Nine residents of Rochelle, GA are suing their city government for discharging the city's raw sewage onto their properties.

Alisa Coe and Bradley Marshall—attorneys in our Florida office—took off on a two-hour drive last month and ended up 60 years away in the rural Georgia town of Rochelle, where black people live on one side of a railroad track and whites on the other.

You’ve heard of this place if you pay attention to news; last weekend the national media was reporting on the local high school’s first interracial prom … ever.

But even as the media focused on the prom, Alisa and Bradley faced up to the town’s mayor and chief of police, who bullied the two attorneys as they investigated claims that the city’s sewer system routinely dumps raw sewage into the streets and yards of the black community (but not the white community). The mayor used his car to block the attorneys’ car when they drove into a black neighborhood, and then screamed and threatened them with arrest. The chief of police pulled up with his lights flashing and told the duo to call him before coming back to Rochelle.

Those fellas obviously didn’t know who they were messing with.

Earth Day is observed on April 22 each year to raise awareness of environmental issues.

Perhaps you’ve already read the good news by our crackerjack Alaska attorney Holly Harris, who reported that ConocoPhillips is the latest Big Oil company to postpone drilling in the oft-treacherous waters of the Arctic Ocean. Shell previously announced it was abandoning plans to drill there this year.

NOAA satellite photo of Sandy

Today, in an editorial, the Los Angeles Times took on a question that many of us have been pondering – did climate change cause super-storm Sandy? The newspaper didn’t try to answer the question, but instead made a strong case for how global warming made Sandy more intense:

In part, it's because Sandy involved a highly unusual confluence of weather events, some of which may have resulted from a widely documented rise in global ocean and surface temperatures…But more important than the exact causes of Sandy's fury is the fact that it was so predictable.

The newspaper observed how climate scientists have long warned about the side-effects of climate change – the increase in extreme weather events like Sandy, and rising sea levels that would allow storms to sweep into low-lying places such as Manahattan and erode coastal areas like the Jersey shoreline.

Russel Train -- Photo Courtesy The Heinz Awards

It’s not the passing of Russell Train – who died Monday at 92 – that we remember, but the life he led as a powerful, humble, principled warrior for the Earth.

Mr. Train was chairman of the newly created White House Council on Environmental Quality before President Nixon picked him to be the second head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a role that fully launched his career as a conservationist, recalls Joan Mulhern, a colleague of mine who worked with this remarkable man to protect the Clean Water Act.

A lifelong Republican, Mr. Train embodied what it meant to be a conservative conservationist, Joan said.

The world's largest prize for environmental action has been awarded to Caroline Cannon, an Inupiat leader and former president of the Native Village of Point Hope in Alaska. Cannon is the North American recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, a major prize awarded annually to grassroots environmental heroes from the six inhabited continents.

Erik Grafe, an Earthjustice attorney in Alaska who has worked with the honoree, said she was richly deserving of the award.

"Caroline is a fearless and inspirational advocate for the protection of the Arctic Ocean and a way of life dependent on a healthy ocean ecosystem," he said. "Over the past several years, Caroline's leadership has raised awareness of the dangers posed by proposed oil and gas activities to the vibrant indigenous subsistence culture of northern Alaska that has depended for millennia on hunting and fishing in the Arctic Ocean. Earthjustice has been honored to work with the Native Village of Point Hope and Caroline in the effort to protect the Arctic Ocean, its wildlife, and its people. We congratulate her on her well-deserved recognition."

The House has passed legislation that would prevent the EPA from strongly regulating coal ash.

Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen is strongly denouncing a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives today, passing H.R. 2273, which would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from strongly regulating coal ash:

"Nearly three years after the tragic spill of more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash in Kingston, Tennessee, it’s obvious that federally enforceable safeguards for the disposal of this toxic waste are long overdue. In fact, 267 members of the House of Representatives have taken the disturbing step of moving us even further away from this important public safety goal.

Red tide victims in Florida

<The Earthjustice office in Florida just released this statement on a major fish kill off the state's coastline>

It’s ironic that, on the very day the Florida Chamber announces it wants to fight limits on sewage, fertilizer and manure pollution, there’s a massive fish kill off Sarasota, Sanibel Island and Charlotte County caused by red tide—red tide that’s fueled by sewage, manure, and fertilizer pollution.

"The Florida Chamber is playing politics with our public health, and that’s really sad,” said Earthjustice attorney Monica Reimer.” The Chamber is ignoring the horrible reality in the water today. We’ve got hundreds of dead fish going belly up in a prime tourist area, off Sanibel Island. The Florida Chamber ought to be looking after all the tourism business affected by toxic algae outbreaks and fish kills like this one. Instead, they are once again doing the bidding of corporate polluters who use our public waters as their free, private sewers."

Dead Mojarra/Sand Bream and Jack, west of Franklin Lock, on the Caloosahatchee River. Photo taken on June 13, 2011. (Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation)

The U.S. House of Representatives was a in a cruel mood, yesterday, when it passed H.R. 2018, a bill that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from protecting our nation's waterways and drinking supplies—and give that power to the states.

But, don't take my word for why this legislation is so potentially devastating. Just check out these recent pictures of the toxic green algae epidemic in Florida's waterways. The slime—caused by unregulated nutrient runoff from agricultural operations and other sources—is choking the life out of such major rivers as the St. Johns and Caloosahatchee. You can't swim in them, drink from them, or eat fish from them. And, if H.R. 2018 becomes law, you can bet that state legislators will try to keep them that way.

You decide. Check out this picture of Florida's waterways—choked with algae—and choose which of the following quotes best describes the photo. Both speakers were referring to attempts in the state legislature to keep the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating the amount of nutrients flowing from utilities, industry and large-scale farms into Florida's waterways. The nutrients feed an explosion of algae.

The first quote is from Associated Industries of Florida CEO and President Barney Bishop, speaking at a business symposium:

Ladies and gentleman, we have clean water in Florida... Don't let any environmentalist tell you otherwise. It is clean, it smells good, it looks good.

The next quote is from David Guest, managing attorney of the Florida office for Earthjustice, which Bishop hyperbolically described as being communist-inspired:

These toxic algae outbreaks are a threat to little kids splashing in the shallows, to family pets and to the elderly... We need to clean up this pollution as soon as we can, and that’s what these EPA limits on sewage, manure and fertilizer pollution are all about.

I’ve spent half my life chasing salmon with rod in hand and heart in mouth, but it seems that I am the one who’s been hooked. Enchanted, perhaps, is a better way of describing my love of all things salmon; thus, at 8 p.m. this Sunday, you’ll find me riveted in front of a TV watching the PBS special, Salmon: Running The Gauntlet.

From everything I’ve read and seen, this is one powerful documentary about the Columbia and Snake rivers salmon, and the heroic efforts of those who seek to save them. Shot and written from the point of view of the salmon, it takes you through the life cycle of a fish that faces hostility at every twist and turn of its existence. How any survive is part miracle, and part dedication by the kind of people who surround me here at Earthjustice.