Meet the Team: Victoria Rose, SOS Environmental Attorney

We're excited to introduce SOS Environmental Attorney Victoria Rose (and kick off a new MEET OUR TEAM series). Rose has been an integral part of SOS since February 2022. With a deep passion for protecting our environment, Victoria’s work "locks in" with our mission. Her smile is golden, she is sharp as a tack, and her heart is with nature. 

Victoria is the lead attorney for a high profile case against Mirasol Springs which challenges the sprawling development near Hamilton Springs and Roy Creek, threatening several endangered species and the water quality in an extremely sensitive area. I sat down with Victoria to learn more about why she joined SOS and what makes her tick!

---

Why did you join SOS? I’m excited about SOS’s mission to protect water quality and wildlife through litigation while also working to educate the public. The kinds of cases that I’m getting to work on really remind of me of my initial inspiration for wanting to become an attorney, and its exciting to show up to work everyday.

What is the toughest part of the job? Waiting for a court’s decision in a case; I’m not good at waiting!

What is the best advice you’ve ever received? An elephant is eaten one bite at a time. Remembering this helps me to take huge, overwhelming projects and break them down into manageable tasks so that I don’t get too anxious or overwhelmed to work effectively.

What do you love most about what you do? I love having a job that aligns with my values and where I can work to protect the environment and the people and wildlife living in it. I also love the other people that work at SOS, and their excitement really keeps me going. 

Tell us a surprising or a fun fact about you. In college I worked for a lab that studied grasshopper mice and bark scorpions. Part of my job included collecting scorpions in the desert. We would go out at night with ziplock bags, forceps, and a black light to find scorpions. The scorpions would glow green under the blacklight, and then we would pick them up by the tail with the forceps and toss them in the ziplock bag. I am crazy good at scorpion catching.

Tell us about more about your role as an attorney at SOS, a case you’re working on, and what the ideal outcome is: While I work on a variety of cases, most of my cases center around challenging the issuance of a permit that would harm the environment. So, this includes challenging wastewater discharge permits and other kinds of permits at TCEQ and challenging groundwater production permits at groundwater conservation districts. The biggest case that I’m working on right now is our Mirasol Springs case, we are challenging two groundwater production permits, 1 wastewater permit, and 1 river diversion permit. The Mirasol Springs case also involves some endangered species work with the Texas fatmucket mussel and Pedernales River springs salamander. The ideal outcome of that case is the developer putting the entire parcel into a conservation easement in recognition of the sensitivity and rarity of the ecosystem on and near the proposed development. Alternatively, it would be great to see the development scaled back a lot and for the development to be served 100% by rainwater and beneficial reuse of wastewater. 

Why did you want to become an environmental attorney? I was always interested in becoming an attorney, perhaps from watching too much Law and Order, and I was always interested in the outdoors and nature and science. For a long time I didn’t have a plan to combine these two interests, but my undergraduate environmental law and ecology courses showed me how I could combine my interests and work towards helping people as an environmental attorney, and I have been on that course ever since.

What’s your favorite “Bill Bunchism”? “Pollution delayed is pollution denied.” It helps me to remember that even when cases are tough or take a long time, we are still protecting the aquifer and springs by keeping pollution out of them for the time being.

We're incredibly grateful for Victoria’s hard work and passion for protecting our springs and wildlife. Thank you, Victoria, for everything you do!