Susan Marie Trager

Susan Marie Trager was a longtime water and environmental attorney who for 30 years represented property owners, public agencies and municipalities across California. Born September 11, 1947, in New York City and reared in rural Connecticut, she earned a bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1970, and a law degree from Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco in 1973.

Ms. Trager began her legal career in Nevada, where she founded Nevada Indian Legal Services Inc. to provide representation for the state's tribal groups, and served as a deputy attorney general for the state of Nevada. She later joined the practice of water rights lawyer Donald M. Stark in Irvine and went on to represent the city of Los Angeles in the Owens Valley and Mono Lake water disputes. In one of her most prominent cases, she won a $43.2 million jury verdict for the owner of land condemned by a water agency to build a Riverside County reservoir, an award the judge increased to $50 million.

Describing herself as a "behind-the-scenes" lawyer, Ms. Trager devoted much of her career to mentoring young lawyers and public officials and to educating journalists in the complexities of water and environmental law. Colleagues remembered her ethic of public service, noting that she had gone to work for virtually nothing for an Indian tribe when she got out of law school. She died March 22, 2011.