Jonathan E. Rinde

Biography:

Jonathan Rinde is a partner with Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox LLP. His practice includes all environmental aspects of real estate development and management, and he counsels clients on environmental permitting, due diligence, and other transactional issues. Jonathan handles matters related to wetlands and stormwater regulations, sewage facilities and their planning, brownfields redevelopment, military base conversions, business transactions, and environmental litigation. Formerly, he performed technical environmental studies and wetland assessments for private and public projects as environmental manager at a consulting engineering firm, an experience that has proven to be valuable to many of Jonathan's clients. He has represented clients ranging from real estate developers to commercial concerns to municipalities on a number of matters including the following:

• counseling the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation ("PIDC") on all environmental aspects of the transfer and redevelopment of two former military sites—the Philadelphia Navy Yard and the Defense Personnel Support Center;
• negotiating a Consent Decree on behalf of Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc. to settle allegations by the USEPA regarding stormwater practices at its development sites nationwide, including ongoing counseling on their stormwater compliance issues;
• counseling numerous residential, commercial, and industrial developers to obtain state and federal wetland permits, and resolve issues related to land development impacts to waters and wetlands, such as (1) assisting several national homebuilders in obtaining a Pennsylvania Chapter 105 and federal Section 404 wetland permit for a large-scale residential community in Chester County, Pennsylvania, (2) assisting a regional healthcare institution to obtain wetland permits for its new health care center in central New Jersey, (3) obtaining state and federal wetland permits on behalf of a Chester County, Pennsylvania, developer of a mixed use residential-commercial project, (4) prosecuting one of the few successful administrative appeals of a jurisdictional determination issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and (5) negotiating resolution of several alleged violations of wetlands laws, regulations, and permits with the state and federal government resulting in the issuance of after-the-fact permits, voluntary settlement agreements, and performance of Supplemental Environmental Projects;
• representing several municipalities and municipal authorities with respect to their sewage treatment plants and discharge permits issued for these plants, including Pennsylvania Act 537 sewage plans;
• assisting a regional developer to challenge, and ultimately reverse, a determination made by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection ("PADEP") at the request of a watershed association to upgrade the classification of a stream abutting the developer's property, allowing the project to proceed in a more timely manner;
• preparing and submitting a "private request" to PADEP resulting in the agency ordering a municipality to revise its Act 537 sewage plan to include a client's development project (Jonathan subsequently defended the municipality's appeal of the order);
• advising numerous clients on their rights and obligations with respect to state and federal threatened and endangered species, including bald eagles, bog turtles, red bellied turtles and Indiana bats; and
• counseling various developers on compliance with stormwater permits associated with earth disturbance activities, typically for land developments.

 

Jonathan was listed in the 2009 and 2010 editions of The Best Lawyers® in America in the specialty of environmental law. He is AV Preeminent Peer Review Rated through Martindale-Hubbell®.

Jonathan is a member of the Board of Directors of the Conservancy of Montgomery County, and also serves as a Chairman of the Montgomery County Agricultural Lands Preservation Board. He is active in water resource issues and is a Board Member and formerly Vice Chairman of the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy. Jonathan is also a Board Member of the Collegeville Economic Development Council. Formerly, he was an Executive Board member and chairperson of the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, Inc. He is also on the Steering Committee for the Harpur College (Binghamton University) Alumni National Law Advisory Council.

Education:

• Temple University Law School, J.D., cum laude, 1989
• University of Michigan, Masters of Regional Planning, 1981
• State University of New York at Binghamton, B.A., 1979

Memberships:

• Bar admissions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey
• American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources
• American Institute of Certified Planners
• American Planning Association
• Pennsylvania Planning Association