Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources

Environmental Transactions and Brownfields Committee

2009-2010 Committee Chair:

Amy L. Edwards, Holland & Knight LLP, Washington, DC

2008-2009 Committee Awards

This Committee was recognized with the following awards within the Environmental Committees. (more)

• 2008-2009 Best Public Service Award

Message from the Chair

Welcome to the home page of the Environmental Transactions and Brownfields (ETAB) Committee. We are one of the largest and most active committees in the Section. We are involved in the environmental aspects of all types of real estate and corporate transactions—ranging from the acquisition of your neighborhood shopping center, to Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) and Base Closure (BRAC) sites, to complex mergers and acquisitions involving multi-national corporations. We welcome your involvement.

In recent years, we have been focused upon evolving environmental due diligence standards ("all appropriate inquiries"); environmental risk mechanisms; audit policies; environmental disclosure issues; institutional controls; "green building" and "green remediation" issues; sustainability and climate change; cost recovery/contribution protection; and related issues. We work closely with several other committees in the Section.

The Committee provides a wonderful opportunity to stay in touch with practitioners in the field from all over the country. Committee members are invited to become involved in our activities:

1. Programs. The Committee regularly proposes topics for both the fall and annual SEER meetings and has had great success in having its proposals accepted. For example, at the 2009 Fall SEER, the Committee will be presenting a Soup to Nuts Case Study in Getting a Brownfields Project done Baltimore Style. The Committee' proposal to do a program on bankruptcy issues affecting transactions has been accepted for the annual environmental conference in Salt Lake City in March 2010 The Committee works closely with other committees. The Committee tries to sponsor 3-4 Quick Teleconferences (QTs) a year on breaking developments or topics of interest to the transactional practitioner. If you have suggestions for additional programs, or want to become involved with our programming committee, please contact our committee Vice Chairs, Jon Schuyler Brooks, jbrooks@phillipsnizer.com, Lisa Decker, lisa.decker@hro.com, Janet Carl, Janet.r.Carl@marshmc.com, or Jean Cohn-Connor, jcohnconnor@kirkland.com.

2. Newsletter. The Committee plans to publish three quarterly newsletters during the coming year. Each newsletter will contain articles covering issues of importance to the Committee. This is an excellent opportunity to remain informed on legal and policy developments affecting brownfields and contaminated property transactions and corporate merger and acquisition issues. If you are interested in submitting an article, or have an idea, please contact our Newsletter Vice Chairs, Tom Doyle, tdoyle@pierceatwood.com, Dean Calland, dcalland@bccz.com, or Rob Gelblum, Rob.Gelblum@ncmail.net.

3. Year in Review. Each year, the Committee contributes a section on environmental transactions and brownfields to the ABA SEER Year in Review (YIR). We have also initiated a periodic update of this publication that is distributed to our members. YIR provides an excellent summary of the most significant events in the field. If you are interested in working on the YIR, or the periodic updates, please contact our YIR Vice Chairs, Pam Elkow, pelkow@rc.com, Shawna Bligh, sbligh@session.com, or Susan Steinwall, ssteinwall@fredlaw.com.

4. Public Service. We initiated our major public service earlier this year, Lawyers for One Million Trees, including our inaugural tree planting event at the 2009 Fall Summit. We welcome your involvement and support! For more information about this important public service initiative, please see http://www.abanet.org/environ/projects/million_trees/home/shtml. Plant a tree or donate to one of our partnering organizations. For further information, please contact our Public Service Vice Chairs, Maki Iatridis, api@bhgrlaw.com or Ann Rhodes, amr@bhgrlaw.com.

5. Webpage/Technology. We now have the opportunity to launch discussions about important policies, trends and developments on the SEER discussion board. We intend to use our list serve to alert you to discussions on current topics. Please use this new feature! We have also posted links to recent regulatory announcements and information about upcoming conferences on our Committee webpage. We intend to highlight our latest newsletters, materials from our conferences and teleconferences, and other useful links. To contribute to the web page, or if you have any questions about its content, please contact our Technology Vice Chairs, Richard Ericsson, rericsson@farerlaw.com or Reeva Schiffman Kymer, RIS@firstenvironment.com. Please feel free to pass along useful links or other Internet resources to any of our Technology Vice Chairs.

6. Membership. The Committee is always looking for new ways to serve its existing members better, to ensure that both new and long-term members have an opportunity to become involved in Committee activities, and to attract new members. We welcome new members and will continue our efforts to recruit interested attorneys, policy makers, consultants and engineers to join our Committee. To become involved, please contact our membership vice chair, Rebecca Pritchett, rebecca@pritchettlawfirm.com.

What we do is determined by our members. We often work closely with other Committees in the Section, including the Site Remediation Committee, the Smart Growth and Urban Policy Committee, and the State and Regional Environmental Cooperation Committee. We expect to be working more closely with the Air Quality Committee and the Environmental Disclosure Committee, given the increasing overlap between environmental cleanup, land use, climate change, smart growth, due diligence and disclosure, and sustainability issues. Remember that under the Section's policies, you can join up to 5 Committees. We encourage you to join the ETAB Committee and as many others that are relevant to your interests and needs.

We invite your ideas and your participation in our Committee. If you have an idea for a program, an article, or any other type of activity, please contact me directly or the appropriate Committee Vice Chair. Similarly, if you want to become involved but don't know where to start, please contact me. I can be reached at amy.edwards@hklaw.com. We look forward to your active participation.

Amy L. Edwards
ETAB Committee Chair

ETAB Committee Publications

Todd Davis, Brownfields: A Comprehensive Guide to Redeveloping Contaminated Property (2nd Edition) (3rd Edition coming soon!)
Amy L. Edwards, Implementing Institutional Controls at Brownfields and Other Contaminated Sites (2nd Edition coming soon!)

About Committee

The Environmental Transactions and Brownfields Committee deals with the role of environmental law in transactions of all kinds, with special attention to the redevelopment of brownfields, including assumption and apportionment of liability, voluntary clean-up laws, prospective purchaser agreements, insurance, institutional controls, environmental justice, parent and successor liability, underground storage tanks and audit privilege.

ETAB Hot Topics

From time to time list serve discussions generate helpful practice tips in the form of e-mail discussions among our members. To give each of our members access to these discussions without clogging up the list serve, we are going to post the e-mail discussions. Today, we post an informative discussion about CERCLA windfall liens. We hope you find this new resource helpful you have general feedback, please feel free to contact us by e-mail.

CERCLA windfall liens - First Half
CERCLA windfall liens - Second Half

Signed

Harry Weiss : Former Vice Chair for Technology
Ken Whittaker: Former Vice Chair for Web site Improvement