Environmental Health and Safety

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Babst Calland’s Environmental Health and Safety Services Group provides a nationwide clientele with sophisticated and practical representation in all aspects of environmental law.  

Babst Calland provides a unique resource for clients facing environmental and health and safety issues. With the region's largest staff of regulatory attorneys who focus their practices exclusively in this field, our Environmental Health and Safety Services Group offers a team of seasoned practitioners who can meet the complex challenges that our clients confront.

Our varied and extensive backgrounds in the environmental and health and safety fields, combined with our representation of clients throughout the country, have made Babst Calland one of the nation's premier law firms in the environmental area.

Focused Environmental Practice Areas

Because of the firm's broad, nationwide client base, lawyers in the Environmental Health and Safety Services Group are able to focus their practices on specific environmental areas, e.g., air pollution, industrial and municipal wastewater management, hazardous and solid waste, complex site remediation, natural resource damages, chemical regulation, and occupational safety and health. Thus, a Babst Calland client with a hazardous waste issue will have that matter addressed by a lawyer who works extensively with hazardous waste programs across the United States. That lawyer will be able to bring hazardous waste experience from different industrial sectors, different U.S. EPA regions and different states. As a result, clients do not have to pay for a long "learning curve" or for advice based solely upon legal research but little or no experience.

Broad Range of Experience and Billing Rates

The extent and range of experience levels within the Group also distinguish Babst Calland's environmental, health and safety practice from other firms. Babst Calland has a number of individual lawyers with more than twenty years of environmental experience. These lawyers have had the benefit of participating in the development of the primary federal and state statutory and regulatory programs, giving them a profound and fundamental understanding of how these environmental programs apply to the firm's broad spectrum of clients. Indeed, our attorneys participated in the initial implementation of, and challenge to, key provisions of what have become today's air, water and waste regulatory programs.

Babst Calland also has environmental lawyers with varying levels of environmental experience between one year and twenty years. This range of experience and billing rates allows Babst Calland to perform work at the most cost-efficient level. Firms with smaller groups simply do not have the ability to match experience and billing rates with the various tasks involved in solving an environmental problem, resulting in significantly higher fees for their clients.

Strong Technical Backgrounds

Babst Calland's environmental lawyers also have a wealth of technical backgrounds that help them to solve complex environmental problems and work with and coordinate the efforts of environmental consultants and scientists. For example, the Group includes lawyers with undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering, chemical engineering, environmental studies, biophysics, microbiology, biology and information and decision systems, and graduate degrees in health, physics and industrial hygiene, environmental engineering, oceanography, limnology, ecology and forensic chemistry.

Plant-Based Experience

Babst Calland has taken this technical background and experience and applied it at the plant level to develop practical solutions for its clients. Knowledge of the environmental regulations is only part of the process involved in providing effective environmental legal services. It is the ability to translate those requirements in the specific context of a client's manufacturing process or contaminated property that adds true value to the service provided. Babst Calland lawyers understand the value of knowing their clients' processes and facilities and routinely spend time in the field so that practical solutions are not missed because of a lack of understanding of the framework in which an environmental problem arises.

This practical perspective also has enabled Babst Calland to develop effective preventative law programs that have assisted our clients in reducing their environmental exposures. For example, our environmental lawyers have conducted over 100 compliance and transactional audits and developed environmental training programs to cover everything from general environmental awareness to specifically focused programs on such topics as preparing for a multi-media inspection and determining when an installation permit is required for an air emission source.

Full Range of Environmental Services

Complementing the talents of our environmental lawyers are the strengths of Babst Calland's Business, Construction, Employment & Labor, and Litigation Services Groups. Attorneys from these other practice groups routinely team with the attorneys in the Environmental Health and Safety Services Group to create a synergy not otherwise found in today's legal market. Through this team approach, Babst Calland lawyers take the practice of environmental law beyond its traditional boundaries by not only resolving the problems of today but by averting or minimizing future environmental conflicts.

Given the breadth and depth of our attorneys' knowledge and practical experience with complex environmental issues, Babst Calland's Environmental Health and Safety Group is uniquely positioned to help our clients face the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.