Administrative Actions and Appeals

Responding to actions taken by federal and state administrative agencies has long been a core area of the firm’s litigation practice.  Whether it is challenging federal rulemaking in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, guiding clients through government investigations and information requests, or appealing or defending final agency actions before administrative hearing boards, we vigorously pursue our clients’ rights.  In addition to state and federal courts, we have represented multinational corporations and individual property owners before such diverse tribunals as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Administrative Law Judges, the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, the New Jersey Office of Administrative Law, the Delaware River Basin Commission, the Allegheny County Health Department, and the Pennsylvania Underground Storage Tank Indemnification Fund Board.

_{Photo © ER09 | istockphoto.com}

Our experience with respect to administrative actions and appeals includes the following representative matters:

• Challenging multiple EPA rulemaking actions, including challenges to EPA’s Clean Air Mercury Rule and Clean Air Interstate Rule in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and a challenge to an EPA-promulgated Total Maximum Daily Load ("TMDL") for PCBs in the Delaware Estuary.
• Challenging regulations related to incineration of non-hazardous secondary materials and solid waste issued by EPA under the Clean Air Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act on behalf of a leading provider of waste management services and waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities.
• Representing a national railroad in a highly publicized enforcement and civil penalty action brought by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania arising from a release and fish kill in northwestern Pennsylvania.
• Negotiating a major federal consent decree, with a value of approximately three quarters of a billion dollars, in the context of an EPA national petroleum refinery enforcement initiative.
• Defending electric generating units in response to state and federal enforcement actions concerning compliance with air quality regulatory requirements.
• Pursuing an action against the U.S. Soil Conservation Service for improperly designating a site, resulting in the agency’s withdrawal of its designation and the wholesale revision of the agency’s designation rules.
• Negotiating consent agreements with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection on behalf of a natural gas gathering company regarding alleged violations of the Clean Streams Law and the Air Pollution Control Act.
• Defending the purchaser of a large former military installation in a civil penalty action brought by EPA related to PCB transformers left at the property by the Department of Defense.
• Representing a petroleum refiner in negotiating two highly complex consent decrees to resolve alleged noncompliance under the Clean Air Act and other federal and state statutes. 
• Providing on-scene counseling to clients during three separate emergency response actions where evacuation orders had been issued and government investigators were present at the site.
• Negotiating resolution of government enforcement actions involving a major mid-Atlantic petroleum facility in the context of the sale of the facility.   
• Representing a client in a Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigation into the disposal of radiological medical waste.
• Resolving citations, requests for information, and other administrative actions with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration.
• Challenging, on behalf of a pipeline company, an administrative order and subsequent directives concerning remediation issued following the release of gasoline from a pipeline valve.
• Representing a municipality in permit challenges to prevent the expansion of an unpopular land use within the municipality.
• Successfully defending a permit challenge seeking to block construction of a wind-powered electric generating facility in northeastern Pennsylvania.