Keeping Up with EPA & EHS Regulatory Compliance

Andrew Bajorat is COO and a principal for BBJ Group, a mid-sized national environmental consultancy. Mr. Bajorat provides environmental consulting services to a diverse client base, including those in the Federal and local government, manufacturing, legal services, real estate, telecommunications, and financial sectors.

As a consultant, Mr. Bajorat advises clients in areas of environmental remediation, environmental liability management, regulatory compliance, and transactional due diligence. He serves as BBJ’s lead risk assessor on site remediation projects and also provides technical review, opinion, and strategy to support client positions during formal dispute resolutions, including toxic tort and cost-share related litigation, mediation, and arbitration.

Brett Sago joined the Health, Safety, Environment and Security (HSES) section of the Eastman Chemical Company Law Department in 2003. From May 2011 through June 2012, Brett successfully completed a rotational assignment in Eastman’s Government Relations organization as Public Policy Director and Senior Counsel. In this capacity, Brett coordinated Eastman’s position on public policy issues including energy and climate change, taxation, chemical control and environmental regulation, and global trade. In December 2014, Brett was asked to lead Eastman’s team of HSES legal experts as the Director of HSE Legal Services.

Brett’s environmental practice at Eastman focuses primarily on Clean Air Act compliance, advocacy and litigation. He also has responsibility for compliance counseling related to climate change regulations, HSES issues at Eastman’s manufacturing sites in China, and has led the environmental due diligence efforts on several Eastman acquisitions and divestitures. He advises Eastman’s Global HSES and Sustainability leadership and is a member of the steering team responsible for Eastman’s Global HSES Audit Program.

Brett graduated with a BA from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas in 1993 and obtained his JD, with honors, from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1998. While at Tulane, he was Editor-in-Chief of the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, received a Certificate in Environmental Law and was a member of the Tulane Moot Court Board. Following law school, Brett practiced environmental law and litigation for five years at a firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is admitted to practice law in North Carolina, Tennessee and Pennsylvania (as in-house counsel). Brett is married, has two children and resides in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Lisa is the In-House Chief Environmental Health and Safety Counsel and Vice President of Regulatory Audit at Olin Corporation. Lisa has been able to use her past experience as Chief Environmental Health & Safety Counsel at Energizer, as well as her experience as a partner at Stinson Leonard Street, in her role at Olin.

Myles is the Assistant General Counsel dedicated to ensuring Oxy's compliance with health, environmental, safety and wildlife issues.

His practice is divided into three basic areas: low carbon ventures; natural resource issues; and HES compliance.

Myles' low carbon ventures practice focuses on understanding the carbon intensity of Occidental's operations, the safe, secure and permanent storage of anthropogenic CO2, and the business opportunities and legal challenges associated with gaining certification for Occidental's EOR operations under federal and state requirements, particularly California's low carbon fuel standard and associated CCS Protocol.

His natural resources practice focuses on minimizing Occidental's environmental impacts and footprint and delivering landscape scale conservation across our operating areas. This includes species management, developing effective partnerships with industry, federal and state agencies and other stakeholders, understanding the legal implications of our long term commitments to their communities and crafting durable agreements.

Lastly, his HES compliance practices focuses on the more traditional areas of environmental law but approaches the legal challenges from a social responsibility perspective. He strives to manage the health, environmental and safety issues to Occidental's competitive advantage. In doing so, he seeks to align Occidental's HES programs with an understanding of their compliance posture, their potential exposures and their mitigation options such that they can demonstrate their commitment to the values held by the communities within which Occidental operates.