You have a lot at stake
Environmental laws and regulations may affect every aspect of your business and its future. Federal, state and local environmental laws and regulations are complex, interrelated, frequently changing and sometimes contradictory. They can involve emotional issues with long-term consequences. If you do not get the advice you need, delays and extra costs can be just one result—an unreported spill or neglected permit might mean fines or even jail time. With so much at stake, you want an environmental lawyer who takes a practical business approach, and has a technical understanding of the laws, regulations and your industry.
You need Porter & Hedges
For many years, we have handled environmental compliance, controversies, and due diligence for companies in the chemical, manufacturing, real estate development, waste collection and disposal, oil and gas, pipeline, transportation and other industries. Our lawyers strive to understand your business and its unique risks, and work within the complex federal and state regulatory framework to develop cost-effective and practical approaches to environmental problems.
Our philosophy is simple: if we understand your business, we can help you decide the best way to keep you in compliance with the law. We work within the rules to get the best results, and use the rules to develop sound positions to defend your interests. Instead of making decisions by rote, Porter & Hedges takes a big-picture, strategic view of your needs to craft creative compliance solutions.
Compliance: Business focus
We work to help you manage environmental liabilities before they arise and to reduce your risk of liability through our knowledge of your business and familiarity with your facilities. As a result, we endeavor to provide practical, business-focused guidance on your full range of environmental concerns: representing you in contested administrative permit or enforcement proceedings, establishing and maintaining regulatory compliance, or managing environmental issues affecting transactions. Here are some of the key compliance areas on which we focus.
Permitting. You benefit from our knowledge of state and federal environmental statutes and their underlying administrative frameworks, plus our ability to work effectively with environmental regulators, at all stages of the permitting process.
Administrative proceedings. We have appeared before the EPA, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Texas Railroad Commission, the Department of State Health Services, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, among others. Our representation has involved contested case hearings as well as enforcement and rulemaking proceedings, and numerous informal negotiations involving air, water, waste and other environmental issues.
Hazardous waste. Our lawyers provide advice on solid and hazardous waste issues including emergency response, auditing processes, corrective action, and document management and retention. Counsel regarding potential environmental liability and agency investigations arising out of past disposal practices is an important part of our services.
Due diligence. Mergers, acquisitions, lending/financing and real estate transactions all raise environmental concerns. Our lawyers are skilled at pre-transactional due diligence and assessment and can help to evaluate environmental concerns related to prior and current business locations and operations, on-site and off-site disposal practices, and potential liability to or of adjacent property owners. Our ability to identify environmental issues helps to put them in proper perspective in your transactions.
Insurance & recovery. We work with clients to identify the value of environmental insurance to manage on-going operational risks, indemnity obligations, cleanup costs and other concerns and assist in tailoring new environmental policies to meet needs. We have asserted our clients' coverage rights in even the most controversial areas, such as historical environmental liabilities, asbestos claims, and mass torts. Our lawyers have helped clients with a wide range of coverage issues, including insurers' duties to defend and indemnify, occurrence and allocation controversies, and interpretation and application of multi-year policies.
Remediation. Our lawyers have considerable experience with legal and practical solutions to remediating contaminated industrial and “brownfield” property. We work with innovative approaches to contamination cleanup where appropriate, and have successfully used risk reduction, voluntary cleanup and innocent owner rules to limit potential liabilities.
We have represented:
- permittees in defense of Clean Water Act (“CWA”), Toxic Substances Control Act (“TSCA”), Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”) and Clean Air Act (“CAA”) judicial and administrative enforcement actions, applicants in contested CWA (including wetlands), RCRA Part B, and solid waste administrative permitting proceedings.
- various clients involved in voluntary and involuntary remediation projects involving groundwater contamination, surface water concerns, dust, odor and nuisance issues, and industrial clients in a variety of CWA citizen suits.
- generators, owners, operators and arrangers alleged to be potentially responsible parties in various CERCLA cases, including both single and multiparty sites and contribution and cost recovery cases.
- a disposal facility that contested EPA's selection of it as a site for disposal of CERCLA cleanup waste.
- industrial clients that have requested a white paper investigation and review of corporate compliance status and quantification of environmental liabilities.
- industrial clients and property owners that have requested environmental counseling, assistance with environmental compliance programs and policies, and environmental compliance audit projects, and self-disclosure notifications.
Environmental Litigation: Wide-ranging experience
Porter & Hedges' lawyers have been active in numerous types of environmental litigation. We have represented clients in CERCLA, CWA, CAA, TSCA, and RCRA litigation and in claims arising under their state counterparts, as well as in claims arising under other environmental statutes. Our lawyers have served as counsel to potentially responsible party (PRP) groups and individual PRPs in CERCLA cases in litigation relating to liability, allocation, and remedy selection.
We have significant experience in representing corporations in multiparty litigation, citizen suits, and enforcement actions. Our firm experience in defending actions involving claims for personal injury arising out of environmental exposures is described under Mass Tort.
We know that environmental law has many dimensions that affect businesses and individuals in different ways. Our lawyers have the regulatory knowledge, transactional sophistication and courtroom skill to defend your interests. As the scope and complexity of environmental regulation grows, our experience can be crucial to your future.
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