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OVERVIEW
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Karaganis, White & Magel offers counseling and
litigation services in a wide variety of environmental and related technical areas.
The
following summaries describe services which span several statutory programs
and environmental media (e.g., air, water, solid waste), and
also describe services which are more narrowly directed to specific
statutory programs.
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Industrial and Commercial Counseling
Karaganis, White & Magel offers a wide range of
environmental counseling services to industrial and commercial clients.
These services include: real estate counseling;
regulatory compliance counseling in all phases of environmental and
health regulation (RCRA/HSWA, TSCA, CWA, CAA, CERCLA/SARA, OSHA, state
laws and regulations, and local codes and regulations); representation
of individual companies and groups involved as allegedly potentially
responsible parties (PRPs) in CERCLA/SARA Superfund sites; compliance
with federal and state Community Right to Know and Worker Right to Know
requirements; environmental audits and analysis for real estate, assets or companies under consideration for
acquisition; internal management and/or board of directors oversight
audits of environmental compliance and contingent liabilities; advice
and counseling as to insurance coverage and actions required to maximize
insurance coverage for environmental losses (e.g., notification);
and counseling and representation pertaining to service charges for
wastewater treatment and solid waste disposal.
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Real Estate
Transactions And Counseling
The firm has in-depth experience in all areas of
hazardous or toxic waste laws and other environmental laws as they
impact real estate operations. The firm can assist real estate
developers, dealmakers, transactional lawyers and other professionals in raw land development,
acquisitions, sales and leases of existing developed property, and
environmental compliance and liability problems involving property
already owned or leased by the client. Examples of specific areas of
assistance include: asbestos (regulatory compliance, tort liability and
clean up cost issues); underground storage tanks (regulatory
compliance, testing, remediation and liability issues); site acquisition
environmental conditions evaluation to assess regulatory exposure, tort
liability risk and cleanup cost exposure; real estate transfer
regulatory compliance under specialized state transfer statutes (e.g.,
"ECRA" type state statutes and "Superlien"
statutes); insurance evaluation to determine possible coverage for
environmental cleanup; contract negotiations establishing liability and
indemnity relationships involving buyers, sellers and third parties for hazardous materials contamination; wetlands
evaluation and (where necessary) permitting for areas arguably encompassing wetlands
under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act; and counseling concerning
possible toxic tort exposure. The firm also offers counseling, drafting,
and negotiating services to real estate lenders seeking to minimize
lenders' possible losses from hazardous materials or other environmental
problems. Finally, the firm offers counseling services to real estate
syndicators, real estate investment funds, insurance companies and other real estate investors to minimize the investment risks of
contamination and other environmental problems.
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Municipal Government Counseling
Municipal governments' traditional role in providing basic services
such as drinking
water, wastewater treatment, and solid waste disposal is becoming
increasingly regulated by the federal and state government. This is
subjecting local governmental bodies to potential liability from customers and third
parties adversely affected by the municipal government’s environmental
practices.
Landfills: Municipal landfills have become the targets of federal Superfund attention under CERCLA/SARA,
and municipalities owning existing landfills face tens of millions of
dollars of prospective liability for site cleanup. Karaganis, White
& Magel provides counseling and representation under the CERCLA/SARA process for
those municipalities involved in sites already on the federal National
Priorities List, and also counsels municipal officials on ways to avoid
listing. The firm also counsels municipal landfill owners on RCRA requirements for non-hazardous
landfills and
waste minimization and recycling ordinances. The firm provides municipal
landfill owners with counseling on regulatory compliance, and provides
municipal landfill owners with guidance as to landfill siting and
avoidance of toxic tort liability.
Incineration and "Waste-to-Energy:"
Faced with mounting liability problems from past landfill practices,
some municipalities are turning to incineration of solid waste.
While incineration
is a conceptually feasible option, it raises many other regulatory,
financial, operational and liability risks which need to be carefully
examined. Municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerators produce hazardous air
emissions (e.g., dioxins and dibenzofurans) and hazardous ash,
and the risks from incineration need to be carefully considered in overall incinerator
design, site selection, selection of pollution control devices and
design of ash disposal facilities. Questions also arise as to the legal
framework for incinerator management. MSW incinerators are complex
devices costing tens of millions of dollars and requiring highly trained
and experienced personnel. Various legal mechanisms are under
consideration ranging from privatization to interlocal agency operation to regional solid waste control.
Karaganis, White & Magel provides counseling on all legal aspects of MSW incineration, including
emission requirements, ash disposal requirements, permitting and siting,
financing, and management options.
Wastewater Treatment: Karaganis, White
& Magel has extensive experience in the legal aspects of every phase of
municipal wastewater treatment, including data collection, treatment plant
processes, effluent quality and discharge requirements, disinfection,
pretreatment requirements, user charges, sludge handling and disposal,
and municipal financing. The firm recognizes that wastewater treatment
options often have a major impact on other municipal operations,
particularly landfills.
Safe Drinking Water: In the area of
drinking water, the firm has nationally recognized expertise in the
regulatory framework of the 1986 Amendments to the Safe Drinking Water
Act. These amendments require the expenditure hundreds of millions of
dollars for upgrading of municipal drinking water facilities. Moreover,
these amendments increase potential municipal liability and exposure to
toxic tort lawsuits from drinking water consumers. The firm counsels
municipal governments in: 1) compliance requirements; 2) mechanisms for
financing cleanup of contaminated water supplies; 3) mechanisms for
preventative protection of a clean water supply (e.g. groundwater
protection); and 4) liability risks from supplying water containing
suspected toxic compounds.
