LOS ANGELES – Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP is pleased to announce that Cynthia L. Burch has joined the Firm as a Los Angeles-based partner in its national Corporate Practice with an emphasis on environmental, land use and Public Private Partnership (PPP) law. She will add strategic depth to Katten’s PPP team both nationally and in California.

Ms. Burch concentrates her practice in several areas of administrative law, including environmental compliance, compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and national, high profile public private partnerships. She has served as counsel for utility company Southern California Edison; energy and chemical company clients including Shell, BP/ARCO, and Conoco Phillips; transportation companies including BNSF Railway; and numerous manufacturing and retail facilities.

“In a business climate in which environmental issues increasingly come into play in major transactions, Cynthia’s depth of knowledge in environmental law and compliance at both the national and state levels will be invaluable assets to the Firm across many areas of practice, including corporate, real estate and Public Private Partnerships,” said Gail Migdal Title, managing partner of Katten’s Los Angeles office. “We welcome Cynthia to the Firm and are excited to begin working with her.”

Ms. Burch joins the Katten Public Private Partnership (PPP) team in sponsoring the 4^th Annual Public Private Partnerships USA Summit being held this week in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Burch has experience in every aspect of environmental guidance, from project inception to appeal after trial. In her roles as counselor and strategist, she has obtained variances, environmental permits, franchises and leases for large industrial manufacturing facilities, including generating stations, refineries, cogeneration and oil and gas plants, oil and gas fields and pipelines and hazardous waste treatment facilities, retail facilities, transportation facilities, and public private partnerships. She has served on teams to perform and defend environmental impact statements and reports under both NEPA and CEQA, to ensure compliance with federal and state laws and to assist in the development of Brownsfields. Ms. Burch has also advised her clients on the environmental aspects of large asset acquisitions and divestitures, performing due diligence, managing disclosures and obtaining environmental insurance for the purchase or sale of both large and small manufacturing facilities, including generating stations, refineries, oil and gas production fields, retail facilities, transportation facilities and printing and painting companies.

Ms. Burch also has extensive experience in contracting and guiding work with technical and government/public relations consultants in the preparation of Environmental Impact Reports, the leasing and permitting of industrial, retail and transportation facilities and the evaluation and performance of remediation activities of significant public import.

In representing potentially responsible parties at federal and state Superfund Sites, she has negotiated remedial investigations, feasibility studies and remedies, clean-up orders and consent decrees. Ms. Burch has negotiated with California EPA and related agencies the remediation of state Superfund sites in phases, allowing development to occur on portions of sites prior to remediation of the entire site. This innovative approach has had precedential impact statewide.

Ms. Burch has conducted hundreds of administrative hearings and numerous public meetings before the U.S. EPA and California state, regional and local governmental agencies, including Cal-EPA; Department of Health Services; the State and Regional Water Quality Control Boards; and local air districts, including the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Coastal Commission, the California Energy Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the California Air Resources Board, the State Board of Equalization, and the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. She has acted on behalf of clients in negotiating new and amended federal, state and local regulations and rules concerning, among others, implementation of goods movement and major infrastructure initiatives, the performance of risk assessments, the listing of toxic contaminants and compliance with air, groundwater, Superfund and consumer products laws.

She has represented clients in litigation involving preemption by federal and state laws and the invalidation of state and local regulations; compliance of major industrial facilities with NEPA and CEQA; compliance of newly created environmental laws with the Administrative Procedure Act and CEQA; challenges to agency rulemaking proceedings; groundwater contamination; tort litigation; federal and state preemption and interference with interstate commerce; and federal and state Superfund related common law theories and contribution actions. In 2007, in a case brought to trial in less than a year, Ms. Burch successfully represented a major logistics client and a national trade group in challenges, on both Constitutional and preemption grounds, to local air regulations.

Ms. Burch earned her B.A. from the University of Kansas and her J.D. from the Washburn University School of Law.