Associate Drew Silton (Washington, DC) was quoted in a June 15 article in Law360 titled "Feds' New Settlement Policy May Imperil Restoration Projects." The article discusses the Department of Justice (DOJ)'s recent decision to prohibit settlements providing for payments to third-party, non-governmental organizations and how this new policy uniquely impacts environmental enforcement matters.

Drew said that the DOJ policy does not affect the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s ability to rely on supplemental environmental projects that may arise from administrative settlements. He noted that the DOJ policy does include three exceptions, including for a payment or loan "that provides restitution to a victim or that otherwise directly remedies the harm that is sought to be redressed," but Drew said that could be a high bar in many cases.

"The underlying issue is in any kind of environmental case, it's very difficult to prove some kind of one-to-one correlation between pollution going into the atmosphere and a particular harm, and then some sort of remedial action on the back end that's alleviating it," Drew said.

Drew previously wrote a news alert with Principal Jamie Auslander (Washington, DC) titled DOJ Eliminates Option of Third Party Payments in Settlements on this new DOJ policy and how it may affect environmental enforcement cases.

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