Practice Areas & Industries: Hunton & Williams LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Hunton & Williams' practice in the environmental field is one of the most substantial in the nation. It involves every major federal environmental statute and many state environmental matters. With the opening of the firm's Brussels office in 1989, this practice has taken on a significant international dimension as well. Hunton & Williams has one of the largest groups of environmental specialists assembled in a single law firm.

Formed in 1970, soon after passage of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act, our environmental team initially represented individual electric utilities in nuclear, Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act matters. The team now deals with the full range of environmental issues, both national and international, and our roster of clients has grown to include a majority of the nation's electric utility companies (in terms of generating capacity), the national trade associations for the electric utility industry, clients in the coal industry, the chemical industry, oil and gas companies, waste disposal concerns, other industrial firms, and individuals.

Much of our work is policy oriented. Many of our clients employ the firm to develop industry positions on how regulation under the various environmental statutes should be developed. Through participation in the legislative process and in administrative proceedings and litigation from the district courts to the Supreme Court, our lawyers act to ensure that the law, administrative policies and regulations reflect these positions. We have represented the Business Roundtable in efforts for regulatory reform.

Services Available

The firm represents a number of large client groups in rulemakings conducted under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and Superfund, in which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other bodies develop rules that regulate large sectors of American industry. Principal among such groups are the Utility Air Regulatory Group and the Utility Water Act Group, which retain the firm on an ongoing basis to represent the interests of most of the nation's electric utilities in all federal regulatory proceedings relating to air and water quality issues. Other associations, including those representing investor-owned electric utilities and the coal industry, have retained the firm to advocate their views on environmental and natural resources management issues such as "acid rain," "toxic tort" victim compensation, and environmental statute reauthorization before Congress, the agencies, and the courts.

Individual client work is an equally important part of our practice. The firm represents companies and private individuals in permit, variance, enforcement, and citizen suit proceedings under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and in cleanup suits and natural resource damages claims under the Superfund Act. Our lawyers have extensive experience in handling licensing cases from the negotiation phase to complex, protracted adversary administrative hearings, and subsequent judicial review. Many of our clients face questions relating to the generation, handling, and disposal of hazardous materials. Our lawyers represent companies in the chemical, petroleum, utility, general manufacturing, and waste disposal industries in cases involving the release of hazardous substances, the development of cleanup programs, and the disposition of properties upon which hazardous wastes may be located.

Judicial challenges frequently arise in the environmental context, and we regularly play a leading role in the litigation that shapes environmental law. For example, we participated in the Calvert Cliffs, Portland Cement, DuPont, Appalachian Power, and other early landmark cases. Since then, the firm has been counsel for petitioners or intervenors in the great bulk of the major D.C. Circuit and Supreme Court Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act cases, for example ¿ the Alabama Power "Prevention of Significant Deterioration" cases; the Sierra Club case, concerning standards for new coal-fired power plants; the Duquesne Light Section 120 non-compliance penalties cases; the Sierra Club stack height case; the lengthy NPDES rules litigation; and the National Wildlife Federation case on dams and NPDES permits. The firm has also participated in many landmark cases in other courts of appeals and in federal district courts, such as the National Wildlife Federation case on the Corps 404 general permit program and the Monsanto Superfund case in the Fourth Circuit. Finally, firm lawyers have participated extensively in citizen mandamus suits and citizen enforcement suits under the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts.

We also work closely with our litigation team in defending clients in the mass tort suits that sometimes accompany these environmental enforcement actions.

Although litigation is an important part of what we do, a substantial concern in our environmental practice is the avoidance of litigation. The firm proceeds from the premise that the constructive participation of regulated entities is crucial to the development of reasonable, lawful regulations that advance the dual goals of environmental protection and economic progress. We routinely contribute to the development of the factual records upon which the regulatory decision makers in the air, water, hazardous waste, and nuclear energy fields rely in developing rules and policies. In doing this, we work with clients, technical consultants, and the regulatory agencies to generate the data and analyses required for informed decision making-an approach that has won a number of our group and individual clients the respect and trust of the agencies and of environmental groups as well.

We also seek to help our clients avoid litigation by advising them on how best to comply with the law. We counsel clients on all aspects of federal and many state environmental laws. We are often asked to recommend ways of structuring those laws so as to avoid environmental problems. We perform comprehensive environmental audits to assess clients' potential liability for environmental problems, and suggest remedial and preventative measures. We counsel industries, lending institutions, and real estate developers on the impact of environmental control requirements and liabilities on a wide range of business transactions, from the simple to the most complex and sophisticated and on the relationship between environmental laws and bankruptcy laws.

The firm also has an extensive pro bono environmental practice. Lawyers in the firm have served as founders and officers of chapters of the Nature Conservancy and counsel for the Piedmont Environmental Council, Wildlife Legislation Fund of America, and the Historic Ricefield Association. One of our partners was the principal draftsman of laws creating the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and the Virginia Board of Historic Resources and their open space and historic preservation easement programs. Lawyers also worked pro bono with certain senators during Congress' enactment of the Superfund Act in 1980, and one was thereafter a member of the 301(e) Superfund Study Group.

Members of the firm's Environmental team are resident in our Brussels office and familiar with the environmental programs and policies of the European Union, the United Kingdom, and other EU member states. They are available to counsel U.S. clients on the difference between U.S. and foreign regulation in the environmental, hazardous waste, and hazardous substance areas. We have participated in U.S. court of appeals litigation over the extraterritorial reach of U.S. environmental laws. We have also given advice to foreign companies and investors on industrial plant siting and regulatory compliance (including compliance auditing) in the areas of U.S. environmental, hazardous waste, and hazardous substance laws, as well as advice on the large, virtually uninsurable contingent liabilities imposed by U.S. hazardous waste laws on companies or real estate in the United States sought to be acquired by foreign clients.

Clients:
Bar Association of the City of New York, Chesterfield County Planning Commission