Leveraging Supplemental Environmental Projects: Toward an Integrated Strategy for Empowering Environmental Justice Communities
Environmental justice communities are especially disadvantaged when it comes to direct community intervention in matters critical to their well-being. Opportunities may exist, however, to institutionalize resources for those communities’ benefit. In particular, environmental enforcement actions could prove a reliable and effective conduit to access resources and obtain environmental and public health benefits, tailored to communities’ self-identified needs.
Freeman v. Grain Processing Corp.
The Iowa Supreme Court held that neighbors of an Iowa corn processing plant were properly certified as a class to pursue pollution claims against the operator. The neighbors filed a suit under state nuisance, trespass, and negligence law, claiming air pollution from the plant interfered with the use...
Waterkeeper Alliance v. EPA
The D.C. Circuit vacated an EPA final rule that exempted farms from reporting requirements for air releases from animal waste. In 2008 the EPA issued a final rule that generally exempts farms from CERCLA and EPCRA reporting requirements for air releases from animal waste, reasoning that the reports ...