Management and Regulatory Compliance
Today’s environmental regulatory regime is often compared unfavorably with the tax code for its complexity, arcane rules, and minutia of requirements. Our attorneys work closely with our clients’ environmental, health and safety, and operations personnel to decipher and understand how those regulations impact our clients’ business and to find the most efficient and cost-effective way to meet those requirements and meet the operational business goals.
Waller Lansden’s attorneys also work on a regular basis with clients in developing and implementing environmental management systems (EMS), including ISO 14000 certifications. The development of EMS and related organizational policies and organizational structures is often a key component of meeting the client’s overall environmental objectives. In conjunction with those EMS programs, we also work regularly with clients in self-audits and disclosures under various state audit privilege laws or under EPA’s self-disclosure policies in obtaining the benefits therefrom.
In regulatory compliance issues, the key to success often is obtaining a determination from a regulatory agency that a client is not subject to a particular requirement. We work closely with clients in obtaining “non-applicability” letters or other favorable regulatory interpretations. These interactions require trust, expertise, and respect from the regulatory agencies for the client. We work with the clients to build that relationship and confidence with regulatory agencies.
Significant Matters
- Advised a national corporation on RCRA issues concerning treatment and storage of hazardous waste, resulting in a process change and savings of $1 million per year
- Advised a national corporation concerning RCRA regulatory status of recycling operations, helped design process to avoid regulation of its plants as hazardous waste treatment facilities, and secured letters concurring in our analysis of RCRA regulations from states in which client's plants operated
- Assisted client in obtaining determination that “ethanol” production facilities were subject to 250 ton not 100 TPY major source threshold under the Clean Air Act, thereby expediting permitting for new facilities
- Assisted client in obtaining applicability determination that determined various operational changes at manufacturing facilities were “routine maintenance” and thus not subject to complex and costly PSD permitting requirements
- Obtained determination that certain operations at foundry did not trigger requirements that would have subjected the facility to MACT requirements under the Clean Air Act air toxics program
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