Tagged: Community Lawyering

Securing environmental justice through community lawyering

Authored by Steve Fischbach, Rhode Island Legal Services

Environmental justice advocates seek redress for a plethora of environmental problems that disproportionately affect low income and minority communities.  Since those problems are experienced on a community wide basis, environmental justice work is well suited to a community lawyering approach. This article describes Rhode Island Legal Services’ (RILS) environmental justice work, involving a wide range of legal strategies to improve health outcomes in our client community.

The work began in 1999, when representatives from several community organizations, including the tenant association of a public housing development approached RILS seeking legal assistance to fight a proposal to build two public schools on top of the former Providence City Dump. Construction of the schools had already started even though regulatory approvals had not been obtained from key agencies, including approval from our state’s Department of Environmental Management (DEM). That approval came weeks later—and our program agreed to challenge the approval and seek a halt to construction of the schools. At the time, RILS did not have any experience in environmental matters—but that did not stop our program from responding to a legal need identified by the community.

After obtaining a grant from the Impact Fund to hire an expert in 2002-2003, RILS filed suit against the City of Providence and DEM in state court, alleging violation of the environmental equity and public participation provision of our state’s  Brownfield law (the “Industrial Property Remediation and Reuse Act”), Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the US and RI constitutions. A week long hearing on a preliminary injunction motion did not stop the schools from being built; but instead, put conditions on further construction and required that plaintiffs be present for environmental testing and receive copies of test results. The case went to trial three and a half years later, and after a six week bench trial the court ruled in favor of plaintiffs on their state environmental law claims and due process claims. Again, the ruling did not result in the schools being closed; instead, the court asked the parties to develop an agreed upon remedy.  Plaintiffs and DEM agreed to establish a stakeholder group to develop proposals for legislation, regulations and policy on five discrete subjects including ,“[i]ssues to consider and methods to employ to ensure a ‘hard look’ at environmental equity issues when reviewing clean up plans for contaminated sites.”

While the court case was the focus of RILS’s initial environmental justice work, the case lead RILS to pursue environmental justice using other legal strategies. In 2003 RILS received an Environmental Justice Small Grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conduct policy research on two issues raised by the case:  1) the siting of schools on top of or near sources of environmental pollution and 2) environmental justice programs of state environmental agencies. The reports were supposed to inform the work of two stakeholder groups that DEM agreed to establish to settle the litigation—however, the case did not settle and only one stakeholder group was eventually formed. The report on school siting was shared with advocates working on school siting issues around the country, and was instrumental in the passage of federal legislation directing EPA to develop voluntary school siting guidelines that take into account “environmental problems, contaminants, hazardous substances and pollution emissions” from a list of contaminants and “any pollution emission that present [sic] or may present a risk to the health of occupants” of school facilities. The report on state agency environmental justice programs was used by the stakeholder group established by the court order, resulting in DEM’s promulgating a draft guidance policy on the agency’s consideration of environmental justice in the review of clean up plans for contaminated sites.

In 2006, RILS obtained a second grant from EPA to conduct education and outreach activities in Providence on environmental justice, culminating in a day long conference on environmental justice. RILS assembled a work group to plan the conference consisting of community activists, environmental organizations and the public housing tenant association which participated in the school case. To recruit work group members RILS met one-on-one with representatives of community and environmental groups and offered to conduct educational forums for groups on environmental justice issues of the group’s choosing. The conference was attended by 75 people and participants agreed to meet the following month to begin discussions to form a formal environmental organization. At that follow up meeting participants agreed to form the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island. Within months the group was incorporated and funds were obtained from EPA to hire staff and pay for an office.

An outgrowth of RILS’ education and outreach work was a pilot project working with youth at the same public housing development where the tenants sued to stop the schools from being built on the former city dump. The project, Green Teenz, was an effort to engage youth in environmental justice work by having them create a photo montage of environmental conditions in their neighborhood. This past year, RILS obtained a second Environmental Justice Small Grant to establish a formal ten week project, where the youth will learn video production techniques and produce two videos, one on litter and another on safe cleaning products.

RILS environmental justice work is nearing its tenth anniversary. When the work began in 1999, RILS never expected to create a full blown environmental justice project, particularly given the program’s lack of expertise at that time. RILS’s experience shows that the lack of internal expertise should not deter legal services program’s from engaging in new advocacy efforts in response to needs identified by the client community.

Environmental justice and community lawyering: successful advocacy strategies

Authored by Sofia Sarabia, The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment

The notion that poor people and people of color bear a disproportionate burden of pollution and other environmental hazards is not new. Hundreds of studies looking at a wide range of environmental dangers such as pesticide poisoning, air pollution, contaminated drinking water, lead poisoning, proximity to toxic waste and other environmentally hazardous sites have confirmed it. But you don’t have to read hundreds of studies, you can simply visit the farm worker communities in the Central Valley, or the low income, primarily African American communities surrounding power plants in the east bay, or you can look at the poor communities of color in your area to see for yourself.

The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) has been very successful in working with communities to protect their health and environment. Our success can be attributed to our approach to each issue and each community. CRPE’s first priority in any campaign is to give the community collectively, and its residents individually, more power and personal capacity than they had before. Obviously addressing the environmental hazard is important, but if the community wasn’t empowered, it would be vulnerable to the next hazard. However, if community residents are armed with knowledge and a sense of power in the decisions affecting their community, then they are better able to take control of the health and environment in which they live.

CRPE believes that the lawyers should not be in charge of campaigns but serve as tools for the community. This “on tap, not on top model,” allows the communities to control how to deal with an issue, further developing the community’s capacity. Our organizers work in our Valley client communities to build community groups. We as lawyers come in once the community has decided it is the best course of action. If I could give one piece of advice to advocates working on these issues, based on my experience with CRPE, it would be to really listen to the community and allow them to guide the course of action. What we may think as outsiders to a community is the best outcome, may not be what is best for the residents of that community.

CPRE is an environmental justice advocacy organization that works with poor people and people of color across the U.S. fighting environmental hazards, with a particular focus on California’s San Joaquin Valley. CRPE began its life as a project of California Rural Legal Assistance and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in 1989, serving as a mini-backup center for legal services offices, offering technical and legal assistance for the environmental justice movement. CRPE became an independent non-profit in 2002. This October will mark CRPE’s 20th anniversary. Since its inception, CRPE has grown to a staff of eight attorneys and four organizers, with offices in San Francisco and Delano, and continues to grow. While CRPE continues to provide support to legal services attorneys, today CRPE primarily provides organizing, technical, and legal assistance directly to grassroots groups in low income communities and communities of color who are disproportionately burdened by pollution and environmental threats.