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Vedder’s Environmental Practice guides businesses through complex environmental challenges with practical, results-focused strategies. Our attorneys have the knowledge, tools, and experience to assist clients manage regulatory risk, ensure compliance, and advance business objectives across enforcement, permitting and compliance, remediation, transactions, and litigation.

Vedder provides comprehensive counsel across complex and oftentimes burdensome federal, state, and local environmental frameworks, helping companies, property owners, and investors respond to regulatory inquiries, mitigate potential liabilities, and maintain compliance in an everchanging regulatory landscape. Capital improvements, expansion and modification of operations, and changing property use can all trigger complex statutes, regulations, and agency processes that can be confusing and difficult to navigate. We assist clients in permitting and transactional matters by preparing and negotiating permit applications, assessing environmental considerations in mergers, acquisitions, and real estate transactions, and embedding compliance requirements into broader corporate and operational strategies. Our approach remains grounded in practical analysis and a clear understanding of each client’s commercial priorities and our goal is to always identify and deliver strategic, innovative, practical, creative and cost-effective solutions.

Our team also advises on site remediation and Superfund (CERCLA) matters at every stage, from initial EPA notices through remedial planning and agency negotiations. With substantive technical and regulatory knowledge, we help clients reduce risk exposure, control remediation costs, and work constructively with regulators and stakeholders to move matters toward resolution.

Whether managing compliance programs, defending enforcement actions, or navigating complex disputes, Vedder offers guidance that balances environmental obligations with operational and financial considerations. With experience across the United States, we support clients in addressing environmental challenges efficiently, effectively, and with a sustained focus on achieving practical, defensible results.

Enforcement Defense

  • Responding to notices of violation, administrative orders, and agency investigations
  • Defending clients in environmental enforcement actions at local, state, and federal levels
  • Deploy comprehensive, cost-effective targets to assist clients in reducing enforcement risks, responding to enforcement actions when they occur, and fulfilling compliance obligations
  • Managing communications and negotiations with regulators
  • Reducing enforcement exposure through strategic, timely action

Regulatory Compliance and Counseling

  • Compliance practice is broad and comprehensive, addressing the full range of issues such as Air Quality, Water Quality, Wetlands, Hazardous Waste, Pesticides and Disinfectants, Chemical Assessment and Planning, Product Development, and California’s Proposition 65, at the federal, state, and local level
  • Developing and evaluating compliance programs and internal controls
  • Directing environmental, health, and safety (“EHS”) audits and compliance assessments, customized to specific client goals and needs, and aimed to prevent, detect, and respond to EHS compliance concerns and risks
  • Interpreting emerging regulatory requirements, understanding the science behind the law, and advising on future business impacts and risks of regulations

Permitting and Licensing Proceedings

  • Preparing, negotiating, and drafting air, water, land use, and operational permits and permit conditions with federal, state, and local agencies
  • Managing agency submissions, public comment processes, and administrative reviews
  • Representing clients in hearings and public meetings
  • Ensuring that permits impose only appropriate and reasonable compliance obligations, which align with client operational and business needs

Site Remediation and Superfund (CERCLA)

  • Handling all phases of the Superfund process, from Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Studies, Record of Decision, Remedial Design, Remedial Action, to Long Term Operation & Maintenance
  • Leading Steering and Technical Committees
  • Managing remedial investigations, feasibility studies, and cleanup strategies
  • Negotiating removal actions, and remedial design/remedial actions with the USEPA/DOJ/State Agencies throughout the country, as well as PRP groups, public officials, environmental nonprofit groups and other stakeholders by identifying common ground necessary to succeed
  • Advising on risk management, cost allocation, and long-term site considerations
  • Advocating fair cost allocation, litigating cost recovery and contribution claims
  • Advise clients in the evaluation, selection, and oversight of consultants and environmental experts essential to completing complex remediation processes

Transactional Counseling and Due Diligence

  • Manage due diligence efforts working with technical consultants, as appropriate, to evaluate and assess legal environmental risks and liabilities related to historical and current business operations
  • Conducting environmental due diligence for corporate mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures; private equity deals; joint ventures; finance transactions; complex real estate transactions; and Brownfield development
  • Assessing potential liabilities, compliance gaps, and remediation obligations
  • Drafting and negotiating environmental insurance provisions, post-closing remediation plans, and detailed indemnity provisions
  • Coordinating environmental strategy with deal teams to prepare and negotiate key environmental provisions of agreements to ensure timely signing and closing

Environmental Litigation

  • Representing clients in administrative, civil, and federal court proceedings
  • Strategically and proactively develop robust administrative records to withstand challenge
  • Collaborating with white collar defense attorneys on criminal environmental matters
  • Handling sophisticated, discovery-intensive, high-stakes disputes

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