VERIS LAW GROUP - Key Persons
Michelle works extensively on environmental, natural resource, real estate, and regulatory matters involving contaminated real property, environmental defense, and regulatory and permitting compliance. She represents a wide range of commercial, industrial, and maritime clients, from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and individual property owners. She has extensive experience working on complex, multi-party, federal and state Superfund sites across the nation involving claims arising under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and its state law equivalents. Michelle represents potentially responsible parties in private, non-judicial liability allocations, contribution and cost recovery actions, and natural resource damage claims involving multimillion dollar disputes. She also negotiates administrative orders and consent decrees with federal and state agencies, and works with clients to manage environmental risks.
Michelle assists clients with regulatory compliance and solid waste management issues arising under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), including corrective actions, consent orders, and financial assurance, and the cost-effective redevelopment of Brownfields properties with complex legal and technical challenges. She also assists clients with matters arising under the Clean Water Act (CWA) and Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA) regulations. As part of her practice, Michelle has counseled Native American tribes on environmental matters arising under federal, state, and tribal laws, the implementation and enforcement of tribal regulations and regulatory programs, the redevelopment of contaminated tribal properties, and environmental risk management.
Before she became an attorney, Michelle spent eight years as a federal contractor supporting the U.S. Department of Energy in Las Vegas, Nevada, first as a senior environmental policy advisor on the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project, and then as a public affairs manager with the Nevada Test Site's Environmental Management Program.