Reed Zars, Class of 1977

With his bachelor’s degree from Williams (1977) and law degree from Northeastern, Reed Zars has used the court system to win precedent-setting rulings to protect clean air and water throughout the West. As a solo practitioner from Laramie, Wyo., and working pro bono with only $5,000 for expenses, he won stunning settlements against three of the region’s largest utility companies that permitted for the first time the use in court of data from the utilities’ own smokestack monitors and resulted in the installation of more than $100 million in pollution-control equipment and millions of dollars more in payments to conservation projects. Before the suit, one of the effected wilderness areas had recorded the highest acidity of any monitored site west of the Mississippi. Working often as counsel to the Sierra Club, he also has ended practices that had been polluting Sand Creek and the North and South Platte Rivers. The Sierra Club has honored him with its William O. Douglas Award “for significant contributions in the field of environmental law by those who have made outstanding use of the judicial process to achieve environmental goals.”