Our team helps clients evaluate and obtain required permits and authorizations for discharges or emissions resulting from manufacturing or industrial processes. We also negotiate comprehensive permit terms and conditions that reduce the need for subsequent modifications. Where appropriate, we assist in the proactive engagement of communities that may seek to slow or derail the permit process.
Our permitting experience includes matters involving:
- Counseling of project developer on contract negotiation, NEPA analysis, and environmental permitting to construct and operate a mine-mouth 1500-MW, hybrid dry cooled coal-fired electric power-generating plant on Navajo Nation lands.
- Counseling of a municipal developer on contract negotiation, NEPA analysis, and environmental permitting to construct and operate a pump storage project in California, including the construction of associated transmission lines on USFS and DOD lands.
- Negotiation of a private-public partnership between a developer client and TxDOT for the construction and operation of tolling facilities and highway expansion/improvements.
- Permits and compliance plans for hazardous and solid waste, wastewater, air and other emissions operations and facilities.
- Advice on issues arising under NEPA in the development of major infrastructure projects (e.g., LNG import terminals, hydropower and highway construction), including the successful defense of a challenge to a Deepwater Port Act license for an offshore LNG facility that involved substantial NEPA claims.
- Defense of Deepwater Port Act license in case of first impression concerning the priority of environmental considerations in licensing an offshore LNG terminal (Gulf Restoration Network v. U.S. Dept Transportation, June 2006).
- Contested permit proceedings
- Wetlands development and permitting issues
- Authorizations for the appropriation of state waters
The Environmental Strategy practice also handles New Source Review (NSR) challenges under the Clean Air Act. We provide comprehensive guidance on NSR issues such as permits, construction compliance, volatile organic compound and sulfur dioxide emissions credits trading and negotiations, and complaints related to acid rain.
Representative Matters
Our firm is handling siting, permitting, regulatory issues and litigation for new coal-fired electric power plants. For several key projects, we also are managing public and media relations. Our work requires complex legal and policy interaction with federal and state agencies and, in one case, with a Native American tribe to solve unique siting issues on Indian lands. Some of these projects include design and implementation of systems for corporate environmental governance, management and auditing, and counseling corporations on strategic climate change and coal-fired energy issues.
For a project developer, advice on wetlands-related permitting for the "greenfield" development of a power plant in the Southwestern United States.
On behalf of a project developer, counsel on the comprehensive assessment of environmental impacts from the construction and operation of an international transmission line for electricity.
Filed first-ever notices of audit and disclosures and developed first compliance agreements under Texas's audit laws. We continue to be leading advisers on the implementation of this program.
For a municipality, negotiation of a comprehensive contract for the siting of an on-shore terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the Northeastern United States.