Nicholas Targ has 18 years experience assisting clients in the public and private sectors achieve their land use, environmental and policy goals. His practice focuses on complex redevelopment projects, environmental compliance and government advocacy. Representative work includes strategic legal advice on Brownfields redevelopment, Superfund compliance, and State and Federal grant and policy advocacy. Mr. Targ has successfully advocated for infill funding and policy initiatives on behalf of public, private and nonprofit coalition clients.
Before joining Holland & Knight, Mr. Targ served in leadership positions with the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, including Counsel and Associate Director to the Office of Environmental Justice in Washington, D.C. In these capacities, he helped bring to a successful resolution highly visible environmental permitting and compliance matters and provided strategic advice on legislation, regulatory initiatives and public participation issues to congressional offices, the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, and federal, state and tribal agencies. On a regular basis he convened and addressed trade associations, government bodies and others.
Mr. Targ also served in the Solicitor’s Office of the Department of the Interior, representing the Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Land Management on a wide range of natural resources and hazardous materials issues. While at Interior, he helped establish the Department's first Alternative Dispute Resolution Program and the Department-wide hazardous materials office, provided legal and strategic counsel on environmental aspects of large-scale land transfers, and handled precedent cases. He joined the Department through the Honors Attorney Program in 1993.
Committed to service, Mr. Targ co-founded the Howard University School of Law Environmental Law and Sustainability Program and taught environmental law and environmental justice as an adjunct professor. Presently, he is an adjunct professor at UC Hastings School of Law, teaching land use law. Mr. Targ also serves as Chair of the American Bar Association's Taskforce on Diversity and Environmental Justice.