|
Environmental Law Program takes on Cheney while expanding its scope and
capacity
by Li Miao
 |
| Sanjay Narayan
|
On July 10, the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program (ELP)
successfully thwarted Vice President Dick Cheney's effort to keep the
public in the dark about the energy industry's influence on the Bush
administration's 2001 Energy Plan.
After a lower court ruled that the White House must produce records
detailing its meetings with energy executives and lobbyists, Cheney
appealed the matter to the D.C. Circuit Court. He lost. According to
Sierra Club attorney Sanjay Narayan, the decision demonstrates that the
administration is "not above the law."
Though the Club must still fight this case in the U.S. District Court,
and contend with the possible assertion of "executive privilege" by the
Cheney team, it marks a satisfying success for the expanding law
program.
Now able to draw on a staff of ten attorneys, the law program is shining
an unwelcome spotlight on administration maneuvers to gut air and water
protections, leave communities at risk from toxic waste sites and other
pollution, allow massive industrial-scale feedlots to pollute the water
and air, open our most treasured wild places to logging and mining, and
allow global warming to continue unchecked. The law program is also
litigating to challenge sprawl and uphold environmental justice.
Despite the law program's expansion, there are many potential lawsuits
and not enough lawyers, so the Club tries to bring similar suits in
mutiple states. For example, the Club has filed more than a dozen
lawsuits challenging industrial-scale feedlots in Michigan, Wisconsin,
Kentucky, Oklahoma, Iowa, and California. These multi-state campaigns
necessarily involve substantial collaboration with local activists,
national campaign leaders, and other organizations. "Instead of knights
on white horses riding in at the end of the day, we work at the front
end with communities to lend legal capability to their campaigns," says
Pat Gallagher, director of the Environmental Law Program. "We think of
ourselves as Ôlawyer-organizers' who look beyond the courthouse doors at
how our suits can help communities and provide strategic, on-the-ground
environmental protection."
The law program's expansion has allowed the Club to provide legal
support and collaboration on key regional issues, like challenging
Pacific Lumber's plan to log the forests surrounding California's
Headwaters Forest. According to Deputy Legal Director Alex Levinson,
"For the first time, we have the capacity to assist strategically with
lawsuits handled by outside counsel but which involve critical
priorities for the Club."
Other regional actions include a suit to stop an Illinois ethanol
factory from polluting the Illinois River, a suit in Idaho to stop
logging in roadless areas of the Lolo National Forest, and a challenge
to a development in New Jersey that would discharge large quantities of
warm water into the Pequannock River.
The suit that Club lawyers have filed against Cheney seeks to compel full disclosure from the White House about what
happened behind closed doors when a parade of energy CEOs from Enron and
other extractive industries helped craft the administration's energy
policy. The Cheney task force released its plan in May 2001, calling for
a host of dig-and-drill actions favorable to the fossil fuel industry.
Last October, District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the White
House to disclose "unprivileged" documents to the Sierra Club. Rather
than comply, the administration made an emergency appeal to the D.C.
Court of Appeals, where one of the judges initially remarked to the
Cheney team, "You have no case." The judge also stated that the
administration was ignoring the law by asking the appeals court for
intervention.
Narayan clarifies the issue of access to the documents. "If Vice
President Cheney wants to invite Ken Lay and every other energy CEO in
America into his office to write the national energy policy, the law
allows him to do so, but only if he does so in the light of day. That
way the rest of us who are uninvited aren't left out of our democracy."
The administration may yet try to hide behind "executive privilege" or
slip through another legal loophole. Narayan says that executive
privilege is an ill-defined concept that does not appear in the
Constitution and is generally considered to apply only under narrow
circumstances, such as cases concerning national security. Hiding behind
it, he says, could backfire by causing a public outcry.
In the Headwaters case, the Sierra Club and its co-plaintiff, the
Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), ran into a Perry-
Mason-like surprise after filing suit. The Headwaters controversy was
ostensibly settled in 1999, when the federal and state governments paid
$480 million to purchase the 7,500-acre Headwaters forest and two
smaller groves. In return, the Pacific Lumber Company was required to
develop a plan for responsible logging on its remaining 211,000 acres.
But Pacific Lumber has been steadily logging for the past four
years – from 1999 through 2003 – without ever submitting the required
conservation plan. The logging was authorized under permits issued by
the state of California.
"The California Department of Forestry never enforced the law," says
Berkeley attorney Sharon Duggan, who has worked on the case for years on
behalf of the environmental groups. Club lawyers helped Duggan recently
by assisting with legal responses and research at a crucial point in the
case.
In May, Duggan took the Headwaters case to trial in Eureka, California,
where a state judge ruled against Pacific Lumber and the California
forestry agencies. "It's unfortunate that it took a lawsuit by EPIC and
the Sierra Club to protect these redwood forests," says Gallagher. "The
logging company once again demonstrated a pattern of caring more about
its bottom line than protecting the forests and wildlife and surrounding
communities, and the state cop on the beat was nowhere to be seen."
"This is very complicated litigation, and the law program lawyers
pitched in to help us when it was most needed," says local activist
Kathy Bailey, who until last year served for a decade as the forest
conservation chair for Sierra Club California. Bailey also notes,
"Almost every single person who got involved in protecting these forests
did so because something happened in our backyards that got our
attention."
"The public got the Headwaters," says Duggan, "but in exchange, a
private company received half a billion dollars and a license to log
old-growth redwoods."
Law program staff attorney Aaron Isherwood notes how harmful Pacific
Lumber's practices have been for local communities. "The company's
logging pace is unsustainable and in short time, once the trees are
gone, will undermine the local economy. Community businesses that rely
on tourism, fishing, and hiking strongly support protection of these
forests."
"We bring cases on behalf of the Sierra Club that protect communities at
risk of being left behind," says Pat Gallagher, "They are suffering from
environmental problems that typically have readily-available
solutions – and our suits highlight the refusal of the Bush
Administration, Congress, or a hostile state government to use these
solutions."
Up to Top
|
