Wendel Rosen helps clients successfully navigate a complex regulatory landscape of local, state, and federal environmental regulations. With deep understanding of the law, experience with the agencies, and insight to a range of industries, our attorneys offer practical guidance to help clients meet their business goals. We assist clients with environmental issues that arise in the ownership, transfer, and leasing of real property. We handle compliance, release reporting, access and indemnity agreements, negotiation, investigation, remediation, and litigation for the public and private sectors.
Our clients include commercial and residential property owners, developers, real estate investment trusts, construction firms, public entities, nonprofits, and manufacturing, industrial, agricultural, chemical, warehousing, technology, automotive, and retail companies.
Environmental Compliance
We guide clients in all manner of air, water, and hazardous waste compliance, including Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act, Hazardous Substance Account Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and Resources Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) issues. Additional matters frequently addressed by the firm include:
- Occupational safety and health compliance, enforcement, appeals, and variance proceedings
- Proposition 65 compliance and defense
- Storm water permitting and compliance
- Underground and above ground storage tank compliance, closure, and reimbursement
- Emergency planning, release reporting, and community right-to-know
Transfer, Redevelopment and Remediation
The firm assist clients with environmental due diligence in real property, asset, and business sales. Our attorneys are experienced in contaminated site investigation, cleanup, closure, and health risk management, and assist with identification of environmental issues, reporting obligations, interaction with regulatory agencies, remediation of contaminated property and actions to fund remediation and obtain site closure. Our attorneys have experience with the redevelopment of former industrial, infill, and brownfield sites.
Litigation and Conflict Resolution
We represent private parties, public entities and municipalities in cost recovery, compliance, and regulatory negotiations. Our attorneys guide clients in matters of environmental insurance coverage, claims analysis, identification of responsible parties and cost recovery. When we are unable to negotiate a resolution, we represent clients in lawsuits to recover environmental costs and to defend environmental claims.
Transactional and Due Diligence Matters
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Instrumental in the approval of the exchange and sale of Port of Oakland public trust land to Oakland Harbor Partners, LLC. The $35 million development will support a mixed-use residential development of more than 3,000 units of market-rate and affordable rental and for-sale housing, 200,000 square feet of retail and commercial space and two new marinas. The transaction includes finding exchange parcels, conducting the necessary negotiations and the passage of precedent-setting legislation to facilitate the deal.
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Assisted a number of residents in San Francisco in negotiations with a utility and the Department of Toxic Substances Control over the remediation of historical contamination beneath their homes and compensation for the associated losses.
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Lead counsel for a scrap metal company’s purchase of a facility in San Leandro, California, negotiating provisions to indemnify client, which was taking over and industrial site with known environmental issues.
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Worked with a closely held trust to meet difficult deadlines for the remediation and sale of a 1-acre parcel to a county transit district for expansion of its maintenance facilities. The firm negotiated an agreement in which the former operator of the property conducted a significant portion of the environmental work without the need for litigation.
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Assisted a national retailer with environmental issues, including response to Polanco Act demands, from a California redevelopment agency, resulting in the successful sale of the multi-million dollar property to a third party.
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Assisted a national cold storage and logistics company with obtaining a favorable variance from the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board with regard to regulations that would otherwise have required the client to spend millions of dollars to address the alleged violation.
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Provided environmental due diligence nationwide for a national fitness chain and assisted in the evaluation, investigation and remediation of contaminated property to allow for the construction of fitness centers and associated facilities.
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Represented the owners of a Napa County vineyard in negotiating a settlement of a Cleanup and Abatement Order in which the agency initially sought penalties and site restoration that could have cost the client several million dollars. The final resolution required only an off-site mitigation program, which cost the owners $15,000.
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Assisted a San Francisco property owner in a case against a publicly-traded international oil and gas company, in which we obtained for the client reimbursement for past remediation costs (including attorneys’ fees), installation of a soil and groundwater cleanup system, indemnity for future costs and a guarantee that the oil and gas company would pay any future incremental development costs resulting from the contamination.
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Assisted a Northern California refinery with environmental permitting and compliance issues, as well as taking the lead on environmental due diligence matters for a possible sale of the facility.
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Lead counsel for the Alco Iron & Metal purchase of a WR Grace facility in San Leandro, California, negotiating provisions to indemnify the buyer, which was taking over an industrial site with known environmental issues.
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Assisted the Port of Oakland in negotiating the remediation of the former Alaska Airlines maintenance facility site at the Oakland International Airport.
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Assisted the Port of Oakland in negotiation of cleanup requirements and the construction details for a state of the art tank farm at the Oakland Airport. The tank farm, which cost in excess of $25 million, supplies jet fuel to the airport and became fully operational within the past 12 months.
Litigation Matters
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Representing owners of coastal property, obtained a ruling from the California Court of Appeal, that a State Lands Commission policy restricting coastal development was an illegal, underground regulation and could not be used to prevent the landowners from developing their property. (Bollay v. California Office of Administrative Law, et al., California Court of Appeal Case No. C 063268 (Sacramento County Superior Court Case No. 34-2008-80000072).)
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Negotiated a multi-million dollar settlement for a client seeking to recover environmental investigation, business interruption, loss of use, and diminution in value damages from the former owners and operators of an automobile dealership in Palo Alto, California. (AR Automotive, LLC, et al. v. Henry Khachaturian, et al., Case No. RG09450197)
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Obtained a final judgment dismissing CERCLA claims by the State of California and private parties against The Dow Chemical Company at the Brown & Bryant site in Shafter, California. (Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, Co. v. Hercules, Incorporated, et al., United States District Court for the Eastern District of California Case No. CIV-F-96-5879.)
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Represented a client that had previously purchased, remediated and sold property near the San Francisco Airport in litigation with an adjoining landowner who sued to recover his own remediation costs. Negotiated a favorable settlement for the client. (Haskins v. Cherokee Grand Avenue LLC, United States District Court for the Northern District of California Case No. CV 11-5142 YGR).
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Assisted the owners of a shopping center in Alameda, California with remediation of historical contamination on the property and regulatory closure plus recovery of 100 percent of past environmental costs and indemnification for future environmental from a major oil refiner that was responsible for the contamination. (Sebanc v. Shell Oil Company, United States District Court for the Northern District of California Case No. C 10-04853 SC.)
Publications

