Environmental Law
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo has one of the leading environmental law practices in California, with expertise in the California Environmental Quality Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and other state and federal environmental laws. ABJC represents labor organizations, community, environmental and other public interest groups and individuals seeking to enforce compliance with environmental laws.
The firm has particular expertise in assessing the full scope of legal, regulatory and policy issues associated with the permitting and approval of residential, commercial and large scale energy, fuel and other industrial projects. In addition to representing clients in the CEQA and NEPA processes, the firm’s practice also includes representing clients seeking to ensure compliance with the federal and California Clean Air Acts, Endangered Species Acts and laws governing hazardous materials and waste, the Clean Water Act, the California Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act, the California Coastal Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act and other State and Federal environmental laws.
Land Use and Sustainable Development
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo has extensive experience representing clients in complex land use planning and project entitlement proceedings before local governments, regional and state agencies throughout California. ABJC advises on matters involving state planning and zoning laws, local and regional land use plans, and municipal codes.
ABJC represents clients participating in planning, permitting and other regulatory proceedings seeking outcomes that minimize public health and environmental impacts, ensure access to public services, and maximize community benefits. For example, in representing the Grassland Water District over more than two decades, the firm’s work was instrumental in protecting the Grassland Ecological Area (GEA), a 240,000-acre area in western Merced County that is the largest remaining freshwater marsh complex in the western United States and is recognized by international treaty as a resource of national and international significance.
Community Protection and Environmental Justice
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo represents labor, community, environmental health and environmental justice organizations and other public interest groups working to reduce or avoid exposures to polluted or hazardous air, soil and water, to address the lack of access to parks, open space and other public services. ABJC advises clients working to improve the poor land use planning practices and deficient environmental review processes that are too often the source of these problems.
For many decades, ABJC has represented clients seeking to reduce environmental burdens, which disproportionately affect working families, people of color and low-income communities. ABJC has a particular expertise in advocating for environmental and other laws that ensure a safe working environment for construction workers and their families, who are often the first to be exposed to soil contamination, construction emissions and unsafe building materials. For example, the firm worked with labor unions and fence-line communities in securing the first Industrial Safety Ordinance in Contra Costa County.
In representing California Unions for Reliable Energy (CURE), the firm provided evidence that pollution control equipment manufacturers were willing to guarantee much lower emission rates for nitrous oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO) and ammonia from power plants. For toxics, the firm was the first to identify the danger of acrolein emissions (even before the state officially recognized the level of risk) and advocate requiring an oxidation catalyst to reduce this risk. For construction emissions, ABJC was also the first to identify the significance of exhaust emissions from construction equipment and advocate requiring oxidizing soot filters to reduce such emissions. ABJC’s representation has prevented literally thousands of tons of NOx, VOCs, CO, ammonia, and toxics emissions in California every year.
ABJC’s representation has also resulted in disclosure and extensive mitigation to reduce impacts from greenhouse gas emissions, soil contamination and other hazards, and impacts to biological resources, water and air quality, and public health. As a result, CURE has facilitated a prosperous and sustainable renewable energy economy in California.
Climate Change
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo plays a leading role in California’s efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Climate change issues permeate nearly all of ABJC’s work at both the statewide policy level and on individual projects. The firm has conceived and designed nationally recognized innovative legislation that simultaneously creates good jobs and dramatically reduces GHG emissions.
ABJC represents clients in nearly all of California’s efforts to reduce emissions from the energy, transportation and building sectors. The firm regularly leads in integrating just transition measures into California’s path toward a zero-carbon economy. The firm has been directly involved in drafting and negotiating groundbreaking legislation such as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 requiring California to reduce its GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act increasing California’s renewable electricity procurement goal from 33 percent by 2020 to 50 percent by 2030 and The 100 Percent Clean Energy Act of 2018 establishing a landmark policy requiring renewable energy and zero-carbon resources supply 100 percent of electric retail sales to end-use customers by 2045.
Renewable Energy
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo represents clients in strategizing, drafting and negotiating California’s groundbreaking Renewable Portfolio Standard legislation and each of the subsequent legislative expansions of the program. Working to align environmental, climate, labor and ratepayer interests, ABJC helped devise and draft the legislation that produced the most ambitious and successful renewable energy program in the United States.
ABJC represents clients participating in all aspects of the regulatory review and permitting of renewable energy power plants and conventional power plants at the California Energy Commission and in cities and counties throughout California. ABJC has successfully negotiated innovative and precedent-setting agreements to significantly reduce air pollutant emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater use and impacts on wildlife from new power plants. These agreements have set new standards for minimizing the environmental impacts of all types of power plants.
ABJC has also successfully worked to ensure that new clean energy generation creates good jobs. ABJC has negotiated hundreds of project labor agreements that establish industry wide labor standards ensuring that California’s leadership in a new green infrastructure also produces good jobs. These standards maintain area wage standards, ensure local workers are hired, advance meaningful, career-path apprentice training in the construction trades, and provide job and training opportunities for disadvantaged and underrepresented populations and for returning military veterans.
