Clients from around the world come to us for our extensive knowledge of environmental law and its far-reaching implications. It is the practice area that helped launch our firm, and the one that continues to play a key role in driving the growth of our business.
Babst Calland’s Environmental Practice Group provides a nationwide clientele with sophisticated and practical representation in all aspects of environmental law. With regulatory attorneys who focus their practices exclusively in this field, our Environmental Practice Group offers a team of seasoned practitioners who can meet the complex challenges that our clients confront.
Our varied and extensive backgrounds in the environmental and health and safety fields, combined with our representation of clients throughout the country, have made Babst Calland one of the nation’s premier law firms in the environmental area.
Focused Environmental Practice Areas
Because of the firm’s broad, nationwide client base, attorneys in the Environmental Practice Group are able to focus their practices on specific environmental areas, such as air pollution, industrial and municipal wastewater management, hazardous and solid waste, complex site remediation, natural resource damages, chemical regulation and occupational safety and health. A Babst Calland client with a hazardous waste issue will have that matter addressed by an attorney who works extensively with hazardous waste programs across the United States. That attorney will be able to apply hazardous waste experience from different industrial sectors, different U.S. EPA regions and different states. As a result, clients do not have to endure a long learning curve or pay for advice based solely upon legal research, but little or no experience.
Broad Range of Experience and Billing Rates
The extent and range of experience levels within the group also distinguish Babst Calland’s environmental practice from other firms. Babst Calland has a number of individual attorneys with more than 40 years of environmental experience. These attorneys have had the benefit of participating in the development of the primary federal and state statutory and regulatory programs, giving them a profound and fundamental understanding of how these environmental programs apply to the firm’s broad spectrum of clients. Indeed, our attorneys participated in the initial implementation of, and challenges to, key provisions of what have become today’s air, water and waste regulatory programs.
Babst Calland also has environmental attorneys with varying levels of environmental experience from one year to more than 40 years. This range of experience and billing rates allows Babst Calland to perform work at the most cost-efficient level. Firms with fewer attorneys do not have the ability to match experience and billing rates with the various tasks involved in solving an environmental problem, resulting in significantly higher fees for their clients.
Strong Technical Backgrounds
Babst Calland’s environmental attorneys also have a wealth of technical backgrounds that help them to solve complex environmental problems and work with and coordinate the efforts of environmental consultants and scientists. For example, the group includes attorneys with undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering, chemical engineering, environmental studies, biophysics, microbiology, biology and information and decision systems, as well as with graduate degrees in health physics and industrial hygiene, environmental engineering, oceanography, limnology, ecology and forensic chemistry.
Plant-Based Experience
Babst Calland has taken this technical background and experience and applied it at the plant facility level to develop practical solutions for clients. Knowledge of the environmental regulations is only part of the process involved in providing effective environmental legal services. It is the ability to translate those requirements in the specific context of a client’s manufacturing process or contaminated property that adds true value to the service provided. Babst Calland attorneys understand the value of knowing our clients’ processes and facilities, and routinely spend time in the field so that practical solutions are not missed because of a lack of understanding of the framework in which an environmental problem arises.
This practical perspective also has enabled Babst Calland to develop effective preventive law programs that have assisted our clients in reducing their environmental exposures. For example, our environmental attorneys have conducted numerous compliance and transactional audits, and developed environmental training programs to cover everything from general environmental awareness to specifically-focused programs on such topics as preparing for a multimedia inspection and determining when an installation permit is required for an air emission source.
Full Range of Environmental Services
Complementing the talents of our environmental attorneys are the strengths of Babst Calland’s other practice groups including Corporate and Commercial, Construction, Employment and Labor, Energy and Natural Resources, Land Use and Public Sector and Litigation. Attorneys from these other practice groups routinely team with the attorneys in the Environmental Practice Group to create a synergy not otherwise found in today’s legal market. Through this team approach, our attorneys take the practice of environmental law beyond its traditional boundaries by not only resolving the problems of today, but by averting or minimizing future environmental conflicts.
Babst Calland environmental attorneys provide seamless, cost-effective solutions for all your environmental concerns. Given the breadth and depth of our attorneys’ knowledge and practical experience with complex environmental issues, Babst Calland’s Environmental Practice Group is uniquely positioned to help our clients face the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.
Former U.S. Department of Justice Environmental Enforcement Attorney Nicholas McDaniel Joins Law Firm Babst Calland’s Washington, D.C. Office
Babst Calland announced that Nicholas McDaniel has joined the firm as a shareholder in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office. With more than a decade of combined government and private practice experience, most recently as a senior enforcement attorney with the U.S. …
Key Environmental and Energy Policies in the Second Trump Administration
Developing Pittsburgh
(by Ben Clapp and Gary Steinbauer)
Announced through a record-breaking number of executive orders, memoranda and directives, new White House energy and environmental policy initiatives are resulting in a rapidly changing environmental regulatory climate affecting the business community. …
WVDEP Proposes Clean Water Act Section 401 Certification for New Corps of Engineers Expedited Permitting Mechanisms for Energy-Related Projects
Environmental Alert
(by Kip Power and Mackenzie Moyer)
On August 21, 2025, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) published its proposed Clean Water Act (CWA) Section 401 Water Quality Certification package with respect to two separate expedited permitting mechanisms recently proposed by the U.S. …
Seven Babst Calland Attorneys Named as 2026 Best Lawyers® “Lawyer of the Year”, 47 Selected for Inclusion in the The Best Lawyers in America®, and Four Named to Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch® in America
Babst Calland is pleased to announce that seven lawyers were selected as 2026 Best Lawyers® “Lawyer of the Year” in Pittsburgh, Pa. and Charleston, W. Va. …
Key Environmental and Energy Policies in the Second Trump Administration
PIOGA Press
(by Ben Clapp and Gary Steinbauer)
Announced through a record-breaking number of executive orders, memoranda and directives, new White House energy and environmental policy initiatives are resulting in a rapidly changing environmental regulatory climate affecting the business community. …
Federal Office of Surface Mining Proposes to Restore Coal Mine Regulatory Oversight Rules
Environmental Alert
(Christopher (Kip) Power and Robert Stonestreet)
Recognizing the “diversity in terrain, climate, biologic, chemical and other physical conditions” among the States in which coal is mined, the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, 30 U.S.C. …
EPA Extends Certain Compliance Deadlines for Oil and Natural Gas Clean Air Act Requirements
Environmental Alert
(by Gary Steinbauer, Gina Buchman and Christina Puhnaty)
On July 31, 2025, EPA published in the Federal Register its highly anticipated Interim Final Rule to extend several deadlines in 40 C.F.R. …
Key Environmental and Energy Policies in the Second Trump Administration
Pittsburgh Business Times
(by Ben Clapp and Gary Steinbauer)
Announced through a record-breaking number of executive orders, memoranda and directives, new White House energy and environmental policy initiatives are resulting in a rapidly changing environmental regulatory climate affecting the business community. …
Navigating Local Permitting Roadblocks to Renewable Energy Deployment in Pennsylvania
Allegheny County Bar Association- Lawyers Journal
(By Anna Jewart)
Over the past several years, developers have targeted the vast rural and undeveloped lands of Pennsylvania for renewable energy development. …
EPA Extends CCRMU Compliance Deadlines and Clarifies Free Liquids Guidance
Environmental Alert
(by Ben Clapp, Gary Steinbauer and Mackenzie Moyer)
On July 22, 2025, the U.S. …
