Law Commons^™

Using Citizen Suits To Remedy Environmental Injustice And Achieve Clean Water In California, Paul Kneitz

Poverty Law Conference & Symposium

Nearly fifty years since the passage of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) in 1972, widespread pollution of California’s surface and groundwater continues across the state. “Over half of California’s lakes, bays, wetlands, and estuaries are too polluted to swim, drink, or fish,” according to the State Water Resources Control Board. Poor and working-class communities suffer disproportionately from the negative externalities and environmental impacts of water pollution, including effects on human health and wellness.

With a focus on the CWA citizen suit provision, this paper examines how the legal and administrative processes for water pollution control have not effectively addressed the …

2019 Environmental Law And Justice Clinic Report, Golden Gate University School Of Law

Environmental Law and Justice Clinic

Report on the recent activities of the Environmental Law and Justice Clinic.

From Dirty To Green: Increasing Energy Efficiency And Renewable Energy In Environmental Justice Communities, Deborah N. Behles

Publications

The stifling summer heat that raged across the nation was difficult for everyone, but one group had a more difficult time than others—those who could not afford to cool their homes. Disparities like these will likely only get worse. Poor communities of color that are already vulnerable and disproportionately impacted by pollution will shoulder a larger burden of climate change impacts. These neighborhoods, often called environmental justice communities, have fewer resources to adapt to the effects of climate change. More measures should be taken to increase the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency in environmental justice communities before the …

Environmental Justice As An Essential Tool In Environmental Review Statutes — A New Look At Federal Policies And Civil Rights Protections And California’S Recent Initiatives, Alan Ramo

Publications

Recent litigation by the California Attorney General has sparked renewed interest in the role of environmental justice under federal and state project environmental review laws. Some say that inserting environmental justice into environmental review marks a “radical expansion” of the role of social justice in environmental review. Environmental justice is now a wellestablished federal legal doctrine addressing communities disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards as a result of their social or economic demographics. The doctrine is supported by President Clinton’s executive order, along with agency guidelines and regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), which govern federal project environmental review. …

Environmental Benefits And The Notion Of Positive Environmental Justice, Colin Crawford

Publications

Following the introductory section, the Article is divided into three parts. The first portion of Part 1 will chart the relatively thin case made in the U.S. literature for what this Article labels "positive environmental justice." The second section in Part 1 then looks outside the United States and analyzes an important and relatively recent decision of the Colombian Constitutional Court. The Colombian decision, which affirmed the constitutional and other international and domestic law rights of native and Afro- Colombian peoples in that country to make decisions regarding the use and exploitation of the nation's abundant forests," provides a nuanced …

Considering Environmental Justice In The Decision To Unbundle Renewable Energy Certificates, Ida Martinac

Golden Gate University Law Review

This comment discusses the current debate over whether or not to unbundle Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and concludes that no regulatory or legislative decision can be made without careful consideration of the potential adverse environmental impacts of unbundling upon disadvantaged communities. Part I explains the concept of Distributed Generation, its history and its importance for the electrical utility industry, paying particular attention to renewable Distributed Generation. Next, it describes the role of the CPUC in the argument regarding REC bundling. This part also examines legislative efforts undertaken to deal with the evolving relationship between renewable energy generators, Distributed Generators and …

A New Story Of David And Goliath: The Alien Tort Claims Act Gives Victims Of Environmental Injustice In The Developing World A Viable Claim Against Multinational Corporations, Pauline Abadie

Golden Gate University Law Review

Part I of this Comment provides a general background highlighting the tentacular role that multinational corporations play in our "globalized" world. Part I also stresses the link between extractive industries, environmental destruction and human rights violations, and uses three cases recently brought in U.S. federal courts against multinational corporations to illustrate such linkages. Part II provides general background information regarding the ATCA, its application and circumstances of its passage. Most important, Part II discusses the general opacity surrounding the birth of the ATCA and concludes that such nebulous origins contributed to the confusion practitioners meet today in its application. Part …

Implementing Environmental Justice: The New Agenda For California State Agencies, Ellen M. Peter