Public Utility
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo represents utility employee unions in administrative proceedings before the California Public Utilities Commission, other state agencies and the California legislature on a wide array of energy regulatory, legal and policy issues. ABJC advises on matters involving electric and gas safety and reliability, energy resource planning and procurement, rate cases, design and policy, decarbonization, distributed energy resource integration and wildfire, climate change and resiliency.
The firm has played a crucial role in groundbreaking energy and utility legislation such as: SB 350 (Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015) establishing integrated resource planning to ensure a diverse portfolio of resources for a reliable and renewable electricity supply; SB 901 requiring IOUs to prepare wildfire mitigation plans that ensure their electric systems achieve the highest level of safety, reliability and resiliency; SB 247 requiring minimum workforce qualifications and prevailing wage for vegetation management work; AB 841 establishing that EV infrastructure work is regular utility work and setting minimum workforce standards (Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program certification) for installing certain EV charging; and SB 410 (Powering Up Californians Act) requiring faster expansion of distribution system capacity and customer connections.
Green Building Codes and Standards
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo has one of the leading energy efficiency and green building standards practice in California. ABJC primarily focuses on the links between building construction, workforce training standards, building efficiency, and the health and safety of building occupants. ABJC represents national model building code publishers, national training certification providers, and environmental, public health, consumer and labor organizations before numerous state agencies.
ABJC represents national model building code publishers, national training certification providers, and environmental, public health, consumer and labor organizations. ABJC provides unparalleled experience in the legal and technical issues associated with the development of building codes, construction workforce training requirements, and energy efficiency programs at the local, state and national level.
As a direct result of the firm’s representation, the California state agencies responsible for approving new building standards began reviewing proposed standards under CEQA for the first time beginning in the early 1980s. This led to the first in the nation restrictions on the use of plastic drinking water piping and drain, waste and vent piping. Those restrictions included measures to limit the leaching of chemical contaminants into drinking water, protections for workers installing the pipe who were being regularly exposed to toxic chemicals contained in the solvents and glues used to join the pipe at levels above adopted health thresholds, regulation of products and construction methods to limit volatile organic compounds released during pipe installation that on a cumulative basis were significantly contributing to the state’s polluted air basins, and prohibitions on use of the pipe in certain occupancies due to increased fire risks. The firm’s representation ultimately led the pipe manufacturers to change certain pipe formulations to eliminate the leaching of chloroform into drinking water.
ABJC’s building standards representation has more recently focused on green building and energy efficiency initiatives. The firm has successfully advocated for regulatory changes and programs to improve ventilation in schools, restrict the use of energy-inefficient flexible ducts, close loopholes on advanced lighting control and demand response requirements in existing building upgrades, improve water efficiency in buildings, and strengthen verification requirements to ensure that expected energy savings from California Energy Code requirements are actually realized.
Labor Law
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo represents building trades councils, labor organizations and other construction craft labor consortiums in drafting, negotiating, administering and enforcing construction industry prehire collective bargaining agreements. ABJC negotiates project labor and community workforce agreements and maintenance agreements covering construction of private development in California, ranging from small and high-rise residential and mixed-use commercial projects to large and complicated industrial facilities, manufacturing plants, power generation facilities, military base reuse projects, and professional sports arenas. ABJC also negotiates public sector project labor agreements on individual public works projects, as well as entire public agency capital improvement programs.
In addition to serving the private and public proprietary interests in efficient construction, the firm has designed community workforce provisions to advance workforce training and employment goals, such as creating employment opportunities for local workers, recruiting and training workers from disadvantaged communities and underrepresented populations, and providing pre-apprentice and apprentice training opportunities for the formerly incarcerated, at-risk youth and returning military veterans, among other labor and workforce objectives.
The firm also represents labor organizations in the development, adoption and enforcement of state and local policies and regulations governing prevailing wages, skilled and trained workforce requirements, apprenticeship training, local hire, contractor prequalification and responsible bidder requirements and other labor standards and contractor requirements.
Litigation
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo represents labor organizations, public interest groups and individuals in both state and federal court litigation. ABJC regularly enforces CEQA, land use and public health laws in state court proceedings.
As a result of litigation brought by the firm over the last forty years, the courts have enforced compliance with environmental and public health laws for residential, commercial and industrial projects, and have firmly established that new building standards resulting in potentially significant health, safety or environmental impacts must be reviewed under CEQA prior to approval. ABJC has also prevailed in a number of cases protecting air quality, public health and the environment, including Communities for a Better Environment v. South Coast Air Quality Management District (2010) 48 Cal.4th 310, the California Supreme Court case establishing the appropriate baseline for environmental review under CEQA.
Legislation & Rulemaking
Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo provides advice and representation regarding potential and pending legislation related to climate change, renewable energy, utility policy and regulation, building efficiency and materials standards, land use and environmental law, and workforce standards.
ABJC represents clients in a leading role drafting and reviewing amendments to CEQA and participating in legislative and regulatory proceedings related to the CEQA statute and guidelines. In addition to drafting legislative and regulatory proposals, ABJC provides legal and technical testimony in legislative and rulemaking proceedings and advises on legislative proposals. Several of the firm’s attorneys are registered lobbyists.
