Contaminated Property Redevelopment and Florida Brownfields
Michael is widely regarded as one of the nation’s leading attorneys in the redevelopment of environmentally impacted property and one of the foremost authorities on Florida’s Brownfields Redevelopment Act. For nearly 35 years, he has been at the forefront of Florida’s Brownfields Redevelopment Program—not only practicing under the program, but also helping create, implement, expand, and modernize the legal and policy framework governing contaminated-property redevelopment in Florida. He helped draft the Florida Brownfields Redevelopment Act when it was first enacted in 1997, as one of a small group of stakeholders who traveled to Tallahassee to provide input on and negotiate its provisions.
Through October 2026, he had worked on more than 340 brownfield projects in 98 Florida jurisdictions and negotiated more than 195 Brownfield Site Rehabilitation Agreements, amendments, and assignment agreements with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and its delegated local programs, including more than 50 with Miami-Dade County, 30 with Broward County, and others with the Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County. He has worked with clients, consultants, accountants, local governments, and regulators to prepare or submit more than 420 Voluntary Cleanup Tax Credit applications, along with dozens of Brownfield Redevelopment Bonus and Construction Material Sales Tax refund applications and numerous federal and state brownfields grant applications. He has been responsible for numerous first-of-their-kind Brownfield Area designations and agreements throughout Florida, including pioneering private-party brownfield designations and agreements in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties and many Florida municipalities.
His redevelopment experience spans former industrial and manufacturing facilities, petroleum properties, dry-cleaning and chlorinated-solvent sites, recycling operations, landfills, agricultural properties, golf courses, automotive facilities, airports and ports, commercial corridors, logistics facilities, multifamily and affordable housing developments, master-planned communities, and large mixed-use redevelopment projects. It includes more than 65 landfill and solid waste redevelopment and reuse projects involving industrial, commercial, residential, recreational, conservation, retail, and renewable energy uses, and, increasingly, the environmental aspects of advanced manufacturing facilities, energy infrastructure, logistics centers, and data center development.
A defining characteristic of his practice is the integration of environmental remediation with the realities of real estate development. When contamination cannot simply be removed before development begins, Michael helps clients develop risk-based cleanup and closure strategies that allow residual contamination to be safely managed in place while accommodating foundations, utilities, stormwater systems, dewatering, excavation, subsurface parking, soil relocation, landscaping, residential development, and other construction activities. His perspective is informed by direct experience as a principal: through Goldstein Kite Environmental, LLC, which he co-founded in 2019, and the Goldstein Brownfields Group, LLC, he has acquired, remediated, entitled, and sold contaminated real estate, including former chlorinated-solvent properties, municipal landfills, a pesticide storage and distribution site, and a large Superfund site. That experience gives him firsthand familiarity with the financial, construction, regulatory, market, and execution risks confronting developers and investors undertaking environmentally complex projects.
Environmental Transactions, Due Diligence, Insurance, and Risk Allocation
Michael is a highly experienced environmental deal lawyer who regularly advises purchasers, sellers, developers, investors, lenders, landlords, tenants, and corporate clients on sophisticated real estate and corporate transactions involving environmental risk. He has supported hundreds of transactions by leading and critically evaluating environmental due diligence; structuring and negotiating environmental provisions in purchase and sale agreements, leases, financing documents, and development agreements; and developing strategies for allocating known and unknown environmental liabilities through indemnities, cost-sharing arrangements, escrows, access agreements, remediation obligations, continuing-operations provisions, institutional and engineering controls, and environmental insurance.
His due diligence practice extends well beyond identifying recognized environmental conditions. He works closely with environmental consultants to evaluate whether investigation programs adequately characterize the conditions that may affect the contemplated transaction and future use of a property, and he evaluates those conditions against the proposed site plan and construction program so that issues affecting excavation, foundations, utilities, stormwater infrastructure, dewatering, subsurface structures, soil management, and worker or occupant exposure are identified before closing or construction. His analysis focuses not simply on whether contamination exists, but on what it means for legal liability, regulatory closure, financing, valuation, construction, soil disposal, groundwater management, permitting, schedule, insurance, and future marketability.
Because environmental risk is frequently a financing and capital markets problem as much as a regulatory one, Michael also works with insurance brokers, underwriters, and lenders to allow environmentally complicated transactions and projects to proceed. He has extensive experience procuring environmental insurance and negotiating policy terms, endorsements, exclusions, deductibles, coverage periods, and insured parties for buyers, sellers, lenders, and end users, and in addressing lender concerns involving contamination, regulatory closure, institutional controls, construction activities, continuing remediation obligations, and other conditions affecting collateral, underwriting, and future refinancing or disposition.
