Benne has developed an extensive national practice in virtually all areas of environmental law over the last 30 years.
"To be a good environmental lawyer, you have to help clients find how to manage risks in a way that makes business sense."

A significant part of his practice has been devoted to helping companies, municipalities and individuals comply with the myriad of environmental regulations. This work has ranged from advising clients on complex regulatory issues relating to hazardous and solid waste, wastewater discharges and chemical manufacturing to the development of comprehensive business-wide compliance management systems. Benne has also negotiated settlements of numerous enforcement actions, including the first ever use of supplemental environmental projects in the settlement of violations of TSCA’s inventory update rule.

In environmental litigation, Benne has successfully defended challenges to various environmental permits and approvals, including appeals to the North Carolina Supreme Court, and negotiated the first ever agreement between a municipality and two state governments establishing limits for phosphorous discharges from North Carolina’s largest sewer authority. Benne has also handled the environmental aspects of hundreds of business transactions, including sales of real property, mergers and acquisitions and complex financings. He was a leader in the development of North Carolina’s Brownfields program and negotiated the State’s first Brownfields agreement.

Benne has been at the forefront of the development of environmental statutes and rules, and was one of the solid waste industry’s lead negotiators in the last major revision to North Carolina’s solid waste statute. He also successfully prosecuted a rulemaking petition that for the first time established a groundwater quality standard less stringent than a federal maximum contaminant level.

In 2012, the North Carolina Speaker of the House appointed Benne to the State’s Environmental Management Commission which is responsible for all air and water regulations in the State. In 2013, Governor Pat McCrory appointed Benne Chairman of the Commission.