Golden Gate University Law Review

The purpose of this article is to give an account of the commencement of the regulatory process to achieve environmental justice and to highlight some of the issues presented to the Davis administration. Preliminarily, some background is required for context. The achievement of environmental justice does not start on a fresh slate. Federal statutes and federal executive initiatives impose separate legal requirements. These federal mandates both require actions by California state agencies and provide guidance on how to interpret the new California statutes. Thus, this article begins with an account of the legal and historical development of the concept of …

Environmental Justice Enforcement Requires Reassessment Under The Equal Protection Clause, Title Vi Of The Civil Rights Act, And Environmental Statutes, Kenneth Owen

Golden Gate University Law Review

This article will suggest what is required to prevail under the purposeful discrimination standard under the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Interestingly, no equal protection environmental justice case or Title VI action has been presented to a jury charged with determining the factual issue of intent. The author will next explore the possibility of winning environmental justice cases under the citizen suit provisions that are part of most environmental statutes. Lastly, the author will suggest arguments to possible defenses that might be raised by defendants.

What Is Good For The Market, Can Be Bad For The Health: Emissions Trading Under Scaqmd's Rule 1610 And The Unjust Environmental Effects, Rachel Brasso Razon

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Comment examines the development of both the environmental justice movement and the traditional environmental movement. It also describes the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and its application of a market-based incentive program known as "emissions trading." This section explains SCAQMD's Old-Vehicle Scrapping Rule 1610 (Rule 1610) and Rule 1610's failure to address environmental justice issues. Section III examines the disparate effects of the program on minority communities. Section IV critiques the way in which oil companies were permitted to use Rule 1610 and how their use resulted in such disparate effects. Finally, Section V proposes that emissions …

Doling Out Environmental Justice To Nicaraguan Banana Workers: The Jose Adolfo Tellez V. Dole Food Company Litigation In The U.S. Courts, Armin Rosencranz, Stephen Roblin, Nicole Balloffet

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

In this article, we will explore the circumstances that led to this landmark ruling and verdict in Los Angeles, how Judge Chaney’s rulings changed the trajectory of the case, the recent developments concerning fraud by at least one U.S. lawyer, and how all of these factors might impact the future practices of transnational corporations.

The People Down The Hill: Parks Equity In San Francisco's East Bay, Paul Stanton Kibel

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

The public parkland system managed by the East Bay Regional Park District (East Bay Parks) is impressive in its geographic scope. It covers nearly 100,000 acres of land in Alameda and Contra Costa counties east of San Francisco, with 55 separate units comprising 14 Regional Parks, 19 Regional Preserves, 9 Regional Recreation Areas and 13 Regional Shorelines. The acreage under East Bay Parks’ jurisdiction constitutes the largest regional metropolitan regional park system in the United States. In selecting East Bay Parks as an initial focus of environmental justice inquiry, this article is mindful that East Bay Parks is only one …

Highway To Health: Exploring Legal Avenue To Connecting General Plans And Public Health Standards In California, E. Jacob Lubarsky

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

This Article first gives background on the health crisis facing those living in low-income urban centers. As the general plan for a city or county is the most comprehensive planning document required by California law, this Article next explains the process surrounding the formulation of general plans, what may and what must be contained in a city or county’s general plan, and how courts should broadly interpret mandatory elements in a general plan to include public health standards. Part III addresses the legal obstacles to requiring public health concerns to be considered in planning, and possible strategies for obtaining court-ordered …

Strategies For Implementing The Environmental Justice Vision, Clifford Rechtschaffen

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Endless Exemptions: An Environmental Justice Critique Of The Ongoing Use Of Methyl Bromide, Laura Kent-Monning

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

This Comment is an environmental justice critique of the ongoing use of methyl bromide. Part I provides an overview of methyl bromide, the Montreal Protocol, the CAA, and the Executive Order on Environmental Justice. Part II critiques the system of CUEs by arguing that the ongoing use of methyl bromide, facilitated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), places an undue burden on minority and low income communities and, therefore, violates the Executive Order on Environmental Justice. In addition, Part II illustrates other instances in which the EPA has violated the Executive Order; argues that the CUE system violates the environmental …