Remediation Strategy and Regulatory Closure
Michael has extensive experience managing environmental consultants and working with engineers, hydrogeologists, toxicologists, laboratories, and remediation professionals to develop investigation, remediation, and regulatory closure strategies. His work includes procuring and managing environmental consulting professionals; reviewing and revising technical plans and reports before regulatory submission; and coordinating with consultants in negotiations with FDEP, Miami-Dade DERM, Broward County, Palm Beach County ERM, and other environmental agencies.
He routinely evaluates environmental data and technical recommendations through a legal and redevelopment lens—identifying data gaps, questioning assumptions, evaluating whether contaminants of concern and potential source areas have been adequately investigated, and assessing whether proposed remediation and closure strategies are compatible with the client’s contemplated development and long-term objectives. He has particular experience with risk-based corrective action and the development, negotiation, and implementation of institutional and engineering controls that permit residual soil and groundwater contamination to be safely managed in place. This technical fluency allows him to translate complex environmental information into practical decisions about liability, capital allocation, design, construction, schedule, and risk.
Environmental Permitting, Compliance Counseling, and Enforcement Defense
An important and growing component of Michael’s practice is environmental regulatory compliance counseling and the defense of permitting and enforcement matters for operating businesses and property owners, particularly in South Florida, where FDEP’s Southeast District and Office of General Counsel, the Miami-Dade County Department of Environmental Resources Management (DERM) and the Miami-Dade County Environmental Quality Control Board (EQCB), the Environmental Permitting Division of the Broward County Public Works and Environmental Services Department, and the Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Resources Management (ERM) each administer their own permitting, licensing, and enforcement programs under Chapters 373, 376, and 403, Florida Statutes, Chapter 24 of the Miami-Dade County Code, Chapter 27 of the Broward County Code, and the Palm Beach County Unified Land Development Code.
Michael regularly serves as a client’s regulatory liaison to these agencies. He reviews a facility’s environmental and operating records together with the agencies’ online regulatory files to evaluate permitting status and compliance history; prepares formal responses to FDEP Warning Letters and proposed Consent Orders, DERM Field Notices of Violation and Orders for Corrective Action, Pollution Prevention Field Notices, Uniform Civil Violation Notices, and permit comment letters, and Broward County notices of violation and license deficiencies; negotiates the terms of FDEP Consent Orders and DERM Consent Agreements and settlement agreements with agency staff, the FDEP Office of General Counsel, and the Miami-Dade County Attorney’s Office; and then helps clients achieve timely compliance with the corrective-action covenants, status reports, extension requests, and penalty and in-kind obligations those instruments impose.
He has substantial experience before the EQCB, where he prepares and presents applications for variances from Chapter 24 and for extensions of time to comply with it. Those applications have involved wellfield protection area restrictions under Section 24-43, limitations on aboveground storage tanks, and after-the-fact wetland permits. In each case, he meets with DERM staff and the County Attorney’s Office in advance to shape the approval conditions, prepares expert and client witnesses, presents evidence and testimony at the hearing, and advises the client on complying with the resulting Board Order. He assists clients in obtaining and maintaining DERM operating permits for industrial waste, private sanitary sewer systems and pump stations, and resource recovery and management facilities; in resolving environmental “rework” remarks on Certificate of Use and building permit applications; in securing after-the-fact sewer extension, wetland, and coastal permits; and in obtaining Broward County hazardous materials, storage tank, wellfield, and non-domestic wastewater licenses. In Palm Beach County, he advises developers on compliance with the Unified Land Development Code’s Article 4 criteria governing excavations within 300 feet of a site with known contamination, and he participated in the development of the county’s interpretation memorandum on that standard by providing written and in-person comments and suggested language and responding to requests for input and review from ERM staff.
His compliance work also includes the reporting and response obligations triggered by spills and releases, including releases of anhydrous ammonia and other extremely hazardous substances; tree preservation, mangrove, wetland, dock, and sovereign submerged lands matters before DERM, FDEP, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the South Florida Water Management District, and the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund; the lawful removal and disposal of structures and demolition debris; compliance with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and U.S. Department of Agriculture requirements for the export of protected plants; and responses to third-party and citizen complaints forwarded to regulators. In each of these matters, he identifies, procures, and manages the licensed environmental, biological, and engineering consultants needed to address the technical side of the problem, reviews their submittals for consistency with the agreed regulatory strategy, and works to establish a definitive pathway to compliance and closure at the lowest practical cost and operational disruption. When enforcement cannot be resolved informally, Michael defends clients in administrative proceedings under Chapter 120, Florida Statutes, before the Division of Administrative Hearings, in EQCB hearings and appeals, and in petitions for enforcement and motions to enforce settlement agreements brought in circuit court by FDEP, the Board of Trustees, the Water Management Districts, and Miami-Dade County.
