Clean Water Act

Overview

Beveridge & Diamond, P.C.’s Clean Water Act Practice develops creative, strategically tailored solutions to challenges posed by the nation’s clean water laws. Under the Total Maximum Daily Load (or “TMDL”) program, the Firm compelled regulators to respect sound science and the limits of their authority in protecting its clients from costly and unfair reductions. In the burgeoning field of storm water regulation, the Firm is helping clients to challenge and re-define a program that has been unworkable since its creation in 1990. The Firm is also working with major industries to refine or eliminate regulation under EPA’s archaic effluent guidelines program. In the enforcement arena, the Firm continues to be a leader in resolving civil and criminal cases, reducing penalties and avoiding interference with successful client operations. Beveridge & Diamond brings the experience and sophistication to deal with these and other key issues at the forefront of Clean Water Act law.

Full Description

We represent industrial and commercial interests, trade associations and large local government clients in our water practice. Our work for these clients includes regulatory counseling, permitting, assistance with compliance management programs, initiation or suppression of EPA rulemakings and representation in all manner of contested proceedings before federal and state agencies and in the courts. In the past, this practice has yielded important victories, including a series of court decisions requiring EPA to take cost effectiveness into account when setting discharge standards for conventional pollutants. These decisions have produced billions of dollars in client savings. Our enforcement defense includes administrative actions, judicial enforcement actions brought by government and citizen suits under either state or federal law. While the rate at which criminal investigations under the Clean Water Act have proliferated is distressing, our clients have been pleased with the results obtained by coupling the expertise of our water practitioners with our white collar criminal defense capabilities.

Noteworthy

Beveridge & Diamond obtained the voluntary withdrawal of a total maximum daily load (TMDL) for a major, multi-jurisdictional waterbody on behalf of a coalition of 17 large industrial and municipal clients. The TMDL, developed by an EPA Region, relied upon a flawed model and incomplete data to set unrealistic (and probably unnecessary) goals for nutrient reductions. Teaming with the State, we convinced the federal agency to withdraw its TMDL rather than litigate the validity of a nutrient model that EPA was preparing for use nationwide. EPA agreed to adopt an adaptive management approach that will allow its science and data to mature, while also allowing non-point source initiatives time to remedy the underlying nutrient problem and eliminate the need for further reductions by point sources.

Beveridge & Diamond resolved favorably one of the first citizen suits brought under the Clean Water Act. The case broke ground on the use of a Special Master as a mediator in private environmental enforcement actions – a technique that allowed us to ground truth plaintiffs’ more exaggerated claims and arrive at a realistic package of measures that could be undertaken without the need for costly and definitive litigation. This technique has become a part of the standard toolkit for those addressing the rising tide of private enforcement actions.

Beveridge & Diamond worked with EPA to defer a multibillion dollar rulemaking by conceiving and securing adoption of the first internationally-applicable environmental standard for a commercial chemical product. Uncertain of the composition of this chemical product, EPA threatened to develop a new effluent guideline to control discharges from the industry in which it is utilized – our client. Recognizing that the chemical product’s manufacturers could not release their proprietary product formulations, we approached a private standards organization to develop a toxicity performance standard applicable to all products of this type. That innovative standard, which remains in force, effectively limits the toxicity of the chemical product, has resulted in a reduction of more than 150% in the toxicity profile of the products now on the market, and has eliminated a major source of the Agency concern about discharges from our client industry.