As Co-Chair of the firm’s Water practice, Drew maintains a practice spanning high-stakes litigation, enforcement, and regulatory counseling. He helps find solutions to pressing water pollution control and water quality problems. Drew led B&D’s team that secured a landmark victory in City & County of San Francisco v. EPA, 145 S. Ct. 704 (2025) in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that EPA and states lack authority under the Clean Water Act to impose permit terms that hold permittees responsible for the overall condition of their receiving waters. Drew helped San Francisco secure a spot on the Supreme Court’s vanishingly small merits docket and a victory that will ensure National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits clearly define permittees’ obligations. San Francisco is among the many critical cases Drew has brought in state and federal appellate courts to challenge agency and local government actions. 

Public and private sector clients seek Drew to defend major Clean Water Act enforcement actions. His docket includes representing multiple large cities and public utilities in cases brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, EPA, and state regulators seeking both significant capital improvements and changes to municipal operations to reduce wet weather discharges. Drew negotiated one of the first federal consent decrees to resolve allegations that the development of utility-scale solar power facilities violated the Clean Water Act’s construction stormwater requirements. He has also defended multiple citizen suits, including multiple cases of first impression, in which he secured favorable resolutions through aggressive advocacy and command of the Clean Water Act’s complex regulatory scheme.

Drew helps clients in a variety of sectors, ranging from public wastewater utilities to information technology companies, develop cost-effective solutions to their clean water regulatory challenges. He routinely advises clients, including semiconductor manufacturers, data center operators, and chemical manufacturers, on aspects of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting process and permit compliance. Drew also counsels clients in developing clean water compliance programs and strategies to address the most difficult water quality issues. He helps organizations seeking water quality standards variances, leads them through the total maximum daily load (TMDL) development process, and represents them in water quality litigation when necessary.