Providing legal and advocacy support

We provide community-led movements with legal and advocacy resources to help challenge polluters and ensure access to environmental benefits – no matter how long the fight.

Working together

We act collectively with our community partners to transform social and political structures that stand in the way of equal access to a healthy environment.

Challenging the status quo

We take on the status quo by fighting to close dangerous regulatory loopholes; open access to information and records; increase transparency in environmental decision-making and polluting operations; and enforce federal, state, and local laws meant to protect communities from environmental harms.

Highlights of our work include:

• We’ve been working with the Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC) in Newark, New Jersey, to stop dangerous pollution from a municipal waste incinerator in the Ironbound neighborhood. The incinerator, owned by Covanta, is the state’s largest garbage incinerator and one of the largest single sources of air pollution in a community that is among the most polluted in the Northeast. With our legal support, ICC was able to force Covanta to develop new waste management practices, improve employee training, install monitoring cameras, conduct a health impact assessment, and pay a fine for violating the New Jersey Air Pollution Control Act. We’re now working with ICC to ensure Covanta follows through.
• We helped the Glendale, California, community stop a gas-fired power plant from being built — which would have locked the city into fossil fuel power for decades. Instead, city leadership is now exploring ways to deliver clean energy to Glendale.
• We supported the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation in Southern California in a fight against a gas-fired power plant that would have been built on the banks of the Santa Clara River, also known as the Utom, which is sacred to Chumash peoples. With our legal support, the Wishtoyo forced the power company, Calpine, to withdraw its application for the Mission Rock plant.
• We produced a report that details how Quemetco — the last remaining secondary lead smelter in California — has exploited a failed regulatory structure to poison the air, soil, water, and surrounding communities. We are working with community members opposed to Quemetco’s proposal to increase its operations, to instead demand a transition away from the use of lead-acid batteries and secondary lead smelters, toward a cleaner future with alternative technologies. 
• We’re working with communities in California’s Central Valley to challenge the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District’s decision to grant a number of unlawful loopholes that exempt the region’s four petroleum refineries — concentrated in the Bakersfield area — from requirements to monitor their toxic emissions. The region suffers from the worst air quality in the nation.
• We helped the West Long Beach, California, community hold Phillips 66 accountable for toxic gas leaks at its Carson and Wilmington refineries, after the local air quality management district failed to do so. The communities around the two refineries are among the most pollution-burdened in Southern California.