Environmental
Linda R. Singer, Esq. has resolved a significant number of complex environmental disputes throughout the United States. She has facilitated the settlement of conflicts ranging from buyers and sellers disputing over their responsibility for removing hazardous waste from commercial property to multi-party cases involving the allocation of responsibility among federal, state, and municipal governments and hundreds of private parties.
Disputes have involved the recovery of past and future costs; methods of remediating hazardous waste sites and natural resource damage; liability of parent companies for pollution by their subsidiaries; insurance coverage; relocation of homes and businesses from polluted areas; reuse of “Brownfields;” changing of remedies due to “technical impracticability;” the Clean Air and Water Acts; and siting locally unwanted land uses.
Ms. Singer regularly provides training to law firms, corporate legal departments, and government agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Environment and Natural Resources Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, in the effective mediation of environmental disputes and other disputes involving government agencies. In addition, she has designed ADR systems for court systems, private companies, and government agencies.
Ms. Singer serves on the CPR Panel of Distinguished Neutrals; the Mid-Atlantic Area Council for mediating disputes in the wholesale electric utility industry; and on a panel that mediates disputes involving the U.S. EPA and other parties.
Before joining JAMS, Mrs. Singer was an owner of ADR Associates LLC, President of the non-profit Center for Dispute Settlement, and a partner in a Washington, D.C. law firm. An award-winning teacher of lawyers and other professionals in mediation, negotiation, and ADR advocacy, Ms. Singer has trained thousands of students and professional mediators throughout the United States and abroad.
Representative Mediations
- Facilitated the agreement among Frrepart McMoran, the EPA, and the Enforcement and Defense Sections of the Justice Department for a historice cleanup of multiple uranium mines on Navajo lands
- Resolved numerous cases brought by state or federal environmental agencies in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, Texas, New Hampshire, and Minnesota for the recovery of past and future costs of removing hazardous wastes from private manufacturing plants, defense facilities, and private and municipal landfills
- Resolved the allocation of liability for past costs and ongoing operation and maintenance of the Kramer Landfill in New Jersey. Parties included approximately 230 private manufacturers and transporters of waste, the City of Philadelphia, most Southern New Jersey municipalities, and federal and state environmental and enforcement agencies
- Resolved the appropriateness of existing remedies, plans for ongoing remediation, and cost recovery at the BROS Superfund Site in New Jersey. Parties included several U.S. and state agencies, as both plaintiffs and defendants, and approximately 80 private parties
- Resolved the federal and state governments’ cost recovery action against 10 private defendants in Houston, Texas, together with the allocation of responsibility among the defendants
- Resolved the modification of a groundwater treatment methodology and compensation to affected landowners and municipalities in Maine. Parties involved federal, state and local governments; local water authorities; electric utilities; businesses; churches and school districts; and environmental advocacy groups
- Settled dispute over reopeners concerning the remediation of the New Bedford, Massachusetts Harbor
