Our nationally recognized Contaminated Sites team consists of attorneys with scientific, regulatory and technical backgrounds. We deliver practical solutions aligned with our clients’ business objectives. We challenge regulators’ conclusions, assist with gap analyses, review risk assessments, and negotiate cost-effective remediation plans that minimize business disruption. Along the way, we foster constructive working relationships with regulators, public officials, tribes, environmental groups and other stakeholders to identify the common ground needed to succeed.
Our clients are businesses and property owners of industrial, chemical and other manufacturing sites; primary metals processors; distribution centers; wood products mills; mines; utilities; ports; refineries; and real estate developments. We advise on individual site strategies and have achieved significant success for clients in complex cases involving multiple parties.
Our Services
Our work includes a broad range of contaminated sites, including National Priority List Superfund sites, state agency-led sites, multiparty landfills, regional drinking water sources, complex sediment sites, hazardous waste corrective action sites and mining sites. In the course of dealing with contaminated site conditions we negotiate with regulatory agencies, defend and prosecute cost-recovery litigation claims, defend related citizen suits and criminal actions, procure insurance coverage for claims, help structure sales or leases of contaminated properties, and evaluate and mitigate risk in corporate and real estate transactions.
Our team includes highly respected thought leaders who’ve helped shape site contamination laws and regulations in Idaho, Oregon and Washington—including provisions in Oregon law to facilitate insurance recovery for contaminated site claims.
- CERCLA, RCRA and state cleanup law compliance, defense and remediation
- Natural Resource Damage Assessments and defense
- Tools for working with large PRP groups
- Defense and prosecution of cost-recovery litigation under federal and state law
- Tendering and procuring coverage under historic insurance policies for contaminated site claims and litigation against insurers
- Representation in corporate and real estate transactions involving contaminated property, including transactional due diligence
- Prospective Purchaser Agreement negotiations
- Criminal defense
- Citizen suit and toxic tort defense
- Environmental release investigations
In transactions involving brownfields, our Contaminated Sites team develops and negotiates risk allocation terms and insurance provisions, and negotiates prospective purchaser agreements with federal and state agencies to provide protection from liability associated with future cleanup issues on the property. We also help strategize the financing of brownfields redevelopment projects through grants and other programs.
Sometimes contaminated site outcomes cannot avoid litigation or alternative dispute resolution involving liability, cost allocation, insurance coverage or other disputes. Our team represents claimants and defendants at the administrative agency level and through all state and federal judicial levels of appeal. Given our significant experience with toxic tort claims—and our understanding that they can arise out of contaminated sites cases—our team prepares proactively to defend against them.