Environmental Litigation

The environmental litigators at Stoel Rives have decades of experience trying environmental cases at all stages of the administrative and judicial process. Our capabilities include:

• Citizen Suits: We have years of experience in successfully defending citizen suits under all federal environmental laws. We are currently litigating a series of groundbreaking energy resource and climate change cases, including the polar bear listing in Alaska and related ESA section 4(d) challenges across the country, as well as challenges to the ESA section 7(a)(2) Biological Opinion prepared for the Federal Columbia River Power System's impact on 13 listed salmonids in the Pacific Northwest.
• Penalty Actions: We have successfully defended numerous precedent-setting government enforcement actions and third-party citizen suits seeking to impose civil penalties.
• Challenges to Government Decisions: We have successfully both challenged and defended government rulemaking and other agency actions, including NPDES permits, new source review air permits, solid and hazardous waste facility permits, and other environmental, natural resource and land use entitlements issued under federal, state and local laws.
• Superfund and Clean-Up: Our attorneys regularly bring and defend cost recovery and natural resource damages actions under the Federal Superfund and similar state statutes.
• White Collar Crime: We also frequently represent companies and individuals in the defense of environmental white collar criminal charges, including CWA cases, hazardous waste, oil drilling, pipeline ruptures and related toxic or hazardous substance release matters.

Pre-Litigation Strategies

Our lawyers understand that environmental litigation can be labor-intensive and costly. That's why we aggressively implement pre-litigation strategies in order to avoid litigation where possible and, if not, to build bulletproof administrative records able to survive judicial challenge. These tactics have proven very successful in supporting a broad spectrum of federal, state and local permitting and infrastructure projects. Recent examples include our successful defense of the Seattle Tacoma International Airport's construction of a third runway and the Columbia River Channel Deepening Project. We also help clients and trade associations develop and implement regulatory compliance strategies appropriate to this constantly changing legal landscape, including addressing court rulings on water and air quality, ESA, NEPA, CEQA and related environmental issues.

Strong, Meaningful Relationships

Attorneys at Stoel Rives have excellent working relationships with officials at all federal and state agencies responsible for natural resources and environmental matters. In fact, many of our attorneys used to work for these agencies, including the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMF), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S. Forestry Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of State, the U.S. Department of Justice (Environmental & Natural Resources Section), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Northwest Power Planning Council. We also maintain good relationships with pertinent Congressional delegations, as well as with the many non-governmental organizations ("NGOs") and Indian tribes involved in relicensing proceedings.

Bottom line – we have the experience and resources to bring and defend challenges under all major environmental and natural resource statutes relating to air and water quality, hazardous waste, ESA, fisheries and wildlife issues.