CERCLA, Superfund, and National Contaminated Site Redevelopment
In addition to his Florida Brownfields practice, Michael advises clients regarding CERCLA, RCRA, U.S. EPA’s Brownfields Program, and the acquisition and redevelopment of federally regulated contaminated properties nationwide. His experience includes Superfund redevelopment, Bona Fide Prospective Purchaser protections and continuing obligations, liability allocation, federal brownfields grants and incentives, and strategies for acquiring, remediating, financing, and redeveloping complex contaminated properties. He works with former senior U.S. EPA officials and nationally recognized environmental consultants to develop liability-management and redevelopment strategies for federal and state cleanup sites, and he has testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on brownfields redevelopment, environmental justice, redevelopment incentives, and federal environmental policy.
PFAS and Emerging Contaminants
Michael advises clients on the rapidly evolving legal, regulatory, transactional, and redevelopment implications of PFAS and other emerging contaminants, including contaminated-property transactions, due diligence, potential source identification, CERCLA liability, state regulatory requirements, brownfields redevelopment, environmental insurance, and remediation strategy. He serves on the Steering Committee of the National PFAS Forum, where he helps develop educational programming on scientific, regulatory, legal, economic, insurance, and remediation developments involving PFAS, and he has spoken extensively on PFAS, including its implications for contaminated-property transactions, brownfields redevelopment, environmental justice, biosolids, agricultural properties, insurance, and federal liability policy. He has also advocated before Congress and U.S. EPA for liability protections for parties remediating PFAS-contaminated properties under qualified state voluntary cleanup programs.
Environmental Litigation and Dispute Resolution
Michael represents property owners, developers, businesses, local governments, and other clients in environmental disputes involving contamination, remediation obligations, environmental liability, and economic damages associated with contaminated property. His approach draws on the same multidisciplinary experience that informs his transactional and redevelopment practice: he works closely with environmental consultants and other technical experts to analyze historical operations, contaminant sources, migration pathways, analytical data, regulatory records, remediation history, causation, allocation, and the economic consequences of contamination. Where litigation can be avoided, he seeks practical resolutions that address the client’s underlying business and redevelopment objectives rather than merely resolving the legal claim. Where it cannot, his familiarity with environmental science, remediation, regulatory practice, real estate development, and project economics allows him to build legal strategies grounded in the technical and commercial realities of the dispute.
Affordable Housing, Public-Sector Redevelopment, and Community Revitalization
A significant component of Michael’s practice involves using environmental redevelopment programs to facilitate affordable and workforce housing, public infrastructure, parks, recreational facilities, and community redevelopment. He has represented 25 of Florida’s most active affordable and workforce housing developers on more than 110 projects across more than 32 jurisdictions, combining environmental due diligence, remediation, risk-based closure, brownfields liability protection, economic incentives, consultant management, and regulatory strategy to convert environmentally challenged properties into housing safely.
He has also represented numerous Florida municipalities and public agencies in the investigation, remediation, acquisition, disposition, and redevelopment of contaminated properties, including brownfields strategy, Superfund redevelopment, landfill reuse, environmental incentives, development procurement, community outreach, and public-private redevelopment initiatives. Since 2023, he has served on the Miami-Dade County Affordable Housing Advisory Board, where he leads efforts to develop recommendations that reduce the time and cost of safely cleaning up and redeveloping contaminated sites for affordable housing.
Legislative Leadership and Environmental Public Policy
Michael has spent nearly three decades helping shape the laws, policies, incentives, and regulatory programs governing contaminated-property redevelopment in Florida and nationally. His involvement began with the Florida Brownfields Redevelopment Act: in 1997, he helped draft the original Act and was part of a small group of stakeholders who traveled to Tallahassee to provide input and negotiate its provisions. He was the founding Chairman and President of the Florida Brownfields Association, has served as Chairman of the Miami-Dade County Brownfields Task Force and Brownfields Oversight Committee, and has served on the Executive Committee and Steering Committee of the National Brownfields Coalition, where he chaired its Public Policy, Redevelopment Incentives, and Regulatory Partnerships Committee.
During the 2025 Florida Legislative Session, Michael served as the principal private-sector author of legislation that streamlined Florida Brownfields Program eligibility for U.S. EPA Superfund and other federally regulated contaminated properties, expanded eligibility for local-government-owned properties, and created an accelerated closure pathway for portions of larger contaminated sites. He led the statewide effort to build support among FDEP, the delegated brownfields programs, U.S. EPA, local governments, environmental professionals, and industry stakeholders. Every legislative committee that considered it approved the legislation unanimously, both chambers of the Florida Legislature passed it unanimously, and the Governor signed it into law.
At the federal level, Michael has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and committees of the U.S. House of Representatives regarding brownfields redevelopment, environmental justice, brownfields reauthorization, and federal redevelopment policy, and has advocated for CERCLA reforms designed to facilitate the cleanup and productive reuse of contaminated properties. This policy experience gives clients an additional dimension of representation: when conventional transactional, regulatory, or litigation strategies cannot adequately solve an environmental problem, Michael understands how legislation, agency policy, government affairs, and coalition building can sometimes create a better solution.