David A. Crass

David coordinated and directed the environmental due diligence of more than 70 operating facilities and also led the negotiations on environmental risk allocation matters in the context of a $400 million transaction. David also coordinated the environmental due diligence and led the negotiations in a multi-state transaction where our client acquired five food processing plants and related facilities, and in another transaction where our client sold more than 50 operating facilities. David has negotiated numerous redevelopment agreements involving former landfills, manufacturing facilities and other former industrial uses.

David led the defense of a federal and state court class action lawsuit brought against a manufacturing client alleging community-wide vapor intrusion from historic solvent handling practices. This case was ultimately resolved through a settlement of both the federal class action and state class action lawsuits involving the client’s insurers as part of the settlement. David worked with the client’s insurers to maximize a positive resolution for the client resulting in a settlement of the underlying class action lawsuits as well as the environmental insurance claim that arose out of the suits.

David has also defended an industrial launderer  involved in a vapor intrusion case alleged to be impacting a neighborhood school and led the prompt response including the design, permitting and construction of a vapor mitigation system in the school. He continues to counsel this client as to emerging contaminant issues.

David represented a private party in an appeal of the administrative agency’s decision to deny claims from a state environmental reimbursement program. David helped his client prevail in the administrative contested case hearing where the client was determined to be eligible for nearly $1.0 million of additional reimbursement proceeds. David has settled favorably dozens more such administrative appeals. David has represented permittees in the context of administrative challenges to issued permits, both defensively and offensively.

David has assisted clients with respect to several of the largest and most challenging contaminated sediment sites in the Great Lakes Region: the Northern States Power/Ashland Lakefront Site, the Lower Fox River Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB) Site, the Hayton Area Remediation Project, the Neenah Slough and the Upper Trenton River Channel. David has provided clients with strategic direction concerning these sites, assisted in directing historical investigations, represented clients in regulatory agency negotiations, including the negotiations of Administrative Orders on Consent and Consent Decrees, and provided day-to-day project management services for one or more of these sites.

David has provided strategic counsel to numerous existing and start-up operations in the nation’s burgeoning biofuels, renewable natural gas, hydrogen, biogas and biomass industries, assisting clients in all phases of project development from feasibility analysis, transactional documents, state and local land use approvals, to project execution, vendor contracting and more.

David’s team has counseled clients on the establishment, qualification and contract pathways for developing environmental services markets, such as water and air quality offset markets. As attention to climate change, net zero initiatives, nutrient reduction projects and ES&G continues to grow (driven by consumers, supply chain, shareholders and investors), David provides historical insight and advice to project approach and revenue maximization.

In an era when siting large livestock operations is more difficult than ever, David assisted clients in obtaining regulatory permits (both local land use and state operating permits) for operations representing more than 750,000 dairy cows in the nation, as well as significant poultry operations. David led the negotiations on behalf of one of the nation’s largest turkey producers converting multiple permits into one master operating permit regulating dozens of facilities, represented trade associations in the development of general permits and the food industry in the negotiations of standardized regulatory permit terms for wastewater discharge. 

David has been a registered lobbyist and has represented industry trade groups, chemical manufacturers, and food producers/processors in matters before Congress, the Wisconsin Legislature and myriad of state and federal administrative agencies.