Services

Property Owners often hold onto sites with environmental liabilities due to no clear options available to divest their real estate. Selling the property becomes difficult if not impossible, due to the burden of environmental clean-up and associated issues. Obtaining financing becomes the next challenge for these same reasons.

We have a solution! WTS has teamed with an environmental engineering firm and we are represented in this program by senior partners in the Environmental Law Practice Group at Hodgson Russ LLP. Together we bring unparalleled expertise in defining the nature and extent of environmental issues and then the designing and implementation of the appropriate clean-up solution. In addition customized environmental liability transfer and insurance contracts to effectuate a liability transfer and indemnification transaction are crafted.

For a fixed fee our team will:

  • Assume complete liability to remediate contamination
  • Perform the remediation to applicable standards and agency closure
  • Where appropriate, prepare the site for redevelopment
  • Indemnify the liable or potentially liable parties, developer and development partners against liability arising from historic contamination
  • Obtain appropriate insurance coverage to provide additional risk protection.

This innovative environmental solution can be applied to the following real estate issues:

  • Orphan Sites : Sites no longer playing a role in your core business or sites that have no viable owner that can be identified
  • Multi-party superfund sites : Sites where numerous parties are jointly and severally liable for remediating releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances and have no other substantial interest in the property.
  • Brownfield Redevelopment Sites: Former industrial facilities where residential contamination and the associated liability risks are barriers to productive reuse or redevelopment.
  • Real Estate Portfolio Management: A portfolio of contaminated properties whose individual problems may be small, but whose aggregate environmental liabilities are substantial.
  • Retiring Contingent Environmental Liabilities: Liabilities arising from contaminated properties must be objectively quantified and accurately reported or disclosed on financial statements.