National:

GOAL: Provide legal resources and representation to communities struggling for environmental justice coast to coast.

BACKGROUND:
During CRPE’s 20-year history, we have represented low-income communities and communities of color across the United States.  We are dedicated to delivering on our commitment to provide legal assistance to the grassroots movement for environmental justice beyond our work in California. We have two main national cases, one in South Camden, NJ and a second in Kivalina, AK. (CRPE represents Kivalina in another case against Exxon Mobile on the matter of climate change)

NATIONAL LEGAL CASES

South Camden Citizens in Action v. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection

In 2001, CRPE was co-counsel in the historic civil rights case South Camden Citizens in Action v. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, in which a District Court judge held – for the first time in U.S. history – that an environmental agency’s permitting decision, although legal under environmental law, was a violation of civil rights law. Although the decision was overturned on appeal, it stands as a monument to the civil rights law’s potential to address the inequitable distribution of environmental harms if courts were no longer hostile to civil rights plaintiffs.

Adams v. Teck Cominco, Inc. and In the Matter of Teck Alaska, Inc.

Background
Kivalina is an Inupiat village in Alaska, located about 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle on the Chuckchi Sea between the Wulik and Kivalina river deltas.  Kivalina’s 400 residents struggle to maintain the traditional subsistence culture of their ancestors in the face of pollution from the world’s largest zinc mine. Red Dog Mine is the No. 1 on the nation’s Toxic Release Inventory and is responsible for polluting the water supply of Kivalina, among other harms.

Colleen Swan, Native Village of Kivalina Tribal Administrator, has spent much of her 18-year career trying to stop the Red Dog Mine’s pollution of the Wulik River, which the residents rely on for food and drinking water. The mine discharges millions of gallons of “treated” mining waste into Red Dog Creek, about 45 miles upstream of Kivalina.  The mine waste contains cyanide, lead, zinc, selenium, and a chemical cocktail called “total dissolved solids,” among other pollutants.

History of Red Dog Mine’s Violations
The Red Dog Mine has a long history of violating the Clean Water Act.  In the 1990s, the United States prosecuted Teck for violations of the federal Clean Water Act (“CWA”), ultimately settling for a civil penalty of $1,700,000.  When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit to the mine in 1998, the Village hoped that the pollution would end.  It did not. Red Dog mine routinely violated that permit without reprcussions.  EPA actually wrote annual “get out of jail free” passes to the mine – formally called Compliance Orders by Consent – by which EPA allowed the mine to discharge amounts of total dissolved solids far in excess of the 1998 permit’s limitations.  Swan was unable to persuade anyone in government or nonprofit organizations to stand up to Red Dog, until she met Luke Cole in 2001. 

CRPE’s Work in Kivalina
Starting in 2002, CRPE represented Kivalina residents in a lawsuit enforcing the 40-year old Clean Water Act, ultimately establishing over 600 violations of that law in 2006. 

CRPE continues to represent the courageous Kivalina residents and the Kivalina IRA Council (Kivalina’s tribal government) in a challenge to EPA’s January 14, 2010 issuance of a new permit that Red Dog sought to allow the massive expansion of the mine and 20 more years of operations. The EPA issued Red Dog a new permit that made legal that which Reg Dog violated for years and did not include the wastewater pipeline. 

Kivalina, joined by the Native Village of Point Hope and two Alaska environmental groups, challenged this “backsliding” and EPA’s failure to consider and require the wastewater pipeline as part of the new permit.  On March 17, 2010, EPA withdrew the components of the new permit that it had weakened, conceding that Kivalina and its allies would have ultimately prevailed.  While Kivalina has won yet another battle in its struggle for environmental justice, its fight for clean water is not yet won. 

Primary Contact:
Brent Newell 415.346.4179 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
47 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
Secondary Contact:
Alegría De La Cruz 415.346.4179 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
47 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108