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1350 I Street, N.W.
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005-3311
Washington

• Air
• Citizen Suits
• Transportation Conformity
• Environmental

• Georgetown University (B.S.F.S., magna cum laude, 1979)
• Georgetown University (J.D., cum laude, 1983)

• Colorado (1983)
• District of Columbia (1988)
• American Bar Association (Chairman, Air Quality Committee, Environment, Energy, and Resources Section)

David Friedland is chair of the Firm’s Environmental Practice Group, and past chair of the Firm's Clean Air Act practice. He currently serves as the Vice-Chair of the Air Quality Committee of the ABA’s Section on Environment, Energy and Resources, having formerly served for two years as Chair.

Mr. Friedland’s practice touches every aspect of the regulation of air pollution under the Clean Air Act and state and local air pollution statutes and regulations.  On the regulatory side, he has helped companies and trade associations prepare comments on scores of proposed rules including revisions to the ozone and particulate matter NAAQS, several rounds of PSD/NSR regulations (e.g., the “WEPCO” rule in 1992, the “NSR Reform” rule in 2002, the “equipment replacement” rule in 2003, and the “Duke hourly rate” rule in 2006), numerous MACT standards (e.g., the aerospace, coil coating, site remediation, medical waste incinerator, offsite waste and recovery, wool fiberglass, hazardous waste combustors, and “MON” rules), the “credible evidence” rule, federal and state Title V rules, and state and local rules (e.g., CARB rules for off road diesel engines and large spark ignition engines).  He has litigated many of these rules in the D.C. Circuit and elsewhere either as an industry petitioner or as an intervenor in suits brought by environmental groups.  Most of these cases have resulted in favorable settlements (e.g., litigation relating to the MON, the organic liquids distribution MACT, the aerospace MACT), while others have resulted in published opinions.  See, e.g. Sierra Club v. EPA, 167 F.3d 658 (D.C. Cir. 1999); Cement Kiln Recycling Coalition v. EPA, 255 F.3d 855 (D.C. Cir. 2001).

Once the rules are in place, Mr. Friedland counsels a wide range of companies on compliance.  His clients include petroleum refineries, synthetic chemical manufacturers, cement and glass manufacturers, pharmaceutical producers, consumer products manufacturers, waste management entities such as landfills and waste to energy facilities, can manufacturers, and trade associations representing numerous industries such as the airlines, road and home building, and chemical companies.  Day to day counseling issues include compliance with the complicated preconstruction permitting requirements of the federal and state PSD/NSR programs; compliance with the plethora of MACT/NESHAP and NSPS standards; responses to over fifty Section 114 requests for a diverse group of companies; and counseling on a wide range of Title V questions, including the application for, amendment and appeal of, and certification of compliance with, these permits that are often hundreds of pages long.

Professional Highlights

In addition to his environmental law practice, Mr. Friedland is very active in pro bono work.  He heads up a team of lawyers who conduct multi-week environmental education classes each year for sixth graders at the Birney Elementary School in Anacostia.  Among other things, the students learn about, and then purchase and retire, sulfur dioxide allowances in EPA’s annual SO2 auction, thereby reducing the overall amount of pollution that is allowed to be emitted each year by factories and power plants.

• Mr. Friedland is currently negotiating with EPA, the Department of Justice and state environmental officials to resolve several multi-facility Clean Air Act audits that companies voluntarily performed pursuant to EPA’s Audit Policy.  These negotiations involve complicated and precedential legal and technical issues in the unique context of an audit.

• Mr. Friedland defends companies in air enforcement actions brought by federal, state and local authorities, and in citizen suits.  Together with Rob Brager, he represented two major petroleum refiners in negotiations that led to settlements in EPA’s Petroleum Refinery Initiative.  This involved negotiation with EPA headquarters and the Department of Justice, as well as OECA, several EPA regions, Pennsylvania DEP, Philadelphia AMS, and other state agencies.

• In addition to defense of cases brought by U.S. EPA and the Department of Justice, he has defended cases brought by New Hampshire DES, Delaware DNREC, the South Coast AQMD and other state and local authorities. 

• Mr. Friedland has also defended numerous citizen suits.  See, e.g. Clean Air Council v. Sunoco, Inc., 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5346 (D. Del. 2003).

• Together with Gus Bauman and Max Williamson, he successfully represented a group of trade associations as intervenors in a series of transportation conformity/Clean Air Act cases brought by environmental groups challenging various road projects.  See
  Sierra Club v. Atlanta Regional Commission, 171 F. Supp. 2d 1349 (N.D. Ga. 2001)(lead counsel for industry intervenors in Clean Air Act case involving Atlanta transportation plan in Georgia federal district court, including briefing and oral argument before district court and on appeal to Eleventh Circuit); Utahns for Better Transportation v. Slater, 295 F.3d 1111 (10th Cir. 2002)(lead counsel for industry coalition in successful appeal establishing right of trade associations to intervene in challenges brought by environmental and local groups); Environmental Council of Sacramento v. Slater, 184 F. Supp. 2d 1016 (E.D. Cal. 2000)(Successfully intervened to defend Federal approval of air quality and transportation plan and vehicle inspection program).