Alston & Bird’s finger is on the pulse of the waste industry. We help you achieve compliance in operational and regulatory spaces, identifying changes to help you stay in compliance and advocating against changes that negatively impact the industry. We help you reduce and navigate regulatory burdens and the potential for error. And if you’re facing enforcement proceedings, we know the way through.
Alston & Bird attorneys help industrial, manufacturing, retail, health care, transportation, and waste service companies navigate compliance issues associated with hazardous and solid waste, including medical waste, pharmaceutical and controlled substance waste, universal waste, and special waste. We guide you through regulatory compliance, permits, and variances and defend you in enforcement proceedings and civil litigation.
Our attorneys assist at every stage of the cradle-to-grave regulation of hazardous waste, including generator status determinations, episodic generation, waste accumulation, storage, manifesting, shipping, source reduction, recycling, and disposal requirements. Our team identifies regulatory exemptions that apply to your businesses or processes, counsels on securing necessary permits or approvals, and advises on potential facility and process modifications.
Alston & Bird helps navigate solid-waste-related compliance issues and evaluate new business opportunities and the requirements that apply. And should the need arise, we have extensive experience defending and litigating cases involving solid-waste matters in both state and federal courts.
Alston & Bird leads in the medical waste space. Our attorneys regularly advise on the complex patchwork of state-level statutes and regulations that govern operations for generators, transporters, and treatment facilities, such as requirements for containers and bags, labeling and marking, commingling and segregation of waste types, storage and temperature, transportation, treatment, and disposal. We serve as national counsel for waste service providers that offer a variety of medical waste services and support regional providers as they grow their footprint and service offerings.
We counsel treatment facilities, reverse distributors, waste management service providers, transporters, wholesalers, and distributors on the management of pharmaceutical and controlled substance waste and assist with navigating the variety of rules governing their management, including those of the EPA, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Department of Transportation (DOT), state environmental agencies and departments of health, and state boards of pharmacy. Our work in this area predates the EPA’s Management Standards for Hazardous Waste Pharmaceuticals and the DEA’s Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act regulations, and our continued work leverages our extensive understanding of those rulemakings.
Our work in universal and special waste is focused on ensuring that not only are you properly managing common business-related spaces but also critically evaluating what hazardous waste streams may be advantageously managed as universal wastes. We work on these waste issues in the manufacturing, logistics, and recycling industries to help reduce regulatory burdens.Special wastes appear in both federal and state-specific regulations and may, like universal wastes, have special handling requirements; we help you strategically manage these wastes.
Our attorneys assist the recycling industry and those seeking to partner with the recycling industry, supporting compliant operations, vetting new business opportunities, and helping them best use exemptions.
Alston & Bird’s environmental attorneys have defended enforcement actions brought by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state environmental agencies, state attorneys general, and local district attorneys in all aspects of waste law. We also have extensive experience defending clients in Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) citizen suits. When investigations and enforcement matters arise, we bring our expertise to bear to help you navigate them nimbly and effectively.
Experience
Please follow the links provided for our representative experience in:
Advising a national restaurant chain on environmental compliance programs for new supply warehouses and distribution centers, including management and handling of hazardous waste.
Advising an international transportation and logistics company on environmental matters throughout the country, including hazardous waste characterization, management, and personnel training, and leading the strategy for compliance across multiple states and EPA regions.
Advising large retail chains, grocery and drug stores, and suppliers to those retailers as more consumer goods are classified as hazardous waste under California law.
Advising pharmaceutical manufacturers on proper management of hazardous waste generated in operations.
Counseling treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) on waste acceptance, navigating capacity constraints, and the rejection of nonconforming waste.
Providing strategic financial assurance counsel to TSDFs and RCRA corrective action sites.
Developed hazardous waste training programs and standard operating procedures.
Drafted contracts to facilitate the purchase and sale of slightly spent solvents and other similar materials that might otherwise be classified as hazardous waste. Legally classifying the materials as nonhazardous waste enabled the companies to save costs associated with transporting and handling hazardous waste and reduced exposure to environmental liability.
Advised a battery company on evaluating product materials to avoid hazardous waste classification, identified requirements for handling and recycling across multiple jurisdictions, and assisted with contract drafting.
Enforcement Defense & Litigation
Represented a global transportation and logistics company in negotiations and resolution of EPA allegations that the company violated federal hazardous waste regulations at its facilities in all 50 states.
Helping pharmaceutical manufacturers address inspection findings and navigate enforcement matters pertaining to hazardous waste generated in operations.
Defending generators across multiple industries, including health care, transportation, scrap metal, and e-waste recycling and retail, in waste-related investigations and enforcement actions for alleged violations of California’s hazardous waste laws and regulations.
Negotiated a RCRA consent agreement and final order (CAFO) with the EPA for alleged financial responsibility and other RCRA violations on behalf of a major energy company.
Negotiated potential multimillion-dollar penalties down to $250,000 in an agency enforcement action for 18 hazardous waste sites. In a related case, we recovered $6.5 million for the client from its former insurance carriers for cleanup costs at these sites.
Defended a RCRA criminal enforcement action by the California EPA, persuading the agency to not only drop the criminal charges against our client but also forgo any civil enforcement.
Represented a used-oil recycling business in criminal RCRA violations linked to a worker’s death and fire, resulting in a minimized fine for the company and a decreased sentence for the company president.
