Practices

Environment and Natural Resources

We provide regulatory, transactional, and litigation support to clients in every corner of the market—helping clear the way for projects, address environmental challenges, maintain regulatory compliance, and navigate enforcement issues.

Our attorneys advise on regulatory compliance and enforcement matters arising under federal environmental statutes as well as state and local programs. We analyze and negotiate the environmental issues at play during transactions and project development.

We help clients develop advocacy strategies to influence national regulatory policy as well as individual project approvals. And should negotiations fail, we litigate environmental disputes of every kind at every level, from municipal boards to the United States Supreme Court.

We are pragmatic problem solvers who understand the science and the business considerations, as well as the law.

Ballard Spahr Represents ClimeCo in Acquisition of Carbonfund.org Foundation Assets

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Experience 

Civil and Criminal Enforcement Defense

  • Provided a national glass and plastic container manufacturer with a RCRA-compliance strategy to avoid RCRA violations in connection with the reuse of materials previously characterized as a hazardous waste in a closed-loop recycling system
  • For multiple clients in Pennsylvania and in other jurisdictions such as California and New Jersey, provided legal support in a number of multi-million dollar RCRA-mandated corrective action cleanups during closure of manufacturing enterprises and their corrective action units

Superfund/ Clean-up Litigation

  • Represents a property owner in environmental litigation against a manufacturing tenant that caused substantial contamination of property near Reno, Nevada
  • Serves as lead counsel for an Arizona utility in the defense of a $40 million federal Superfund claim for alleged groundwater contamination in metropolitan Phoenix

Oil, Gas, and Mineral Regulation

  • Represented the United States Bankruptcy Trustee in administering the upkeep and operation of the nation's largest rare earth mineral mine, the former Molycorp Minerals, LLC property in Mountain Pass, CA
  • Represented a New Mexico-based investor in effort to purchase out of Chapter 11 proceedings bankruptcy more than 250,000 net mineral acres of San Juan formation and other deep oil and gas rights in New Mexico and in Colorado.

Regulatory Compliance Counseling

  • Provide counseling to a University seeking a determination that its plan for neutralization of hazardous waste prior to shipment would not require an individual RCRA hazardous waste treatment permit
  • Serve as Environmental Counsel in support of a Pennsylvania university’s modification of its program under RCRA to collect, store and arrange for disposal of its hazardous waste

Major Project Permitting

  • As permitting counsel for Action Manufacturing Co., Inc., assisted the client in obtaining the first hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal (TSD) facility permit issued in Pennsylvania under Subpart X of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permitting provisions (pertaining to heat treatment of hazardous wastes). In 2019, obtained a permit modification under RCRA allowing the client’s TSD facility to accept for treatment in the facility hazardous waste generated at the client’s other facilities
  • Successfully assisted an Eastern Arizona biomass facility in connection with renewal of its Class I air quality permit

Transactional Due Diligence, Risk Assessment, and Brownfield Redevelopment

  • Represent a major oil and gas exploration, production and refining company in connection with the redevelopment of a former refining site in New York
  • Served as Environmental Counsel to operator of gas pipeline in Northwest Pennsylvania during its acquisition of additional pipeline assets in the Commonwealth