislative and policy arenas to develop and implement public policy based solutions that will meet her clients’ water supply and infrastructure needs and mitigate risk in a changing political, financial and legal landscape.

Chris is a frequent speaker before a wide variety of professional and community forums, including public agencies and local ratepayer groups, on the subjects of water reliability and rates, water distribution system access, level playing field for utilities, and other current water law and public policy issues.