Property Acquisition, Site Remediation & Brownfields Redevelopment
We are prepared to counsel you on transforming a formerly polluted landscape into a thriving center for new business. Our environmental lawyers represent clients throughout the United States in the acquisition and redevelopment of environmentally impaired brownfields sites and remediation of hazardous substance and hazardous waste properties. Our practice covers corporate and real estate transactions and remediation under the federal Superfund Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) hazardous waste law, their state counterparts, and brownfields redevelopment programs. Our clients on these matters have included industrial entities, public bodies, lenders and real estate developers. Our experience includes negotiating cleanup agreements with the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Justice, numerous states and myriad buyers and sellers of real estate.
In the Superfund and RCRA areas, we have advised clients on the conduct of emergency removal actions; completion of longer-term remedial investigations and feasibility studies; hazardous waste corrective actions; demonstrating or challenging consistency with the National Contingency Plan; and selection of remedial action requirements. Our engagements have included modest single-party sites with petroleum contamination; industrial facilities with on and offsite air, soil and underground impact; and National Priorities List sites with contaminated groundwater, surface water or sediment stretching for miles. The constituents of concern have included metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury; polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxin; perchlorate; radioactive materials; pesticides; petroleum constituents; and solvents and volatile organic compounds such as trichloroethylene, its daughter product vinyl chloride, perchloroethylene and trichlorethane.
In the property acquisition and brownfields areas, we have directed the environmental due diligence on real property portfolios as large as US$1 billion; helped structure acquisitions to avoid, minimize or allocate potential environmental liability; negotiated covenants not to sue and prospective purchaser agreements; and guided clients through state brownfields redevelopment programs.
Our lawyers' significant engagements in these areas include:
- Negotiating the first prospective lessee agreement with the United States on behalf of the developer of a luxury resort within the former Empire Canyon mine site in Deer Valley, Utah, in a transaction that served as a pilot project for EPA’s new Environmentally Responsible Redevelopment and Reuse (ER3) program.
- Conception and implementation of a complex agreement resulting in one of the largest brownfields cleanups in New York state history. The agreement calls for the remediation and redevelopment of a 220-acre Buffalo site that was home to steel and coke making operations for more than 75 years. The parties required to approve the agreement included three federal courts, two bankrupt steel companies and their creditors and insurance carriers, a private remediation group, and six state and city agencies.
- Advising one of the six largest cities in the United States on completion of Superfund investigation and remediation work at two municipal landfills, including development of a cost-effective strategy for natural attenuation of impacted groundwater.
- Securing covenants not to sue from state authorities on behalf of clients involved in the renovation and reopening of an historic hotel in downtown Columbus.
- Counseling public bodies and industry groups on legislative changes to state brownfields redevelopment programs.