Mary Ellen Ternes, Esq.

Mary Ellen began her career with U.S. EPA’s Superfund Emergency Response Program, utilizing her chemical engineering degree for chemical release response, remediation and treatment as an On-Scene Coordinator and federal “commander on the scene.” Trained and charged by EPA Region 6 with emergency field response, Mary Ellen characterized root cause, extent and fate of hazardous chemical releases, designing and implementing removal and remedial actions for uncontrolled hazardous waste sites throughout EPA Region 6, including projects like the Vertac dioxin waste site with its on-site incineration remedy in Jacksonville, Arkansas.

After several years in the field she moved to EPA’s Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) program, becoming an EPA Region 6 hazardous waste incineration RCRA Subpart O permit writer, leading the EPA’s national RCRA incineration permit writer workshop. She left EPA to work for the pervasively regulated hazardous waste incineration industry, managing RCRA, Clean Air Act (CAA) and Toxic Substances Control Act compliance programs for ENSCO, a commercial hazardous waste incineration facility. At ENSCO, Mary Ellen was responsible for permitting, compliance demonstrations and enforcement, including the on-site incineration project at the BROS Superfund Site in Bridgeport, New Jersey.

Through her work with ENSCO’s attorneys while chairing the Permitting Committee for the Hazardous Waste Treatment Council (predecessor to the Environmental Technology Council), Mary Ellen became interested in environmental law, particularly the CAA. While serving as an advisory expert in the litigation surrounding the Vertac on-site incineration project, Mary Ellen met the EPA’s Office of General Counsel staff, and later clerked for EPA’s OGC Air and Radiation Division, where her experience confirmed her decision to change careers from chemical engineering to environmental law.

Since 1995, Mary Ellen Ternes has become well-known for providing sophisticated environmental legal strategies informed by practical EPA, industry sector, and chemical process experience. Her early foundation in emergency response, hazardous waste site remediation, incineration and chemical process safety, permitting and compliance, followed by over twenty years counselling clients through complex regulatory and technical issues provides unique depth in developing effective legal strategies. Relying on this rare breadth and depth, she guides a broad spectrum of industrial, commercial and municipal sector clients through complex projects such as:

• Permitting and compliance challenges and enforcement arising from exceptional process design and operating scenarios that interfere with efficient permitting and reasonable compliance demonstrations, subjecting permittee to unreasonable enforcement exposure;
• Legal rapid response required for hazardous substance release disaster response, mitigation and remediation;
• Risk management strategies for developing issues, such as risk arising for chemical process, water and waste treatment plants threatened by extreme weather events, and risk arising from ongoing unsustainable business practices including failure to plan for business continuity through a disaster;
• Transactions involving multi-faceted operational and/or pollutant scenarios that threaten stalling transaction closings and commercial development generally, including regulatory agency approvals and financing;
• Litigation involving chemical processes or pollution events including class actions, breach of contract, common law actions and citizen suits, as well as civil and criminal enforcement proceedings before administrative agencies.
  
  

Specific examples of past projects include:

• Clean Air Act Permitting, Audits, Enforcement and Litigation

Advising an industrial manufacturing client that was implicated when Clean Air Act “stack test” results triggered an enforcement investigation. Mary Ellen assisted the client in demonstrating that the process was not testable, and working closely with technical consultants, negotiated an air permit modification with new compliance strategies. Previously, Mary Ellen had guided the client through:

• Designing and implementing a nationwide facility compliance audit and associated self-disclosure followed by completion of a negotiated compliance schedule;
• Successfully defending against a Clean Air Act citizen suit and negotiating an advantageous settlement;
• Prevailing against EPA allegations that a process incident had triggered CERCLA reporting requirements, which were resolved by applying chemical engineering principles to demonstrate that no material could have reached the “environment.”

• Transactions
  
  

Assisting a deal team to assess material risk related to the acquisition of a large chemical process facility which had been targeted by local environmental advocacy groups. Mary Ellen was asked to provide legal analysis of traditional legacy environmental risks associated with contaminated properties, as well as the future compliance and enforcement risk of the chemical process facility from all perspectives, including the history of its Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act permitting and enforcement, and applicable elements of the Clean Air Act’s Risk Management Program. Mary Ellen provided the client with a comprehensive understanding of historic, current, and emerging risk for strategic management in this critical transaction allowing a successful closing.

• Contaminated Property Remediation and Redevelopment 
  
  

On behalf of a development client, Mary Ellen was retained to develop a remediation strategy for a network of downtown properties in a large metroplex area involving groundwater contamination over which there was planned commercial and residential development. Mary Ellen successfully guided the client through negotiations achieving regulatory approvals for redevelopment, including the environmental application for HUD financing, utilizing separate groundwater and soil “operable units” and institutional controls.

With this unique combination of education, training and work experience in the fields of chemical engineering and environmental law, Mary Ellen has served in various leadership and liaison roles within and between the legal and engineering communities. As a Fellow and past President of the American College of Environmental Lawyers (ACOEL), a Fellow, past leader and lifetime member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and a past leader within the American Bar Association (ABA) Sections of Environment, Energy and Resources and Business Law, Mary Ellen focuses on better integrating law and policy with science and engineering. This value of Mary Ellen’s science policy focus has been recognized by the Global Council for Science and Environment, which in 2022, appointed Mary Ellen as a Senior Fellow for Law and Policy. Mary Ellen is a frequent author and speaker particularly as it relates to improving applied science-based environmental policy, especially most recently in the areas of climate change adaptation, renewable energy, plastic and other chemical waste mitigation and regulation.