Jaan M. Haus, a Partner in Riker Danzig’s Environmental Group, has a multifaceted practice assisting clients on a broad array of transactional, regulatory, and litigation matters involving state and federal environmental law.
Jaan takes a practical, business-oriented approach to his work counseling clients to efficiently and effectively resolve complex environmental issues. He finds that the best way to provide value-added service is to truly understand a client’s business and to work as an integral part of the client team in addressing its challenges and achieving its objectives.
Jaan advises clients from a wide range of industries, including real estate developers, real estate investors, lenders, energy companies, commercial and industrial manufacturers, specialty chemical companies, aerospace companies, pharmaceutical companies, food distributors, and small commercial businesses.
He has extensive experience assisting clients with environmental due diligence, contaminated site remediation, licensed site remediation professional (LSRP) issues, brownfields redevelopment, operational permitting, regulatory compliance, siting renewable energy projects, cost recovery actions (under CERCLA and the NJ Spill Act), procuring environmental insurance and pursuing insurance coverage claims. He is also adept at assessing development constraints and obtaining waterfront development, CAFRA, wetlands, flood hazard area and stormwater management approvals for his developer clients.
Environmental Transactional Work
Jaan advises clients on all types of business and real estate transactions, including buying and selling, leasing, financing, and redevelopment of real property (particularly environmentally encumbered property), as well as corporate asset and equity transactions. He is particularly well-versed in identifying and analyzing environmental risks and developing risk management strategies that include protective contractual mechanisms, insurance policies, and creative transaction structuring. He efficiently manages the due diligence process by identifying and effectively communicating potential material risks and has extensive experience negotiating all types of environmental issues and allocating environmental liabilities and responsibilities in complex transactions. Jaan also has particular knowledge of the New Jersey Industrial Site Recovery Act (ISRA) and routinely counsels clients on applicability and compliance issues.
Contaminated Site Remediation/Brownfields Redevelopment
Jaan frequently manages contaminated site remediation matters from start to finish, which includes overseeing environmental consultants, negotiating access and service agreements, managing relationships with regulatory agencies, developing cost-effective and business-practical cleanup strategies, and counseling clients on long-term management and disposition of properties. He has assisted numerous clients with cleaning up and developing brownfields sites, including obtaining regulatory approvals, negotiating liability transfer agreements, obtaining funding, and implementing risk management and mitigation strategies, particularly through obtaining environmental insurance. As a Chair of the New Jersey Licensed Site Remediation Professionals Association (LSRPA) Legal and Legislative Committee, as well as the New York City Brownfields Partnership (NYCBP) Insurance and Risk Management Committee, Jaan is deeply immersed in the latest issues affecting site remediation and brownfields development, including vapor intrusion and indoor air quality issues, natural resource damages (NRD), and emerging contaminants (like PFAS).
Environmental Land Use Permitting
Clients regularly rely on Jaan for assistance in obtaining various state and federal permits and approvals for development and infrastructure projects in regulated coastal, waterfront, wetlands, riparian and flood hazard areas. In these matters, he routinely engages with and appears before state and federal regulators, including the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Jaan is also experienced with addressing threatened and endangered species issues, climate change and flood resiliency considerations, and developing mitigation strategies for project impacts, which at times involves contracting with mitigation banks, establishing conservation restrictions, or negotiating turnkey mitigation contracts.
Regulatory Compliance
Jaan handles all types of environmental permitting and compliance matters, including defending clients when they are charged with violating environmental permitting requirements. He also is experienced in procurement, modification, and renewal of operational permits of many kinds, including solid and hazardous waste management, groundwater, surface water, industrial and stormwater discharges (NJPDES and NPDES), and sewerage connections and treatment. Jaan frequently engages in legislative and regulatory stakeholder processes to assist his clients and to keep informed on the newest governmental initiatives and changes in regulation, including state and federal environmental justice programs.
Jaan earned his law degree cum laude from Pace University School of Law, where he also received a Certificate in Environmental Law.
