Dawn Meidinger is chair of our natural resources, energy and environmental law practice group. Previously in-house counsel for Phelps Dodge Corporation, now Freeport-McMoRan Inc., she is an experienced mining attorney with a focus on public land utilization on both the state and federal level and environmental permitting.
Through her experience as a mining attorney, she has represented clients seeking a variety of use authorizations, including exploration and mine plans of operation, special use permits, rights of way, and grazing leases. Many of those matters require working with federal and state agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the Arizona State Land Department. In the natural resources law sector, Dawn has multidisciplinary experience permitting mining, renewable energy and linear projects, and handling all aspects of NEPA, NHPA, and ESA compliance for those initiatives.
She especially enjoys working with the high-caliber professionals in the mining industry, including some of the finest environmental managers and engineers in the field. As an experienced environmental attorney, she diligently shepherds projects forward for her clients, many of which span the course of years, to ensure plans come to fruition. An advocate for the importance of mining and minerals in our daily lives, Dawn has broad transactional experience related to due-diligence exercises, land use planning, earn-in, farm-out and joint venture agreements in conjunction with the developments of mineral exploration targets, and ground leases or purchases for solar facilities.
Outside of her experience as a mining law attorney, Dawn honed her focus and competitive nature while playing volleyball for Arizona State University. As the daughter of a retired exploration driller in Wyoming, her familiarity and passion for public land issues led her to law school and she has practiced in the areas of mineral exploration and development, natural resources law and endangered species law ever since. When not in the office, you will find Dawn and her partner in the great outdoors, roaming with their pair of Vizslas, loyal Hungarian sporting dogs.