Spotlight: Billy Clarke

By Rick Kolb

Billy Clarke is a partner at Roberts & Stevens in Asheville. Billy has long been active in the Environment, Energy, & Natural Resources Section and served as chair of the section in 2009-2010. For those who attend the annual section meeting on alternate years in Asheville, you probably know Billy as the host of our Friday evening social at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, his family’s farm near Asheville.

Billy was born in Bat Cave, North Carolina and grew up as one of eight children (two girls and six boys; Billy was next to youngest) on his family’s Fairview dairy farm, where they also raised tobacco, apples, chickens and pigs. Billy says raising eight kids and gardening kept his mom busy, and he remembers meat from dairy cows being tough.

Billy’s father, James McClure Clarke, came to the Carolinas in the 1930s after graduating from Princeton in 1939. He ran the Farmer’s Federation, a farm cooperative that was squeezed out of business by larger cooperatives in the 1950s. Jamie Clarke was the editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times for 15 years, served in the North Carolina legislature in the 1970s, and served three terms as a U.S. Congressman in the 1980s. Billy’s sister Annie and her husband live in the “big” house at the family farm, and Annie’s husband is in the North Carolina legislature as one of three representatives from Buncombe County.

Billy graduated from Princeton in 1979 with a degree in American history and from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1982. He joined the Redmond, Stevens, Loftin & Currie law firm out of law school and had a general practice, including real estate and representation of many of his former elementary school mates in various criminal matters, most of them involving alcohol and cars. That practice was interesting but not lucrative (one fee was paid with an old Coleman cooler which the client would not need during his upcoming jail term).

When Billy figured out how cool, smart, exciting, and fun environmental lawyers, engineers, and consultants were, he became interested in environmental law, and has been doing it ever since. Redmond Stevens, Loftin and Currie merged with Roberts, Cogburn, McClure & Williams in 1986 to become Roberts, Stevens & Cogburn, and today is Roberts & Stevens, which has 25 attorneys. Billy does most of the environmental work for the firm.

One of his biggest projects was working with Jack Stevens and the regional wastewater treatment entity plant for six years to acquire ownership of all of the collector sewer systems in Buncombe County to facilitate much-needed rehabilitation of sewer lines, many of which had been installed in the 1920s. He recalled another elderly client, during a trial regarding a sedimentation erosion claim in the 1990s, who was hard of hearing and used a cut off one-gallon milk jug as his ear horn/hearing aid in court. Yep, sounds like Asheville.

Billy’s hobbies are family, golf, hiking, hunting, and land conservation. He has been married to Cindy for 25 years in September and is a father of five and grandfather of six, all boys so far. Billy served fourteen years on the board of directors of the Golden Leaf Foundation, including two terms as chair and two as vice chair. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina since 2014 and a board member of the North Carolina Department of Transportation, representing Division 13 since 2017.

Profile by Rick Kolb, SynTerra Corp., Cary.