Karen A. Winters leads the firmwide Environmental Health & Safety Practice Group. Ms. Winters has experience in all aspects of environmental law and litigation including state and federal litigation, administrative law practice before state and federal agencies, corporate and municipal counseling, and government relations and legislative counseling.

Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Winters spent five and a half years working for the Office of the Ohio Attorney General acting as an Assistant Attorney General including Assistant Chief of the Consumer Fraud Division, member of the Environmental Enforcement Division, member of the Federal Litigation Division and member of the Chief Counsel’s staff.

Ms. Winters is a member of the American Bar Association’s Environment, Energy and Resources Section; the Ohio State Bar Association’s Environmental Law Committee and Board of Governors of the Section on Women in the Profession; the Columbus Bar Association’s Environmental Law Committee; and the Columbus Bar Foundation. She is also a member of the American Iron and Steel Institute’s Environment Committee, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s Energy and Environment Committee and its Executive Committee, and the Ohio Manufacturers Association’s Environment Committee.

Ms. Winters has been selected by her peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America each year since 2006, and she has been included in Thomson Reuters’ list of Ohio Super Lawyers, the top 5 percent of lawyers in Ohio, each year since 2004. Ms. Winters has been listed in Chambers USA – America’s Leading Business Lawyers in the area of environmental law each year since 2005.

Representative Experience

• Resolving successfully claims in bankruptcy by the United States and the states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio under CERCLA against a debtor and its affiliates through the establishment of a custodial trust to take ownership of and remedial responsibility for 13 sites in five states through the appointment of a qualified trustee and funding of the custodial trust in the amount of approximately US$17 million.
• Conducting due diligence associated with the acquisition of contaminated properties both within and outside the bankruptcy process.
• Representing a major Ohio municipality in connection with the defense of a citizen suit filed pursuant to the Clean Water Act by the Sierra Club, Ohio Chapter relative to the municipality’s combined sewer overflows from its wastewater collection system; the suit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.
• Representing an independent power producer in connection with obtaining a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need from the Ohio Power Siting Board for construction of an 850 megawatt electric generating facility in Southwest Ohio and related environmental permits.
• Representing a private developer in connection with obtaining one of Ohio’s first permits for construction of a new solid waste disposal facility pursuant to its best available technology standards for the siting, design, construction and operation of municipal solid waste landfills, promulgated pursuant to Uncodified Section 7 of Am. Sub. HB 592, as revised to meet US EPA’s standards under Subtitle D of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the defense of citizen challenges thereto.
• Representing a developer in connection with obtaining one of the first covenants not to sue under Ohio’s Voluntary Action Program, which was designed to stimulate brownfields redevelopment in Ohio.
• Representing a host of steel companies on a variety of legislative and regulatory matters including legislation and rules to implement Ohio’s Voluntary Action Program and steel-specific siting, design and operational standards for landfills disposing of residual waste from the iron- and steel-making processes.