Ms Susan Gail Jordan | Attorney

Ms. Jordan is a partner in the Nordhaus Law Firm, LLP's Santa Fe office.  Ms. Jordan advises tribal clients in all aspects of water rights matters, and handles various general counsel matters. 

Ms. Jordan's water rights work includes representation of the Pueblo of Laguna in the Rio San Jose water rights adjudication, State ex rel. Martinez v. Kerr-McGee Corp., et al., currently in the discovery and dispositive motion phase on Pueblo water rights for historic and existing uses.  She is currently representing Taos Pueblo in securing congressional legislation to authorize its water rights settlement, and in the associated negotiation of a federal funding package and waivers and releases of claims.  She recently completed negotiation of principles of agreement for the settlement of a stream adjudication involving multiple tribal and non-Indian parties.  She has negotiated numerous leases of water to enable a tribe to benefit from an income stream during times when the tribe's water rights are not needed on-reservation.  She represents the Santo Domingo Tribe on water rights issues including the storage and delivery of water through a federal water project.  She also assists tribes with Endangered Species Act issues and other environmental issues that arise in connection with water rights.

Prior to joining the Nordhaus Law Firm, Ms. Jordan was a staff attorney at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center from 1996 to 1998.  She represented tribes and Native American grassroots groups such as Eastern Navajo Dine Against Uranium Mining in its challenge to a new in situ leach mine in the community's sole source of drinking water.

From 1995 to 1996, Ms. Jordan was an associate attorney at the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, where her work included litigation challenging a Southern California regional landfill and the Environmental Protection Agency's PCB import rule.

Ms. Jordan was awarded an echoing green public service fellowship to enforce toxic control laws on behalf of low income communities of color and workers as supervising attorney at the Environmental Law Foundation in Oakland, California from 1992 to 1996.  She was also a visiting lecturer at Stanford Law School, where she taught a course on environmental justice.

During law school, Ms. Jordan clerked at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the United States Department of Justice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.  

From 1986 to 1989, Ms. Jordan was a research associate at Salomon Brothers, Inc., where she authored analytical reports for investors in real estate markets and real estate securities.

Education:  Ms. Jordan received a J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1992, and graduated from the University of California with a B.S. in Business Administration with highest honors in 1986.

Conference and Continuing Legal Education Presentations: Assuring Water to Senior Users in Times of Shortage, January 23-24, 2003, Law of the Rio Grande Conference; Environmental Panel, Five Tribes Annual Conference, February 21, 2000, Prescott, Arizona; Grand Canyon Overflights: When the Trust Duty and Cultural Resources Protection are Not in the Flight Plan, Second Annual Environmental Law on the Reservation Conference, August 17, 2000, Phoenix, Arizona; Federal Consultation and Tribal Historic Preservation Office presentations, Eighth Annual EPA/Tribal Environmental Conference, October 25-27, 2000, San Francisco, California. Ms. Jordan counseled Stanford Law students as a public interest visiting mentor in April 1999.