Thomas K. Prevas

Tom Prevas is a leader in infrastructure project counsel and development. Tom advises major project sponsors, developers, and institutional investors on the lifecycle development of critical infrastructure projects—from site selection and regulatory strategy through permitting, financing, construction and operations. His practice encompasses:

• Energy generation and transition (nuclear, coal, gas, renewable energy, LNG)
• Transmission and distribution infrastructure 
• Digital infrastructure (data centers, telecommunications networks) 
• Water and wastewater systems 
• Solid waste and environmental management 
• Brownfields redevelopment and Superfund remediation

Key Engagements

For close to a decade, Tom has served as counsel to a major offshore wind developer, providing in-depth, ongoing counsel on permitting and siting offshore wind generation plants in federal and state waters, as well as significant onshore components and the stand-up of various state benefit programs associated with project credits. This engagement has equipped him with a nuanced understanding of how renewable energy policy, grid interconnection, and community engagement operate in practice, supporting his ability to identify project execution and timing risks.

Tom served as environmental counsel for the redevelopment of the Sparrows Point Steel Mill site into a major logistics center, which serves as a national model for successful large-scale brownfield redevelopment. 

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More recently, Tom has served as both financing counsel and project development counsel on large battery energy storage system (BESS) projects and data center campus development and also helps clients navigate interconnection and energy co-location opportunities and challenges associated with these projects. Tom, together with the Saul Ewing team, also negotiates significant design, build, construct and operate agreements between municipal utilities and private client service providers, including work-outs when waste disposal logistics and other challenges do not go as planned.

Across these engagements, Tom advises on state and local regulatory, contracting and benefit/credit issues, which frequently determine whether a project will succeed or fail or can produce the anticipated return on investment within the expected time-horizon. Having played the role of project counsel and financing counsel, Tom assists clients in packaging projects with the goals of attracting investment and finance interest and avoiding delays.

Municipal Finance and Planning Perspective

Tom served as a Baltimore City Planning Commissioner—a role in which he reviewed and evaluated the city’s capital budget and bond initiatives. This experience—gained from both the public finance and infrastructure planning sides—provides him with the capacity to see challenges from municipal government’s side and provides insight he uses to guide clients seeking to forge public-private partnership solutions and MOU/public benefits arrangements, which many infrastructure projects require to be successful.

Environmental Compliance and Litigation

In addition to his project counsel work, Tom maintains an environmental litigation and regulatory compliance practice. His background in litigation, including clerking for the Maryland Supreme Court and serving as a Baltimore County prosecutor before entering private practice, assists him with leveraging litigation as a possible solution. 

Tom advises clients on environmental litigation and regulatory risk relating to solid waste, hazardous waste, petroleum, biosolids, wastewater, land contamination, air permits, and climate change. Tom’s litigation background becomes particularly useful when leveraging pre-emption and constitutional structure themes in efforts to prevent local governments from blocking key infrastructure projects approved at the state or federal levels. Some of Tom’s significant work includes:

• Extensive gasoline station and underground storage tank pollution litigation experience, including his key role in the trial and appeal of one of the largest mass tort environmental case in Maryland history—a $1.5 billion verdict relating to contamination from an underground storage tank.
• Obtaining a defense verdict after trial in a stormwater permit civil enforcement action brought by the Maryland Department of Environment and Office of Attorney General against a client.
• Representing a major former oil company in climate change litigation brought in Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County Maryland, which was ultimately dismissed by the Maryland Supreme Court.