Elizabeth L. Cousins

Cousins' practice centers on helping local governmental entities build the infrastructure to improve how they manage water and sludge. These days, the work is booming.

With the West in drought, she sees a trend among agencies to pursue projects that turn wastewater into drinking water. "It's no longer just a given that water just comes out of the tap," Cousins said. "People are having to be really creative... about ways in which they're going to guarantee their community's water supply."

One of her major projects is a series of five progressive design-build packages to supply East San Diego County with a sustainable, drought-proof water supply, she said. The next phase of the $700 million project goes before the East County Advanced Water Purification Joint Powers Authority Board for approval this month.

She is also helping the entity create a Biogas Recovery Facility to turn organic waste and the water-purification by product called sludge into natural gas, she said.

In general, Cousins and her clients are "trying to turn trash into treasure," she said.

Another major project is advising the city of Los Angeles on creating an advanced water purification facility at an existing water reclamation plant. The city council approved phase two of the project last year.

Her work entails advising government agencies on structuring deals to create their projects and bring them into being. "Our role is to put together the procurement documents, to hire the contractor and then draft and negotiate the contracts," she said. Cousins and her team also oversee the contracts and other legal aspects of projects during construction and sometimes on into operation.

Before joining Nossaman in 2013, Cousins had a broad infrastructure practice with a major firm in her homeland of Australia for many years. "My practice spans the whole gamut of government trying to build some sort of transformative infrastructure," she said.

Currently, she is advising Riverside County on adding express lanes to the I-15/SR-91 interchange and advising Michigan on modernizing I-75.

The result of her work is "tangible assets in the community [that] you can touch and feel," she said. "It's not just documents."

- Don DeBenedictis