Best Lawyers, the oldest peer-review publication in the legal profession, has named Betsy Temkin as the Denver Best Lawyers Litigation - Environmental Lawyer of the Year for 2012. Lawyers who are honored as "Lawyers of the Year" have received particularly high ratings in peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers.

Four partners of Temkin Wielga & Hardt were named Colorado Super Lawyers for 2011. Betsy Temkin, Scott Hardt and Alison Thayer were named 2011 Colorado Super Lawyers in the field of Environmental Law. Nea Brown, who joined the firm in April, was named a 2011 Colorado Super Lawyer in the field of Energy & Natural Resources Law.

On November 29, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in an appeal of an Eleventh Circuit decision upholding the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) 2008 Water Transfer Rule. Friends of the Everglades v. South Florida Water Mgmt. Dist., No. 10-196, 2010 WL 3164795 (Nov. 29, 2010). The Water Transfer Rule allows transfers from one jurisdictional water of the United States to another without the need for a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”) permit, even where the transfer introduces pollutants to the receiving water body. The Rule has significant implications for water users in Colorado, who may be affected by the introduction of pollutants which may occur in numerous Colorado water transfers, including large trans-basin diversions like the Colorado-Big Thompson Project.