Talk on Disaster-driven Ocean Policy to Kick Off Oceans Symposium

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Feb. 14, 2012– The Oceans Symposium at Williams College will begin on Friday, Feb. 17, with a talk by Catherine Robinson Hall, professor in the Williams-Mystic Program, titled “Disaster-Driven Ocean Policy in the United States: Gulf Oil Spill Not Big Enough?” The lecture will take place at 2:30 p.m. in Wege Auditorium, Thompson Chemistry. The event is free and open to the public.
At the Williams-Mystic Program, Hall teaches Marine Policy. Hall is also an environmental attorney with a concentration in wetland, coastal, and water law. She has litigated hundreds of cases dealing with wetland, watershed, and coastal resources. She also served as a former deputy chief legal counsel at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, where she served as the department’s public ethics officer, founded the agency’s environmental mediation program, and served as a liaison between the agency and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Hall has drafted numerous policies, laws, and regulations that have influenced coastal resources, land and water use, administrative practice, and environmental enforcement. She has published articles on coastal policy and water law. She is an alum of the Williams-Mystic Program from the spring of 1984.
Hall received her B.A. from the University of Rhode Island in 1985 and her J.D. from Vermont Law School in 1989.
This year’s Oceans Symposium series will continue with six additional lectures over the course of the semester. The next lecture will take place on Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. in Thompson Biology 112. Professor of Geosciences Ronadh Cox will deliver the talk titled “Boulder Ideas: Storm Waves Can Move Megagravel on Cliff Tops of the Aran Islands, Ireland.”
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