California Environmental Law Specialists

AUDREY WINTERS, ESQ.

Audrey Winters is a partner at Brown & Winters.  Her practice has focused on Environmental and Community Redevelopment Law for over ten years.  Ms. Winters has served as in-house counsel to the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency and currently serves as special counsel to cities, counties and redevelopment agencies statewide.

Ms.Winters specializes in Brownfields’ redevelopment.  Her practice focuses on state and federal petroleum, hazardous waste and toxic substances laws and regulations, local ordinances, community redevelopment laws, environmental insurance laws, and administrative laws and procedures.  As such, she assists her clients in understanding and effectively communicating with local, state and federal regulatory agencies, such as the Department of Toxic Substances Control, the State Water Resources Control Board, and regional water quality control boards, as well as local environmental health departments.  

Ms. Winters provides a range of legal services that include regulatory and legislative affairs representation, insurance archaeology, insurance coverage representation, and related civil litigation services.  In 2004, Ms. Winters was a principal architect of and lobbyist for Senate Bill 559.  The purpose of the bill was to streamline CalEPA to provide more efficient services for her public entity clients.  Ms. Winters successfully moved the bill through the Senate and the Assembly to the Governor’s desk for signature.  The bill was vetoed in favor of an executive order from the Secretary of CalEPA establishing a Memorandum of Agreement between the Department of Toxic Substances Control and state water boards, coupled with the Governor’s California Performance Review policy in which the Governor proposed administrative reorganization plans.  Ms. Winters has since applied the Memorandum of Agreement and its principles in a variety of settings to improve regulatory treatment of her client’s site, which in turn provides greater support in civil litigation cases for insurance coverage and cost recovery.  

Another important component of Ms. Winters’ practice is completing her client’s insurance picture.  A major obstacle facing clients who either desire to redevelop a brownfield site, or who inadvertently become the ‘low-hanging fruit’ that a regulatory agency picks to clean up a site, is money.  Insurance archaeology is an important part of every Brownfield project.  The aim of insurance archaeology is to reconstruct, analyze and fully understand the insurance program associated with the business, or businesses, that occupied the site over a period of many years.  Archaeology offers the potential of rediscovering lost insurance coverage which may respond to recently asserted claims.  Primary and excess liability coverages bought many years ago may respond to ‘long tail’ claims asserted long after the events which gave rise to them occurred.  Historic policies typically cover most liabilities arising from environmental claims, and frequently provide defense costs in addition to the limits of liability.

Ms. Winters is also an active participant in the Brownfields professional community.   She is a frequent speaker for State professional associations, such as the County Counsels’ Association of California and the California Redevelopment Association.  Her professional publications include an article entitled “The Polanco Redevelopment Act: California’s Most Important Brownfields Statute,” published in the Real Property Law Reporter by the Continuing Education of the Bar (September 2003).  Ms. Winters also assists her clients by actively maintaining memberships with  professional associations such as the Capitol Center for Government Law and Policy, the CalEPA State Brownfields Committee, and the Brownfields Committee of the California Redevelopment Association.

 

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