Managed all aspects of a major RCRA criminal investigation by the EPA and Department of Justice into the alleged improper storage and disposal of acid; negotiated a noncriminal civil penalty.
Represented an oil and gas services company in negotiating a 92% reduction of an environmental civil penalty for alleged violations of RCRA and other federal environmental statutory schemes.
Defended a waste cleanup company in a RCRA criminal enforcement action by the EPA and associated debarment actions by the EPA and the U.S. Navy for allegedly causing the transport of a listed hazardous waste without a manifest.
Solid Waste
Compliance Counseling
Advised a Fortune 500 waste service provider on regulatory compliance questions relating to transportation of hazardous materials and solid waste.
Advising a waste service provider on compliance with the New York City Business Integrity Commission’s trade waste rules.
Advising a food/renewable waste management company on compliance, siting, and permitting matters as it builds biodigesters and produces and connects pipeline-ready renewable natural gas across the United States.
Provided CEQA review and entitlement strategy to an owner and operator of anaerobic digestion facilities for a biogas project in San Diego.
Providing guidance on how to reduce risk in the use of waste-reduction claims, including “zero waste to landfill” claims.
Advising on permitting matters, including reporting requirements, for facilities across the United States.
Counseled a Southern California mine on county landfill permitting and compliance for its active landfill and waste discharge requirements issued by the regional water quality control board.
Advised industrial clients on California DTSC inspections, compliance, and resolution of notices of violation, including waste hauling requirements and on-site materials storage.
Enforcement Defense & Litigation
Defended a waste hauler against claims for contribution and indemnification for disposing of waste at a former landfill.
Represented a former pesticide manufacturer in the investigation and remediation of a closed hazardous waste landfill in West Covina, California, and the pursuit of contribution from thousands of potentially responsible parties.
National land use counsel to a renewable energy company developing dozens of projects across the United States to produce renewable natural gas from the anaerobic digestion of organic waste diverted from landfills and beneficial reuse of agricultural byproducts.
Counsel to a former fabric and fiber manufacturing company in the remediation of a landfill pursuant to Georgia’s Hazardous Site Response Act.
Represented a materials manufacturer in connection with the alleged contamination of a dairy farm from PFAS through application of sewage sludge as soil enhancers.
Defending a solid waste company in a suit brought by adjacent landowners alleging public nuisance based on alleged odors emanating from the company’s operation of a municipal landfill.
Medical Waste
Compliance Counseling
Advising medical waste service providers on regulatory, legislative, and compliance issues, from waste acceptance through transportation, treatment, and disposal, and requirements for changes to operations and service offerings.
Analyzing developments in federal, state, and local regulated waste treatment and disposal laws, and advocating for policy changes.
Advising shippers, logistics companies, and waste transporters on DOT regulations for the transportation of regulated medical waste and infectious substances.
Advising health care facilities on medical/infectious waste management requirements for generators.
Enforcement Defense & Litigation
Guided a medical waste service provider through responding to notices of violation and negotiating administrative consent agreements for alleged violations of waste and air regulations.
Negotiated a favorable resolution of alleged state medical waste violations for a treatment facility.
Representing a health care system in a California waste enforcement matter involving alleged mismanagement of waste generated in hospital and medical facility operations.
Representing medical waste companies in regulatory disputes and litigation arising from extraterritorial application of waste disposal laws.
Represented a transportation and logistics company in a California waste enforcement matter involving the alleged mishandling of pharmaceutical waste.
Pharmaceutical & Controlled Substance Waste
Counseling pharmaceutical manufacturers, logistics providers, and forward and reverse distributors on pharmaceutical waste characterization, management, transportation, and disposal.
Helping health care facilities, waste transporters, and waste service providers navigate the EPA’s Management Standards for Hazardous Waste Pharmaceuticals and state equivalents.
Counseling health care facilities, reverse distributors, and waste service providers on DEA Disposal Act compliance and related issues such as the management of controlled substance wastage.
Advising pharmaceutical reverse distributors and waste service providers on compliance with state board of pharmacy licensure requirements.
Universal Waste
Counseling logistics, manufacturing, and recycling companies on the reclassification of existing waste streams as universal waste where feasible and on new categories of universal waste across jurisdictions to reduce the regulatory and cost burdens of managing those wastes under RCRA.
Counseling generators, manufacturers, and distributors on operational changes for the management of aerosols, batteries, and paints as universal waste.
Special Waste
Advising manufacturers on the compliant management of paint and sludge wastes within the larger context of ongoing business operations.
Advising on the management and reporting of petroleum byproducts in areas of regulatory uncertainty.
Recycling
Compliance Counseling
Counseling a recycling service provider on state recycling regulations governing operations and required permitting.
Counseling a battery recycler on the business value and feasibility of waste stream options for discarded batteries and the regulatory requirements of each.
Vetting opportunities to recycle medical devices for service providers.
Counseling companies seeking to use new and innovative recycling services on compliant management, verification, and recordkeeping practices.
Enforcement Defense & Litigation
Representing an industrial company and landowner in connection with sediment contamination with an alleged connection to recycling activities in a highly complex Superfund matter.
Advised a waste recycling company on compliance with a California DTSC enforcement order.
Counseled scrap metal recycling companies facing enforcement actions for alleged violations of California’s hazardous waste laws and regulations.