Remediation and Clean-Up
RISK ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
Our lawyers have extensive experience in guiding and directing risk assessment activities, in litigation, settlement and transactional contexts. They also have experience in making recommendations and implementing risk management strategies. These matters may include:
- Reviewing and assessing of the toxicity or potency factors that are appropriate in a particular situation, including evaluation of the scientific credibility and acceptability for a particular chemical.
- Coordination and review of the exposure assumptions made, to which the toxicity or exposure assessments are applied, to be used in assembling the risk assessment protocol and profile.
- Assessing the reasonableness of assumptions and providing support and documentation for those assumptions.
- Providing a critique review and supporting information for "remediation alternative" including different techniques that may meet the screening criteria or assumptions to be employed in the risk assessment activity.
- Working with the consultants and specialized experts involved in presenting the reports and documentation, and assisting in the preparation and presentation of the reports to stakeholders, including regulatory agencies.
In these risk assessments, we have extensive experience with heavy metals, benzene and benzedine-based materials and chlorinated hydrocarbons. We have assembled these risk assessments and related activities in the context of evaluating potential and existing products, worker and customer exposure issues and complaints, as well as litigated personal injury, property damage and natural resource matters.
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SOIL AND GROUNDWATER REMEDIATION
We counsel clients nationwide on identification and evaluation of contaminated soil and groundwater, both in the context of voluntary and government-required clean-up actions. Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team, we insure that reporting requirements are met, regulatory clean-up requirements are fulfilled and client liability is minimized.
Foremost in developing and implementing remediation strategies, we get involved with the technical experts at the outset to proactively address the “what if” scenarios and to prepare for possible unknowns. These efforts include:
- Working with a client’s technical staff and specialized consultants to create a problem-specific team.
- Evaluating and creating site-specific clean-up activities tailored to the client's property needs.
- Coordinating with federal, state, and local regulatory agencies to facilitate remedial actions and minimize enforcement actions.
- Preparing and negotiating consultant engineering agreements, with insurance and financing for implementing remedial actions.
- Overseeing project work to assure compliance and to advise on preservation of site-related evidence for possible cost-recovery litigation.
- Obtaining agency and regulatory closure.
Our clients’ successes are achieved not merely by mitigating liability, but by capturing the economic benefit of timely, cost-effective, and creative remediation, including a track-record of strong regulatory agency praise. Sonnenschein lawyers are instrumental in obtaining federal, state, and local agency approvals and commendations for our clients in:
- Remediating hazardous waste landfill sites for reuse for residential development, among other uses.
- Responding to gasoline and other hazardous material spills into public sewers, waterways, and soils, including public roadways.
- Assisting in transforming impacted industrial property into open space and schools.
- Coordinating remediation of myriad sites, including those contaminated by coal gas, PCBs, chlorinated solvents, metals, dioxins, and other contaminants.
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