We help our clients comply with environmental regulations at both the federal and state levels. Our aim is to minimize our clients’ environmental liability and the expenses associated with clean-up and remediation projects. We want to solve your immediate legal problem and understand your long-term business objectives so that we can help you achieve those objectives efficiently without litigation. We monitor legislation and regulatory developments, anticipate potential problems specific to your business, and recommend solutions to protect and defend you from inadvertent violations.
We Understand Your Business
Our environmental clients include:
- Manufacturers, including petroleum refineries
- Distributors
- Transporters of hazardous materials
- Property owners
- Land developers
- Brokers
- Lenders
- Public Utilities
- Insurance Companies
- Individuals
We serve our clients across the entire spectrum of environmental law — from transactional matters to advocacy representation & litigation. Our clients appreciate our environmental expertise, our experience with local agencies and our knowledge of the regulatory framework. We add value to our clients’ business operations by solving their environmental compliance problems.
The Specifics of our Environmental Practice
We counsel you on the most cost-effective way to comply with the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, RCRA, CERCLA (Superfund) and OSHA (and state analogs), as well as California’s Proposition 65, Asbestos Notification Law, and CEQA.
When necessary, we represent clients in administrative proceedings before governmental agencies, including the California Department of Health Services, State and Regional Water Quality Control Boards, Air Quality Management Districts, city fire departments and environmental enforcement departments, county health departments, and district attorney offices. Recently, we have successfully represented clients’ interests in a broad array of cases involving Superfund cleanups, sales and leases of contaminated property, NPDES discharge violations, soil and groundwater contamination, hazardous waste management facilities permits, environmental impact statements, asbestos, wetlands development, TSCA compliance, pesticides registration and reporting under SARA, Title III.
We conduct due diligence investigations to assess the environmental risks associated with purchasing and selling your commercial real estate and manufacturing facilities. Finally, to help you avoid lofty fines, we also assist with environmental audits and help your local business institute procedures to comply with environmental laws.
To protect your interests, we structure commercial transactions to clearly allocate each party’s financial responsibility for known and potential environmental liabilities. In addition, we assist financial institutions and commercial agents in structuring loan transactions to protect against lender and broker liability.
When environmental contamination is found, we negotiate consultants’ site investigation and remediation contracts to ensure that the work is organized efficiently, effectively and without increased risk to you. We evaluate their performance in asbestos abatement projects, hazardous waste and underground storage tank removal projects, soil and groundwater remediation, and risk assessment.
The Regulatory / Judicial Process
When litigation can’t be avoided, clients rely on our extensive environmental litigation experience, including regulatory enforcement proceedings and trial advocacy in federal and state courts. We have advocated and litigated on behalf of our clients in all manner of environmental actions, including toxic tort litigation, injunctive relief, and cost recovery actions. Our depth of experience significantly reduces our learning curve, minimizing the time needed to understand the impact of environmental regulations on your specific business operations, and results in cost-effective representation for you.