Warren County's Legacy For Mexico's Border Maquiladoras, Amelia Simpson

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

This Article explores the legacy of the U.S. environmental justice movement for the U.S.-Mexico border region. Part I introduces the case of Metales y Derivados, an abandoned, U.S.-owned maquiladora factory in Tijuana, Mexico, and the community’s struggle to compel cleanup of toxic waste at the site. In the context of environmental justice, Metales y Derivados illustrates a complex intersection of histories and cultures, international trade policy, and movement building. Part II discusses how racism, a defining element of the environmental justice movement, is often minimized and even denied in Latin America, despite studies documenting its persistence. Part III examines obstacles …

Warren County's Legacy For Healthy Parks, Schools And Communities: From The Cornfield To El Congreso And Beyond, Robert Garcia, Aubrey White

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

This Article traces the impact of the struggle for the Cornfield on the creation of other great urban parks, resource bonds, the greening of the Los Angeles River, and evolving efforts to achieve equity in the distribution of public resources. Part II presents a vision for a comprehensive and coherent web of public spaces, including parks, school fields, rivers, beaches, mountains, and forests, that will enhance human health and economic vitality for all the people of the Southern California region, with lessons for regions across the country. Part III describes lessons learned from raising funds for parks through resource bonds. …

Sb 115: California's Response To Environmental Justice - Process Over Substance, Caroline Farrell

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

This article discusses California’s development of an institutional framework for addressing environmental justice through the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (“OPR”) and the California Environmental Protection Agency (“Cal/EPA”). It will demonstrate the ways these agencies’ foci have been on coordination as well as formulating guidelines. Further, the article’s purpose is to point out that while these guidelines provide important tools for environmental justice advocates, they do not provide any substantive guarantees that disproportionate impacts will not occur in communities of color and low income populations.

Warren County's Legacy For Federal And State Environmental Impact Assessment Laws, Anhthu Hoang

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

The first part of this article discusses the modern environmental-quality review process at the federal and state levels, starting with a summary of the National Environmental Policy Act and then California’s and New York’s approaches. This is followed by a brief discussion of how each entity addresses environmental justice. The second part describes one community’s difficulties in meeting the required evidentiary showing to demonstrate environmental injustice.

Warren County's Legacy For The Quest To Eliminate Health Disparities, Charles Lee

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

At least two paradigm shifts have revolutionized the field of environmental health since Rachel Carson’s day. One occurred when environmental health encountered civil rights, forming the environmental justice movement. We are in the midst of the second, as environmental health reunited with architecture and urban planning. Significantly, these two paradigm shifts are converging. This article will examine how this convergence is taking place, and its significant implications for efforts to achieve environmental justice, community health and sustainability, and the elimination of health disparities.

Title Vi And The Warren County Protests, Bradford Mank

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

One part of the 1982 civil rights struggle against building a Polychlorinated Biphenyls (“PCB”) landfill in Warren County, North Carolina, was an unsuccessful suit by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (“NAACP”) under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act . The NAACP alleged that the state of North Carolina, a recipient of United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA” or “the Agency”) funds, had discriminated against minorities by building the landfill in Warren County, which had the highest percentage of minorities among all the counties in the state, while ignoring several alternative suitable or superior sites …

Warren County And The Birth Of A Movement: The Troubled Marriage Between Environmentalism And Civil Rights, Veronica Eady

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

The protests at Warren County, North Carolina, in the early 1980s led to several critical, galvanizing events in the history of the environmental justice movement. This article suggests that the environmental justice movement — while often characterized as a marriage between the environmental and civil rights movements — has adopted key facets of both movements. The 1990 letter to the so-called “Big 10” marked an evolutionary point that has led the environmental justice movement to establish valuable alliances with some mainstream environmental groups. Additionally, the article suggests from a jurisprudential perspective that civil rights laws in that same period failed …

Environmental Justice Comes Full Circle: Warren County Before And After, Dollie Burwell, Luke W. Cole

Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal

This article/remembrance chronicles the Warren County struggle. It begins before the protests that thrust it into the national spotlight, examining the factors that led to the struggle in the first place. It touches on the protests themselves, and then recounts part of the Warren County story that is not well known: the ultimate detoxification of the polychlorinated biphenyls (“PCBs”) site. Finally, it examines the legacy of the Warren County struggle, both nationally and locally in the county itself. In places, it self-consciously departs from the third person to describe in first person narrative (presented in the italicized portions of the …

