Chapter 7: Environmental Solutions

Top Disputes & Investigations

Managing and resolving environmental issues such as complex contamination, toxic tort, product liability and insurance disputes can be challenging for public and private entities. FTI Consulting’s Environmental Solutions Group provides essential expertise and services through strategic consulting, communications, and litigation support to help deal with specific issues or ongoing challenges.

Currently, it appears that entities subject to EPA regulation, at least, will continue to face regulatory enforcement as they have in the past, despite COVID-19. We will continue to monitor this space closely in the weeks and months ahead.

In this section of our 2020 Insights: Top Disputes & Investigations report, we highlight our work helping clients resolve disputes on major Environmental Solutions projects.

Cost Allocation at a Superfund Site

A Cooperating Party Group retained FTI Consulting to provide responsible party identification and cost allocation services at a waterway CERCLA (Superfund) site. In this role, FTI Consulting served as a neutral fact-finder and mediator for an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process that allowed participants to avoid litigation.

FTI Consulting conducted a rigorous investigation based largely on publicly-available records to identify additional potentially responsible parties whose operations may have contributed contaminants to the Superfund site.

Such parties historically or currently have a nexus to the Superfund site through direct discharges of process waste or other materials, indirect discharges via the sewer system, or other pathways. FTI Consulting worked with the existing Group members and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to add new members to the Group, which ultimately spread cost and reduced the required contribution from any given participant.