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Litigation Services
Given the high cost and uncertainty surrounding the
outcome of environmental and hazardous materials litigation, the primary
focus of the firm's counseling services is to prevent unnecessary,
expensive and avoidable enforcement or private party litigation. The
firm's counseling activities recognize that a client's goal is to
operate its business with maximum efficiency in compliance with
applicable laws — not to engage in litigation.
However some litigation is unavoidable or may be necessary to protect the client's
interests. For example, governmental units as well as private companies
inevitably become involved in CERCLA/SARA Superfund litigation as waste generators,
waste transporters and facility operators. Similarly, private
companies, local governments, and landowners may find it necessary to sue
as plaintiffs to obtain judicial relief from unfounded or illegal
regulatory actions by state and federal agencies.
Perhaps unique among the nation's environmental law
firms, Karaganis, White & Magel represents and litigates on behalf of such
diverse clients as major industries, state and local governments,
private landowners and citizen organizations. Consistent with a rigorous
adherence to ethical standards as to conflicts, this broad range of
experience allows the firm to provide clients with in-depth litigation
services in all areas of regulatory, environmental, and toxic tort
litigation.
Karaganis, White & Magel has been primary counsel in a
wide variety of environmental and hazardous materials litigation over
the last twenty-eight years. These controversies have included:
litigation to prevent the contamination of subsurface ranch land water
supplies by heavy metals and cyanide in mine tailings (South Dakota);
litigation by a municipal landowner to force cleanup of PCB contamination
of landfill and sewage treatment plant (Indiana) (among the largest
private hazardous waste cleanups in nation's history); litigation to
protect Chicago's water supply from industrial contamination (Illinois);
litigation representing owners of several thousand acres of Illinois
farmland in a nuclear power plant land acquisition dispute (Illinois);
litigation to challenge permitting of hazardous waste landfill in a
geologically unsuitable area (Illinois); litigation for cost recovery by
landowners whose properties were contaminated by underground municipal
sewage leaks (South Dakota); litigation challenging wastewater treatment
requirements (Nevada); litigation between railroads and the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers over dam projects (Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri,
Alabama, Tennessee); litigation on behalf of potentially responsible
parties (PRPs) challenging EPA failure to require others to undertake
corrective action (Indiana); and litigation representing industrial
clients in Illinois, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and elsewhere.
As environmental counsel and litigators, Karaganis, White
& Magel has been and is currently lead counsel for potentially
responsible parties in some of the region’s most important Superfund sites —
serving as lead or group counsel at Midco I, Midco II, Ninth Avenue, and
the ACS sites. The firm is also in the final stages of representing the
City of West Chicago, Illinois in a complex controversy
that will result in a massive cleanup of radioactive waste in West
Chicago — likely the largest waste cleanup in Illinois history.
This litigation experience has included every level
of state and federal administrative agencies and courts, experience in
application of specialized jurisdictional statutes, and extensive
experience in the application of administrative law, tort law, and
constitutional law to environmental controversies.
As noted above, given the uncertainty and cost of
litigation, the firm's policy is to encourage litigation avoidance where
appropriate. However, where litigation is necessary or unavoidable,
the firm possesses the experience and the skill to
provide high quality litigation services.
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Permitting/Siting
Karaganis, White & Magel has extensive experience in
assisting with the permitting of industrial and municipal facilities in
such areas as wastewater treatment, sludge disposal, industrial air
emissions, hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities,
transfer stations, recycle facilities, mining operations, nuclear power
plants, municipal and hazardous waste landfills and incinerators. The
firm also has successfully assisted clients in obtaining and defeating
siting for pollution control facilities under state laws. Combining its
knowledge of current regulations and of institutional history with a
thorough understanding of the technical issues, the firm works closely
with the client's engineering services to maximize the chances of a
successful permit decision.
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Audits
Environmental auditing is a procedure that is
increasingly recommended — and sometimes required — by both EPA and
the Securities and Exchange Commission to assure both the public and
investors that company practices are in full compliance with applicable
regulations. Such auditing is typically performed by a law firm which
does not provide day-to-day counseling or litigation representation for the
company which is the subject of the environmental audit. Our attorneys
have extensive experience performing such audits.
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Compliance Counseling
Working with the client's internal compliance
personnel, our attorneys will assist a client in conducting regular
step-by-step compliance reviews of relevant regulatory obligations.
In
addition, our attorneys serve as sources of immediate practical legal
advice on potential compliance problems that need immediate answers.
Our
attorneys advise clients on all phases of regulatory compliance in all
environmental areas.
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Services to Other Lawyers
The breadth and complexity of environmental law requires specialized
skill and experience. Many non-environmental practices and general
practitioners
have clients which face actual or potential environmental problems, and
could make cost-effective use of an environmental
"specialist."
Karaganis, White & Magel often provides that
specialized assistance to clients in cooperation with either the
clients' own in-house counsel, or at the request of the clients' outside
counsel. The firm has found that such partnerships work smoothly
and benefit the clients by offering the clients the
services they need without duplicating the services that are being
managed and provided by the clients' main counsel.
To insure that the client is maximizing its return on
its legal investment, the firm practices "value lawyering" to
assist the client and its primary law firm in: 1) devising the overall
strategy; and 2) making sure that the joint efforts result in a
lower total cost to the client.
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