Leadership

Alan Lilly, a longtime water rights and environmental attorney, was appointed on September 18, 2019, as the first Presiding Officer of the State Water Resources Control Board’s new Administrative Hearings Office.

Mr. Lilly’s selection follows the state legislature’s adoption in 2018 of Assembly Bill 747, which, effective July 1, 2019, enacted Water Code sections 1110-1114.  These statutes created the Administrative Hearings Office as an independent office within the State Water Board to hold hearings and issue orders in water-rights proceedings.   (Administrative Hearings Office orders are subject to review by the five-member State Water Board.) Previously, Board members presided over all major water-rights hearings.

Mr. Lilly has a unique combination of legal and scientific expertise and experience. For most of his career, Mr. Lilly worked for private law firms, representing public agencies and private parties in various matters before the courts and the State Board, and in contract negotiations and related proceedings.  These matters involved applications of water-rights law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the National Environmental Policy Act, and the federal and California Endangered Species Acts to surface water, groundwater, water service, water quality, environmental and eminent domain issues. Mr. Lilly also worked as a law clerk for a United States District Court Judge in Colorado and as a Deputy Attorney General in California.

Mr. Lilly earned a Bachelors degree in physics and biology from UC Santa Cruz and a Masters degree in physics and a Juris Doctorate degree from UC Berkeley.