Pursuing Environmental Justice: Obstacles And Opportunities - Lessons From The Field, Helen H. Kang

Publications

This article argues that the clinic‘s clients and similarly situated grassroots groups pursue litigation because the laws do not adequately protect them from pollution at the neighborhood level. Environmental lawsuits filed by such groups result from the conclusion that there is "too much" pollution in the neighborhood—there is elevated background pollution, violations of environmental laws contribute to excess pollution, and litigation is one of the few ways to redress the distributive injustice resulting from pollution created by multiple sources.

Access To Parkland: Environmental Justice At East Bay Parks, Paul Stanton Kibel

Environmental Law and Justice Clinic

In the United States, the environmental justice movement began with a focus on the inequitable burden of toxic exposures placed on low-income minority residents. There is now an increasing recognition that low-income minority residents also often face inequitable access to environmental amenities such as open space, parks and wilderness. Access to Parkland: Environmental Justice at East Bay Parks examines questions of equity for low-income minority residents related to the parkland holdings of the East Bay Regional Park District, the agency that manages close to 100,000 park acres in Alameda and Contra Costa counties east of San Francisco Bay.

Environmental Justice In Cuba: Capital Needs, Developing A Tourist Infrastructure, And Liberty Of Access To National Resources, Colin Crawford

Publications

First, I will describe the role of tourism in the current Cuban economy and identify the environmental concerns this development poses. In particular, this analysis will explore the environmental justice concerns of Cuba's emerging tourist infrastructure. Second, the article will examine both practical and theoretical efforts to include claims for freedom of access to environmental benefits under the environmental justice rubric. The article will both examine the relevance and lessons of those efforts for Cuba and do so with reference to notions of liberty rather than equality-the standard principle on which environmental justice claims are advanced. This section will conclude …

Advancing Environmental Justice Norms, Clifford Rechtschaffen

Publications

Part I of this Article provides brief background on the environmental justice movement. Part 11 generally describes some of the challenges that environmental justice principles pose for the traditional environmental decision-making paradigm. Part III presents several specific examples of how environmental justice norms can be incorporated to improve the ethical outcomes of traditional agency decision making.

California's Energy Crisis - The Perils Of Crisis Management And A Challenge To Environmental Justice, Alan Ramo

Publications

California's energy crisis represented a profound moment in energy policy, crisis management and environmental justice. California's deregulation led to blackouts and rapid increases in ratepayer bills that eventually fueled the Governor's declaration of emergency and emergency legislation by the State Legislature. Lessons about deregulation, crisis management and environmental justice abound. This article is not an attempt to systematically and comprehensively analyze California's energy deregulation. It instead focuses on the repercussions of crisis management, particularly as it relates to environmental justice.

A Survey Of Federal Agency Response To President Clinton's Executive Order No. 12898 On Environmental Justice, Colin Crawford

Publications

Authors: Denis Binder, Colin Crawford, Eileen Gauna, M. Casey Jarman, Alice Kaswan, Bradford C. Mank, Catherine A. O'Neill, Clifford Rechtschaffen, and Robert R.M. Verchick.

Each of the authors reviewed the response of a specific federal agency to Executive Order No. 12898, relying extensively, but not solely, upon the responses to a prepared survey. Professor Binder then summarized and edited the individual responses into this cohesive, comprehensive study with the substantial assistance of the other authors. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance provided by the representatives of the individual agencies in preparing and responding, often at great length, to our inquiries. We …

Using Federal Property Rights Laws For Environmental Justice, Colin Crawford

Publications

The late Ralph Santiago Abascal, who worked for years out of California Rural Legal Services and became one of the most admired legal service attorneys of his generation, was co-counsel in a celebrated environmental justice victory, El Pueblo Para Aqua y Aire Limpio v. County of Kings. El Pueblo successfully blocked the proposed siting of a hazardous waste incinerator by holding that the project's proponents had not translated the public review documents into Spanish in a majority monolingual Spanish-speaking community. Despite this victory, however, Abascal later observed, "The handful of reported environmental justice cases that have raised civil rights claims …