Mary Ellen Ternes

Mary Ellen Ternes focuses her practice on environmental law, including environmental permitting, compliance strategies, enforcement defense, and state and federal litigation, as well as corporate disclosures and transactions. With a background in chemical engineering and hazardous waste remediation and combustion permitting, she specializes in air quality as well as hazardous waste issues, which experience is particularly relevant for her work with climate change adaptation and mitigation as well as plastic waste and plastic pollution policy development.

Mary Ellen provides strategic counseling regarding complex legal and scientific issues arising in air permitting, including New Source Review (NSR), Title V, New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), and National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPs), regulatory interpretation and applicability, compliance and enforcement resolution. Mary Ellen has significant experience as well as unique technical perspectives regarding carbon capture, use and sequestration (CCUS), particularly relevant to our shift to a hydrogen economy with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. She also advises clients regarding hazardous waste permitting, interpretation and enforcement matters, including generation, classification, exemptions, treatment and disposal issues, including corrective action and risk-based remediation, as well as Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) reporting pursuant to Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act and underground storage tank regulation. She assists clients with water quality permitting and discharge regulation, including wetlands and stormwater issues, as well as Safe Drinking Water Act permitting and compliance. Recent matters have included due diligence risk evaluation and litigation assistance for clients impacted by policy developments regarding polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which will soon lead to similar due diligence needs arising from currently developing policy regarding plastic and microplastic pollution.

Mary Ellen also maintains a very active transaction and voluntary cleanup practice, counseling clients regarding “All Appropriate Inquiry,” post-closing duties and disclosures.

Prior to entering law school, Mary Ellen applied her chemical engineering degree in chemical release emergency response, remediation, and chemical waste treatment, in her work for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and industry. For EPA, she was an On-Scene Coordinator (OSC) ("commander on the scene" of a chemical release), a federal project and contract officer in emergency response and response action site characterization/remediation, and then she was a hazardous waste incinerator permit writer in Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) incinerator permitting. She left the EPA to join industry, working as an environmental project officer for a commercial hazardous waste incineration company overseeing RCRA, Toxic Substances Control Act and Clean Air Act permitting, compliance and audit activities. During law school, she worked as a law clerk for the EPA Office of General Counsel Air and Radiation Division.

With her unique combination of education, training and experience in the fields of chemical engineering and environmental law, Mary Ellen has served in various leadership and liaison roles between the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the American College of Environmental Lawyers (ACOEL), the American Bar Association (ABA), the Global Council for Science and Environment (GCSE) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), to better integrate law and policy with science and engineering.

She is a frequent author and speaker on environmental issues, particularly as it relates to improving applied science-based policy. Through her leadership roles within the ACOEL, ABA, AICHE, GCSE and contributions to NASEM, she frequently provides continuing legal and policy education on science-based policy and legal developments and strategic solutions. Lately, Mary Ellen has focused significantly on climate change mitigation and adaptation (including CAA 112(r) and CCUS) as well as plastic pollution mitigation strategies and policy development working with national and international collaborative efforts toward fulfilling the March 2, 2022 UNEP International Resolution to End Plastic Pollution.

Mary Ellen has contributed to many significant publications, including: ABA's 2021 Environmental Aspects of Real Estate and Commercial Transactions (5th Edition) (Chapters 9, 10 and 11); NASEM's 2022 Reckoning with the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste; ABA’s Clean Air Act Handbook (Chapter 6: New Source Review; co-authored with Bernard F. Hawkins, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions); CRC Press Air Pollution Control Technology Handbook, a chemical engineering text book (2nd ed., co-author). She also contributed to the ABA’s Nanotechnology Environmental Law, Policy and Business Considerations (Ch. 4: Clean Air Act and Nanotechnology; ed. Lynn L. Bergeson), and the LexisNexis Global Climate Change Special Pamphlet Series, (EPA’s Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule; ed. Bradley M. Marten). In 2007, her comprehensive publication titled "Basic Practical in Nanotechnology" won a competitive, peer-reviewed Best Paper Award at the ABA’s Section of Environment, Energy and Resources Fall Meeting.

Since its debut in 2004, the International Who's Who of Environment Lawyers has named Mary Ellen to its prestigious list of pre-eminent environmental lawyers worldwide each year, and has now included Mary Ellen in its list of pre-eminent climate change lawyers. In 2008, Mary Ellen was granted early election as a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, a professional association of private and public sector environmental lawyers recognized by their peers as pre-eminent in their field, and led the College as President 2020-2021. In 2018, Mary Ellen was also elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Her achievements have also earned her inclusion in Chambers USA Guide to America's Leading Lawyers for Business (energy and natural resources: environment), The Best Lawyers in America (environmental law, environmental litigation and administrative law) and Oklahoma Super Lawyers, in which she was named to its list of “Top 25 Women Oklahoma Super Lawyers." She was also named Best Lawyers' Oklahoma City "Lawyer of the Year" for Environmental Law in 2011, 2016, 2019, and 2023 an honor only given to a single lawyer in each legal specialty in each community.