Elizabeth Temkin is a partner at Temkin Wielga & Hardt LLP, with over twenty-five years of experience in environmental litigation and transactional work throughout the West. Ms. Temkin's practice focuses on complex environmental litigation and site clean-up requirements under all the relevant environmental statutes and she has worked with most states' site cleanup programs. Ms. Temkin is particularly well-known for her litigation and clean-up related work at hard rock mining sites throughout the Western United States, including some of the biggest and most complicated Superfund sites in the WestŠ Coeur d'Alene, Midnite Mine, Leadville, and others. She also has considerable experience and successes on both sides of citizen suit litigation and as common counsel to PRP groups. On the transactional side, Ms. Temkin has over the years successfully assisted many major development and redevelopment projects across the country and elsewhere in addressing all sorts of complex environmental challenges. She has a reputation for finding creative ways to effectively manage environmental issues in both real estate and corporate transactions.
Ms. Temkin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University. She received her J.D. from Stanford Law School. She is a member of the Bar of the Courts of Colorado, the Ninth Circuit and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court, and has been admitted pro hac vice in numerous courts across the United States. Ms. Temkin is a past chair of the Environmental Law Section of the Colorado Bar Association and has authored or co-authored many articles on environmental litigation and regulation, including: Temkin, E.H. and Tita, K.M, Multi-Party Issues at CERCLA Mining and Energy Sites, 35 Rocky Mtn. Min. L. Inst. 6-1 (1989); and Temkin, E.H., Cleaning Up ARARs: Reflections from the Field, 6 Nat. Res. Env. 18 (Winter 1992). Ms. Temkin has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America for many years. Ms. Temkin also speaks now and again on managing and litigating cleanup liabilities, environmental regulation of the natural resources industries and "Brownsfields" redevelopment.
Representative Matters
- Trial counsel in the District of Idaho for remaining defendant in the long pending Coeur d'Alene Basin CERCLA response cost and natural resource damage litigation, involving billions if dollars in claims.
- Defense counsel to a major mining company on CERCLA and other claims related to historic gold mining operations in California, including trial counsel in the Eastern District of California on the successful defense of a multi-million dollar lawsuit by a real estate developer arising out of historic environmental contamination. Court awarded attorneys fees and costs to our client.
- Successfully defended a putative class action "toxic tort" case where the plaintiffs sought over $120,000,000 in damages and the establishment of a medical monitoring program. Case was dismissed by state court before trial through motion practice.
- Trial counsel for a major mining company in a CERCLA case arising out of a historic uranium mine in Washington State. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington found the United States liable as a CERCLA owner and assigned a one-third share of cleanup costs to the Untied States.
- Counsel to Colorado municipality on voluntary cleanup and CERCLA liability issues at multiple sites.
- Counsel to major ski resort on a critical § 404 permit application for a major redevelopment project.
- Common counsel for four major companies at a State-lead mine site cleanup in Nevada with multiple additional stakeholders, including EPA, an Indian Tribe and several other natural resource trustees.
