Environmental Litigation

GordonDerr's environmental litigation team is one of the premier environmental practices in the region. The firm's attorneys are renowned for their innovative negotiation and settlement strategies, including their ability to combine persuasive technical consultants and broad legal experience working with private parties and government agencies to resolve potential risks and current liabilities associated with a myriad of environmental matters, including SEPA/NEPA, water resources and water quality, natural resource damage claims, and contaminated sites.

In addition to providing strategic advice, GordonDerr helps coordinate work involving multiple regulatory agencies; and consults, assists, advocates, appeals, and defends against citizen and government enforcement actions. The firm successfully shepherded the permitting and subsequent appeals process through both local and state courts for the largest wetland fill approval in the Western United States and is involved in significant litigation governing Washington's water utilities, which provide water supply to more than 80% of the state's population.

GordonDerr's hazardous waste team has been instrumental in dozens of federal consent decree settlements under CERCLA, the Clean Water Act, and in hundreds of site investigations and cleanups under MTCA, including the successful negotiation of the first de minimis consent decree in Washington state history. The firm's hazardous waste practice has deep experience advising clients on groundwater, surface water, and soil contamination; leaking underground storage tanks; site cleanups and cost recovery litigation; and brownfields development.

GordonDerr has a formidable track record of negotiating, litigating, or reaching prompt settlement in some of the most complex environmental matters in the Pacific Northwest.

• Citizen Suits
• Hazardous Waste
• Natural Resource Damage Claims
• SEPA/NEPA
• Water