Increasingly, high-value investments involve environmentally-distressed properties. The ability to understand and get comfortable with the risks posed by such opportunities is a vital step for ensuring business success. Tellus lawyers bring decades of experience navigating these processes, and will efficiently ferret out the scope of environmental issues, and then design client-tailored mitigation solutions. We bring decades of environmental due diligence and transactional negotiation expertise to the table, and give our clients the protection and confidence needed to move smartly in this competitive business landscape. Experience really matters!

Knowing when and where to insert commas and employ tack-sharp drafting techniques is a key lawyering skill, as is being able to spot issues in page-long paragraphs served up by “the other side”.  Knowing how and when to push for a client advantage, and understanding the implications of phrasing in the context of environmental risk mitigation are skills best left to attorneys with long experience.  Tellus attorneys posses these skills.  

Whether you are the purchaser, the seller, landlord or responding to a regulator, our approach to sound, careful and persuasive legal drafting makes all the difference.  Tap into Tellus for your drafting and contract review needs.

We love our environmental engineering peers, but their job is to dig into factual information regarding contamination molecules, and not keeping tabs on agency overreach. For this reason, the most effective cleanup teams combine technical and legal expertise, both having an orientation towards efficient business outcomes. Tellus lawyers have evolved this team approach into a fine art, balancing the roles of field remediation and ongoing agency interface, to “birddog” projects to completion: on-time and on-budget. Anyone who has dealt with regulatory agencies knows this is no easy task, yet it is essential for maintaining the cost-benefit calculus with distressed property investments.

Tellus lawyers have long-term, established relationships with excellent engineering teams, and with environmental agencies across the state of California (and in several other states). We bring tried and true relationships and processes to site cleanups of all size and complexity.

Tellus has significant experience representing clients in environmental regulatory and administrative matters. We possess the necessary knowledge and established relationships with regulators to successfully navigate compliance matters, notices of violation, cleanup orders, permits and the range of other complex issues that emerge under environmental and landlord-tenant law. Manufacturers, developers, energy, industrial and commercial companies of all types rely on our technical expertise, negotiation prowess and strategic approaches to address the intricate and shifting environmental, health and safety requirements, land use entitlements, and zoning guidelines.

In particular, Tellus maintains up-to-date expertise of laws pertaining to gas stations, dry-cleaners, asbestos, PFAS, underground storage tanks and other high-intensity hazardous materials uses typically found in commercial real estate settings. Left unaddressed, these environmental issues often compromise investments, and require special due diligence and lease terms to protect landlord/owners.

Our attorneys assist manufacturers, distributors, and retailers understand and maintain compliance to avoid getting caught in the crosshairs of these often imperfect and highly arcane laws including with all aspects of Proposition 65, PFAS in textiles.  These laws are complex and many have “citizen enforcement” provisions that can result in significant settlement costs.  Because our experience includes chemistry and related technical backgrounds, we bring a negotiating edge to such claims. Our practice includes:

• Compliance counseling, including under the “Clear and Reasonable Warnings” provision of Proposition 65;

• Counseling regarding responding to a Notice of Intent to Sue;

• Pre-litigation settlement efforts and strategy;

• Proposition 65 litigation;

• Proposition 65 settlements (both in and out of court) of enforcement actions brought against manufactures, distributers, and retailers; and

• Supplier/manufacturer certification and indemnification agreements.

Tellus attorneys keep a close watch on the regulatory marketplace. We track court opinions, analyze emerging legislation and agency actions, and read a plethora of expert opinion pieces each week. We do this with a view towards understanding the implications of new developments for our clients’ concerns. Like a good doctor, we want to give you the benefit of the newest advancements and changes. Recently enacted requirements that are causing client headaches include:

• The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) hazardous waste fee programs that impose several strict reporting and fee requirements on impaired site redevelopment due to the disposal of “dirty dirt” (e.g. contaminated soils);

• California beach nourishment requirements imposing permit conditions on developers to pay for the segregation and beach placement of eligible site excavation spoils, including California Public Beach Restoration Program and Sand Compatibility and Opportunistic Use Program (SCOUP)

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