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Joey Meldrum is a founding partner at Monchamp Meldrum LLP, where she brings a rare combination of legal insight and technical expertise to complex environmental, land use, and natural resources matters. She advises clients across all stages of development—from due diligence and permitting to regulatory compliance and litigation—with a focus on brownfields redevelopment, California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) compliance, and land use entitlements. She is also a trusted advisor on permitting for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, battery storage, and other emerging technologies.

Before entering the legal profession, Joey spent over a decade as a licensed civil engineer and geologist, working on high-profile development and infrastructure projects throughout California. This technical foundation gives her a deep, working knowledge of the scientific and regulatory dimensions of environmental law. Her fluency in groundwater and soil chemistry enables her to bridge the gap between legal strategy and environmental science, particularly in cases involving complex contamination issues. She has worked with a wide range of contaminants, including chlorinated solvents, petroleum hydrocarbons, MTBE, PAHs, PCBs, PFAS, pesticides, and heavy metals.

Earlier in her career, Joey led multidisciplinary engineering teams on litigation matters and insurance claims related to environmental failures as well as structural and infrastructure defects. Her work included forensic analysis of water distribution systems, oil and gas pipelines, boilers, foundations, and underground storage tanks, as well as investigations into landslides, water intrusion, corrosion, and construction-related settlement. A LEED Accredited Professional since 2002, she also has deep experience in sustainable design and green building standards.

Joey’s public sector background includes legal and regulatory work at the California Coastal Commission and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), giving her firsthand insight into the inner workings of California’s regulatory agencies. She also practiced at Holland & Knight before co-founding Monchamp Meldrum LLP.

In addition to her legal practice, Joey teaches Applied Land Use Regulation as an adjunct professor at UC Law San Francisco, where she shares her deep knowledge of environmental and land use law with the next generation of lawyers.

Published Cases

  • Upland Community First v. City of Upland (2024) 105 Cal.App.5th 1
  • Tsakopoulos Investments, LLC v. County of Sacramento (2023) 95 Cal.App.5th 280
  • The Claremont Canyon Conservancy v. Regents of the University of California (2023) 92 Cal.App.5th 474
  • McCorkle Eastside Neighborhood Group v. City of St. Helena (2018) 31 Cal.App.5th 80
  • Covina Residents for Responsible Development v. City of Covina (2018) 21 Cal.App.5th 712
  • Friends of the College of San Mateo Gardens v. San Mateo County Community College District (2016) 1 Cal.5th 937

Honors and Awards

  • Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch, 2024 and 2025
  • Thurston Society
  • Thomas Trapp Scholarship for Environmental Law
  • Witkin Awards for Excellence (top of class) in
    • Land Use Regulation
    • Property
    • California Water Resources
    • Federal and Interstate Water Resources
    • Negotiation and Mediation: Process and Practice
    • American Indian Law
    • Mediation
    • Legal Writing and Research

Licenses and Memberships

  • San Francisco Bar Association
  • American Bar Association – Environment, Energy and Resources Law
  • Civil Engineer, California, #C63479
  • Professional Geologist, California, #7798
  • Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional (LEED AP)

Education

  • University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, J.D. Magna Cum Laude
  • Queen’s University, Kingston Canada, Masters of Science in Engineering (Geological Engineering)
  • Queen’s University, Kingston Canada, Bachelors of Science in Engineering (Geological/Environmental Engineering)

Bar Admissions

California

Court Admissions

All State Courts in California

Select Publications

  • Design Review of By-Right Development Does Not Trigger CEQA Review
    Lexology,  January 2019
  • Fourth District Rejects City’s Retroactive CEQA Baseline but Holds that Error did not Violate Constitutional Rights
    Lexology,  October 2018
  • California Court of Appeal Invalidates EIR for Failure to Identify a Project
    Lexology,  November 2017
  • Court Upholds San Francisco’s CEQA Exemption for Telegraph Hill Project
    JDSupra, October 2017
  • California Supreme Court Rejects Attorney General’s Challenge to SANDAG’s Transportation Plan Lexology,  July 2017
  • Reliance on 1998 EIR Under CEQA Upheld Based on Substantial Evidence
    Lexology, December 2016
  • California Supreme Court Invalidates “New Project” Test
    JDSupra, September 2016
  • CEQA Judicial Outcomes: Fifteen Years of Reported California Appellate and Supreme Court Decisions
    Holland & Knight Alert, May 2015 (coauthor)
  • Nonresidential Building Energy Benchmarking is Here
    Daily Journal, May 2014
  • Reservation and Quantification of Indian Groundwater Rights in California
    Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, Volume 19 Number 2, Summer 2013
  • Floor Level Surveys and Their Use in Geotechnical Investigations: Case Studies
    Proceedings, 5th ASCE Forensic Engineering Congress, 2009
  • The role of trees in debris flow initiation
    Proceedings, AEG Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, 2006
  • Effect of cyclic wetting and drying on soil chemistry and corrosivity
    Proceedings, AEG Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, NV, 2005
  • Understanding soil corrosion
    Proceedings, AEG Annual Meeting, Dearborn, MI, 2004
  • Failure analysis of a sewer pipeline confirms link between regulatory changes and resultant biochemical impact on pipe materials
    ASCE International Conference on Pipeline Engineering and Construction, 2004
  • Investigation of structural damage in a corrosive environment
    Proceedings, 5th International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering, New York, NY, 2004
  • Oxidation of mine tailings from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, at subzero temperatures
    Canadian Geotechnical Journal 2001; 38(5), 2001
  • Investigations of the soil-structure kind
    Proceedings, Forensic Engineering Second Congress, Puerto Rico, 2000
  • Estimating the quantities of water contributions to a landslide in the Santa Cruz Mountains
    Proceedings, AEG Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, 1999
  • Laboratory determination of sulphide oxidation potential in permafrost using tailings from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut
    Proceedings, Sudbury ’99 Mining in the Environment, Sudbury, ON, 1999
  • The effect of sub-zero temperatures and pore water salinity on sulphide oxidation of tailings from Rankin Inlet, NWT
    Proceedings, GAC/MAC Annual Meeting, Quebec City, QC, 1998
  • Acid mine drainage potential of tailings in permafrost at Rankin Inlet, NWT
    Proceedings, ANSUS Conference, Vancouver, BC, 1997
  • Composite geotechnical logs for a deep borehole at Richmond City Hall
    Geological Survey of Canada Open File 3356, 1996 (coauthor)

Select Presentations

  • CEQA Case Law Update
    AEP/APA North Bay Chapter, October 25, 2018
  • Regulating California’s Thirst for Groundwater
    Association of Women in Water, Energy and Environment, September 14, 2016
  • Economics of Hydraulic Fracturing: Boom, Bust, or Business as Usual
    Hydraulic Fracturing in California Conference, August 12, 2014
  • Challenges with going green
    Claims Conference of Northern California, Sacramento, CA, 2009
  • Construction failure investigations: an engineer’s point of view
    National Association of Women in Construction meeting, San Francisco, CA, 2009
  • Construction sites in the urban environment: Damages to adjacent structures
    Published presentation, Lorman Education Services, San Francisco, CA, 2007
  • Seismic and slab building damage—Catastrophic and non-catastrophic
    Association for Facilities Engineering, Menlo Park, CA, 2005
  • Women in engineering
    Stanford Society of Women Engineers, Stanford University, CA, 2005

Also goes by: Jo Leckie, Joey Leckie, Joanna Leckie