Environment

Van Ness Feldman’s Environmental Practice helps clients manage the wide range of federal and state regulatory, compliance, enforcement, permitting, siting, and legislative matters that can arise throughout the life of a project:

Brownfields projects. Clean Air Act compliance. Emissions trading. Environmental planning in corporate, lending, and real property transactions. Facility siting, permitting, and expansion. Greenhouse gas emissions trading. Hazardous and solid waste materials management. Electronic waste (e-waste). MACT standards. Mobile source emissions. Natural resource damages claims. New Source Review. Private cost recovery actions. Risk mitigation, environmental management systems, and operational compliance. Superfund cleanups.

Air Quality

Van Ness Feldman has an unparalleled depth of experience in air quality policy-making and analysis. While serving as counsel to congressional committees and as senior officials in federal agencies, the firm's lawyers drafted primary sections of the original Clean Air Act and later played key roles in the design of the SO2 Emissions Trading Program. Van Ness Feldman puts this extensive air regulatory experience to use for its clients, assisting them with legislative matters; agency rulemakings; enforcement proceedings; compliance planning; and facility permitting and siting.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading

More and more companies and investment firms are participating in environmental credit markets, including markets for greenhouse gas emission reductions and renewable energy. Whatever a client's motivation for participation in these markets, Van Ness Feldman can assist the client in formulating and implementing its trading strategy. The practice team brings together lawyers with a significant depth of environmental and energy regulatory expertise with lawyers who have substantial expertise in project development and commercial transactions. Van Ness Feldman also can assist clients in understanding how greenhouse gas emissions trading can fit within a comprehensive corporate climate change strategy.

Environmental Permitting

Any large-scale construction project requires developers to secure numerous environmental permits. Van Ness Feldman has the expertise needed to help clients approach this task in the multi-jurisdictional and multi-disciplinary manner that today’s complex permitting process requires. Because we understand all aspects of federal permitting, we can find those solutions and tradeoffs that allow our clients to avoid unnecessary permitting delays.

Global Climate Change

Since the mid-1990s, Van Ness Feldman’s pioneering Global Climate Change Practice has developed a significant national and international reputation. The practice team brings together lawyers and government policy professionals who previously helped set climate policy at the highest levels of the U.S. government — including the White House Climate Change Task Force and the U.S. Department of Energy — with lawyers and government policy professionals who have substantial expertise in domestic and international commercial transactions. The firm has been regularly consulted in domestic and international policy-making arenas where climate change policy is being debated and developed. Van Ness Feldman also has helped clients structure some of the largest and most complex greenhouse gas emission offset projects yet undertaken.

Hazardous Waste and Environmental Compliance

With one of the leading hazardous waste practices in the nation, Van Ness Feldman calls upon a depth of experience and broad abilities to assist clients in meeting critical environmental challenges. For more than twenty-five years, the firm has handled high-profile and ground-breaking disputes under most of the nation’s principal environmental laws, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. The firm counsels leading industrial and manufacturing companies, as well as major industry coalitions and associations, in significant regulatory and environmental liability issues, including challenges to proposed regulations, preparation of complex permit applications, and prosecution of appeals from adverse regulatory decisions.

Mobile Source Emissions

Van Ness Feldman has a broad range of experience with all aspects of mobile source emission matters, including: rulemaking, compliance, enforcement and legislative matters. The firm represents individual vehicle and engine manufacturers, as well as trade associations for these companies. Our attorneys, some of whom worked in the mobile source program at EPA, have extensive experience with EPA, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and the Ozone Transport Commission (OTC).