Ms. Hayes is Of Counsel with Morrison & Foerster in the firm’s San Francisco office. She specializes in the practice of land use and environmental law. She studied biology at Indiana University (B.S., with distinction, 1975) and law at Yale Law School (J.D., 1982).

Ms Hayes represents clients from a wide range of industries, including major telecommunications, technology, energy, mining, petrochemical, development and financial companies. Her clients also include public entities such as airports, redevelopment agencies and educational institutions. Ms. Hayes has represented these clients in matters of federal, state and local law relating to land use, environmental review, natural resources, air, water, hazardous waste and materials, and environmental cleanup.

Ms. Hayes is experienced in major facility and project siting, permitting, and closure matters. Currently Ms. Hayes is representing a telecommunications company in the environmental review and permitting of the first undersea fiber-optic cable system designed to serve California's major coastal cities. She has also assisted industrial clients, including a paper mill and a chemical manufacturer, in NPDES permitting actions. Presently she is representing a major international airport in the NPDES and storm water permitting for its publicly-owned treatment works and municipal storm sewer system, as well as the Title V air permitting for the airport as a whole and the air quality aspects of a runway project. Ms. Hayes has also assisted oil refineries, chemical manufacturers and steel plants in obtaining variances and permits required by various federal and state initiatives mandating closure or modification of hazardous waste or waste water treatment or disposal facilities.

Ms. Hayes also represents clients in cleanup, cost recovery and enforcement actions and rulemaking proceedings. For example, she represented a major international airport in obtaining a fast-track, facility-wide soil and groundwater cleanup to facilitate a multi-billion dollar expansion project. The matter involved negotiations with over twenty responsible parties and several governmental agencies and resulted in issuance of an order under California's Containment Policy, which has become a model used at other airports across the country. She also represents redevelopment agencies in the cleanup and cost recovery matters to allow brownfields development. In connection with one such matter, she was a principal author of legislation, known as the Polanco bill, which provides redevelopment agencies with additional cleanup immunities and cost-recovery rights. Ms. Hayes has also represented companies in various state and federal rulemaking proceedings related to hazardous waste regulation, including most recently representation of a mining company in a proposed federal hazardous waste listing action.

She also assists clients in transactions involving contaminated property or other potential environmental liabilities. Ms. Hayes is experienced in environmental due diligence and in the review, drafting, and negotiation of environmental indemnities and agreements in numerous real property transfers, complex mergers and acquisitions, and financing transactions. She has also drafted and negotiated asbestos, hazardous material and hazardous waste recycling, transportation, and disposal contracts for domestic, international, and overseas companies.

Ms. Hayes routinely advises clients on environmental compliance issues related to their business operations and has assisted a number of clients in the development and implementation of environmental compliance, record-keeping, and auditing programs. Examples of clients that she has assisted with such programs include a geothermal energy company, an electric utility, a telecommunications company, a transportation company, an airport, and a university.

Ms Hayes frequently lectures and writes on environmental issues. She is a member of the California Bar. She also serves on the board of directors for the Northern California Region of The National Conference for Community and Justice and the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation. In 2004, the San Francisco Magazine listed Ms. Hayes as one of Northern California’s “Super Lawyers” in Environmental law.

Before joining Morrison & Foerster LLP in 1988, Ms. Hayes was an associate in the Environmental Law Group at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro. Prior to law school, she was a medical technologist in hematology and chemistry.