Air Pollution Meteorology Expert Witness Timothy Minnich

The experts at Minnich and Scotto, Inc. are Meteorologists – each with 40+ years' experience in providing a wide range of ambient air-related and meteorological services to attorneys, local communities, industry, and government.  

Litigation Support - Established in 1996, their business has evolved over the years based on changing client needs – originally providing predominantly high-end, “boutique” consulting services to industry and government (such as real-time, emission-rate measurements of airborne toxins from hazardous waste sites and other large area sources), and today offering a variety of technical services to environmental attorneys in support of toxic tort cases, including reconstructive analyses to assess past exposure to hazardous air pollutants (HAP) and other air toxins.

Minnich and Scotto's unique skill set – owing to a high level of proficiency in diverse disciplines such as ambient air monitoring, air dispersion modeling, CERCLA (Superfund) and Clean Air Act regulations, forensic meteorology, and environmental quality assurance – has often led to development of winning legal strategies for our attorney clients which otherwise might not have been envisioned. They have extensive knowledge in the following areas:

Regulatory:

• CERCLA and Clean Air Act Compliance

Quality Assurance: 

• DQO Process Compliance
• Monitoring / Sampling Plan Assessment

Timothy R. Minnich, President, MS, QEP, is a Meteorologist and Atmospheric Scientist with over 40 years experience in the design and management of a wide range of ambient air and meteorological investigations under CERCLA and the Clean Air Act. He is a recognized technical expert on high-profile legal cases, with assignments involving forensic meteorology and reconstruction of inhalation scenarios in relation to community exposure to hazardous air pollutants (HAP). 

Mr. Minnich is accomplished in presenting conclusions and opinions derived from analysis of complex technical data in a well-reasoned and easily understood manner. He is a skilled technical writer and proven manager in a highly specialized arena. He is a nationally recognized expert in the application of optical remote sensing (ORS) for hazardous waste site remediation. He has designed and managed more than 25 ORS field investigations and air dispersion model validation studies since the promulgation of U.S.EPA (EPA) Method TO-16 for open-path FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared) spectroscopy in 1988. 

Mr. Minnich was an instructor for several half-day continuing education courses on calculating emission rates from ground-level sources.

Robert L. Scotto is a Meteorologist with over 40 years of experience in the design, management, and execution of a variety of air quality investigations. He is a specialist in Clean Air Act permitting, and is an expert in a broad range of CERCLA-related QA/QC issues. 

Mr. Scotto is a highly skilled air dispersion modeler and has extensive experience in customization and validation of AERMOD – USEPA’s most recent guideline air dispersion model. In addition to having co-founded Minnich and Scotto, he has held significant positions with other organizations, including vice president of ETG Services and zone-wide QA manager for NUS Corporation, USEPA's Field Investigation Team (FIT) contractor. In this latter capacity, Mr. Scotto was responsible for QA program implementation in all four USEPA Zone I FIT offices (Regions 1 through 4). The total value of that contract was $300 million.