Stephen W. Saunders
Steve Saunders focuses his practice in the areas of Environmental, Energy, Oil and Gas, Business Litigation, as well as Municipal and Land Use law. He represents individual, corporate, municipal, industrial and institutional clients in these practice areas.
His environmental law practice, which spans over 20 years, encompasses both transactional (real estate and business transfers, permitting and facility compliance and auditing issues) and litigation matters. He has represented clients in federal and state trial and appellate courts and has also litigated appeals and challenges before the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board. From the transactional perspective, Steve has been heavily involved in the Pennsylvania Land Recycling Program for over 15 years and was appointed by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to serve on a work group that supplied input to the Pennsylvania legislature in preparing what would become Pennsylvania’s Land Recycling Program (Acts 2, 3 and 4 of 1997). His clients’ Brownfields projects have received special recognition from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and he served as the Chairperson of the Luzerne-Lackawanna Counties Brownfields Task Force. In the course of his environmental transactional practice, Steve has identified and assisted his clients in securing numerous specialized federal and state grants to finance large-scale development projects.
Steve advises county and local governments and municipal authorities on environmental and planning issues, has been appointed by Lackawanna County to act as its General Counsel for Environment and Planning, and has acted as Special Environmental Counsel to Luzerne County. He has been a speaker and presenter on environmental law topics to private client groups and members of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and has written a number of articles on environmental law issues.
Steve has an extensive and growing Oil and Gas and Mineral Rights practice and has been contacted by major media publications such as the Wall Street Journal and prominent Wall Street venture capital and investment firms to provide commentary on trends and developments in the field. He has counseled landowners with property in 13 different Pennsylvania counties who reside as far away as Alaska. He has advised clients on matters involving disputed mineral rights claims and has been retained to pursue litigation in gas lease and mineral rights actions. Steve’s clients in the Oil and Gas and Mineral Rights areas include individual landowners, property owner groups and large institutional landowners. In the closely related and growing field of Energy law, Steve has represented a major interstate natural gas transmission company in a $150,000,000 compressor station and pipeline upgrade project in Pennsylvania and counsels clients in the wind energy arena.
His Business Litigation experience includes representation of clients in federal and state trial and appellate courts and before arbitration and mediation panels in a variety of settings including shareholder derivative lawsuits, business dissolution and valuation, breach of contract and construction claims, and litigation of land use and commercial real estate projects for developers and citizens groups.
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