Rodd W. Bender

Biography:

Rodd Bender, a partner with Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox, LLP, has been with the firm since 1997. He concentrates his practice in brownfield and development transactions, as well as providing compliance counseling across a variety of regulatory programs. Rodd represents a range of clients, such as developers, municipalities, economic development authorities, industrial companies, and telecommunications firms. Examples of Rodd's work include:

• coordinating environmental due diligence in real estate transactions, including retaining consultants, commenting on draft reports, and evaluating due diligence results;
• negotiating and drafting environmental provisions in agreements of sale, leases, and other real estate contracts, as well as agency liability protection documents;
• navigating state voluntary cleanup programs and property transfer laws (including Pennsylvania's Act 2 program, New Jersey's Site Remediation and Industrial Site Reuse Programs, and others in a variety of states), and working with clients, engineers, consultants, and regulators to satisfy state requirements consistent with business objectives;
• counseling clients on public involvement strategies for brownfield redevelopment projects;
• drafting and negotiating environmental insurance policies, and assisting clients in seeking brownfield project public funding;
• drafting comments for companies and trade associations on proposed federal and state environmental rulemakings;
• advising and training companies on interpreting, applying, and complying with complex regulatory provisions involving hazardous waste management, stormwater permitting, Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act ("EPCRA") chemical inventory reporting, storage tank operations and corrective action, Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("OSHA") asbestos standards, and other programs;
• representing clients to resolve agency enforcement actions alleging violations of waste management, storage tank, and other programs;
• representing developers and industrial clients at pre-application meetings with agency officials, and assisting in preparing stormwater, wastewater, and other permit applications; and
• performing regulatory compliance audits of multi-facility clients, both confidentially and involving disclosure to and negotiation of reduced penalties with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") and state agencies under governmental audit disclosure policies.

Rodd has written articles and presented to industry audiences and for continuing legal education programs on topics including brownfield redevelopment, environmental permitting for real estate projects, environmental issues for the construction industry and commercial and industrial real estate brokers, environmental auditing, lender environmental liability protections, hazardous and residual waste management, and storage tank regulatory requirements and litigation. He is the co-author, with Joseph Manko, of the Pennsylvania chapter in Brownfields Law and Practice: The Cleanup and Redevelopment of Contaminated Land, a treatise published by LexisNexis.

Rodd was selected as an "up-and-coming individual" in the 2007 edition of Chambers USA - America's Leading Lawyers for Business, and as a "Pennsylvania Rising Star" by Pennsylvania Super Lawyers/Law & Politics magazine in 2006.

Rodd currently teaches a course on representing regulated clients as an adjunct faculty member at Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law.

Before joining the firm, Rodd served as a law clerk for the Honorable William T. Moore, Jr., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Prior to his legal career, Rodd was an analyst for the environment and health systems group of American Management Systems, Inc., in Arlington, Virginia, performing program analysis and support for EPA.

While in law school, Rodd was special projects editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. At the Kennedy School of Government, Rodd co-authored a study of unit-based pricing for solid waste services in Massachusetts that was awarded the 1993 prize for Outstanding Policy Analysis Exercise in the Masters in Public Policy program.

In the community, Rodd serves on the boards of the Conservancy of Montgomery County and Beth David Reform Congregation. He is a former board member of Riverbend Environmental Education Center and the Gershman Y branch of the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Philadelphia.

Education:

• University of Pennsylvania School of Law, J.D., 1996
• John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Masters in Public Policy (Environmental and Natural Resource Policy), 1993
• Brown University, A.B. (Public Policy & American Institutions), magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1989

Memberships:

• Bar admissions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, District of New Jersey
• American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources
• Pennsylvania Bar Association, Environmental, Mineral, and Natural Resources Law Section
• Philadelphia Bar Association, Environmental Law Committee
• Building Industry Association of Philadelphia