NEPA’s Turn on the Trump Chopping Block
07/27/2020 | Wendel Rosen LLP
As it has with other environmental laws, the Trump administration has taken aim and fired at the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”). In record time, changes to the regulations proposed…
Full Article
Clean Water Act Permitting Reaches Groundwater
05/26/2020 | Wendel Rosen LLP
Discharging pollutants to navigable waters has required an NPDES permit under the Federal Clean Water Act for nearly 50 years. Now, pollutants discharged to land that seep in groundwater to…
Full Article
Rising Waters of the State and Receding Waters of the U.S.
04/16/2019 | Client Update
While you may have heard about the Trump administration’s attempts to narrow the scope of Waters of the United States (WOTUS), California is expanding its regulations, including broadening the definition…
Full ArticleEvents

Water Laws, Regulations and Recent Developments
05/16/2018 | HalfMoon Education Inc.
On Wednesday, May 16, 2018, environmental attorney Wendy Manley will present "Complying with Water Quality Laws and Regulation" in San Jose, CA. Join Wendy as she discusses the following topics: State and…
Full Article
Emerging Stormwater Litigation Trends: 5 Things Environmental Professionals Need to Know
03/15/2018 | Mapistry
Join Wendy Manley and founder of Mapistry, Ryan Janoch, on March 15 as they explore emerging environmental litigation trends and the best ways that you can reduce risk of environmental non-compliance and more…
Full Article
Water Laws, Regulations and Recent Developments
10/03/2017 | HalfMoon Education Inc.
Join Wendel Rosen environmental attorney Wendy Manley and four other water experts as they present at the Water Laws, Regulations and Recent Developments seminar hosted by HalfMoon Education Inc. on Tuesday,…
Full ArticleNews

Wendel Rosen Attorneys Selected to 2020 Northern California Super Lawyers and Rising Stars List
07/13/2020 | Wendel Rosen LLP
Wendel Rosen LLP, the largest law firm in the East Bay representing businesses throughout the county, announced that 19 attorneys have been named to the 2020 edition of the Northern…
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Wendel Rosen’s Amara Morrison Appointed to Bay Planning Coalition Board of Directors
10/10/2019 | Wendel Rosen
Amara Morrison, a land use partner with Wendel Rosen LLP, the largest law firm in the East Bay representing businesses throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and state, has been…
Full Article
Warning! You’ve Been Exposed to New Prop 65 Requirements!
02/06/2019
Wendel Rosen attorney Wendy Manley co-authored the article, “Warning! You’ve Been Exposed to New Prop 65 Requirements!” which published on February 6, 2019, in the ACBA. To read more, please…
Full ArticleDate | Category | Publication | Title |
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08/21/2018 | News | Wendy Manley | Ruling on Acrylamide Brings Breakfast Back to the Table – First Coffee, Now Cereal |
06/19/2018 | News | Food Safety Magazine | Proposition 65 – Effects on Coffee Producers |