By Brian R. Hook
Environmental law touches on many aspects of business. Whether
it is to comply with federal, state or local environmental regulations,
many companies turn to attorneys that specialize in environmental
law to keep up with this ever-changing environment.
Who do St. Louis companies turn to? St. Louis Commerce Magazine
interviews seven leading attorneys to get a feel for how environmental
law is impacting the market.
Steven Poplawski
Bryan Cave LLP
“Because environmental law is so pervasive in its impact, I
get the opportunity to team with lawyers in all disciplines:
corporate, real estate, bankruptcy, litigation, and corporate
compliance. Thus, no two days are the same. Nor am I only working
with one group of lawyers,” says Steven Poplawski at Bryan Cave
in downtown St. Louis.
The firm has 45 lawyers practicing environmental law across
the globe, representing pharmaceutical, chemical, mining, agricultural,
manufacturing, real estate development and financial industry
clients. Poplawski is currently involved in permitting an ethanol
plant and counseling a client regarding the cleanup of a contaminated
site.
Poplawski says there was a lull of interest in environmental
law in the early part of this decade, but that the issues of
climate change, renewable energy, and sustainable development
are starting to increase the level of interest in environmental
law.
“St. Louis has the opportunity to be the hub of renewable energy
with regard to agricultural based fuels,” Poplawski says. “These
are potentially the most interesting times for practicing environmental
law in St. Louis since the early 1990s.”
Stephen Jeffery
Thompson Coburn LLP
“Environmental law is a lot more specialized than what it used
to be,” says Stephen Jeffery, who serves as Chair for Environment
on the RCGA Board of Directors. “If we went back in time 25
years ago, when a lot of the environmental statutes, laws and
regulations were enacted, there were no environmental lawyers,”
says Jeffery, who is a partner and a vice-chair of Thompson
Coburn’s environmental practice in downtown St. Louis.
Jeffery says many environmental lawyers came out of labor or
business law practices. He says many of the attorneys had to
develop their own expertise. “If you fast forward till today,
I think the current status of environmental laws and regulations
is so specialized and so sophisticated it would be very difficult
for a general practice attorney to really start dealing with
a complex environmental issue,” he says.
John Traeger
Gallop, Johnson & Neuman L.C.
John Traeger, a partner at Gallop Johnson & Neuman in Clayton,
says the interest in environmental law is growing thanks to
all of the attention that “green” issues are receiving in the
media. This, coupled with the country’s energy concerns and
issues relating to biotechnology, means plenty of work for environmental
lawyers.
“We are already seeing a new generation of environmental lawyers
prepared to meet the challenges presented by new industries
developing around these emerging technologies. With the development
of new biotech business, we’ll see new laws and regulations
addressing environmental issues unique to these businesses,”
he says.
Joseph Nassif
Husch & Eppenberger LLC
“When you look at the history of St. Louis, it is intertwined
on a number of major environmental issues,” says Joseph Nassif,
chair of the environmental and regulatory practice group at
Husch & Eppenberger in Clayton. Some of the historical environmental
issues from the region include the remediation of nuclear materials
and dioxins.
“There was a connection to the St. Louis area for these major
chemicals that drove the environmental litigation,” Nassif says.
He says his group took that environmental work and expanded
its practice beyond St. Louis. His group acts as environmental
counsel for several manufacturing companies. It also represents
clients involved in litigation and clean up activities initiated
by regulatory agencies or private parties.
Brad Hiles
Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin LLP
Brad Hiles says his environmental law practice at Blackwell
Sanders Peper Martin in downtown St. Louis is a blend of litigation
and counseling. On the litigation side, he represents companies
in civil disputes against enforcement agencies such as the Environmental
Protection Agency. On the counseling side, he assists companies
with efforts to understand and comply with a myriad of environmental
regulations.
“I enjoy the underdog role,” Hiles says. “Federal and state
environmental agencies have the upper hand in disputes with
corporations, because many environmental laws are written to
be completely one-sided in favor of the enforcement agency.
Therefore, most of my cases are extremely challenging because
the law favors my opponent.”
Hiles says he also enjoys helping clients comply with regulations.
He helps implement Environmental Management Systems—programs
that study system-wide compliance, identify areas for improvement,
and devise and implement a plan to achieve that improvement
and to continue self-study of the compliance on a regular basis.
David Shorr
Lathrop & Gage L.C.
“The climate appears to be changing with the change in politics
in Washington and the international move on global warming,”
says David Shorr, member in charge at Lathrop & Gage’s Jefferson
City and Columbia, Mo. offices. He says international drivers
often impact government and corporate decisions regarding the
environment.
“On Monday it may be the pallid sturgeon endangered species
issues, the next day a development with sewage issues and storm
water concerns, the following week a confined animal feeding
operation in rural Missouri,” he says. “I rarely stay on the
same issue two days straight. Lots of controversy, politics,
and social implications.”
Frank Hackman
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP
A Monsanto executive in the 1960s asked Frank Hackman if he
had considered pursuing environmental law as a career. At the
time, Hackman was a chemical engineering student interning at
Monsanto. The executive told him that a chemical engineer with
a law degree would be in a great position to take advantage
of upcoming federal environmental regulation.
"To get in on the ground floor and grow up with the field of
law where you can deal with scientific issues, public policy
issues and legal issues—I just found it exciting," says Frank
Hackman, who is now a partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal
in downtown St. Louis.
Hackman says that environmental law has had a very steady growth
of interest over the years. "By in large most people think there
should be more, rather than less environmental regulation, which
often times I think reflects a failure on the part of the regulated
community to explain to the public how much environmental regulation
there is already," Hackman says.
In the United States, there is already a very large body of
federal and state regulation on the books governing environmental
activity. "I would estimate that at the federal level there
is probably 11,000 to 12,000 pages of regulation, which would
put it roughly in the league of the Internal Revenue Service
code in terms of complexity. If you add in state and local regulations,
it probably goes up into the hundreds of thousands of pages
across the country," Hackman says.
