The Chicago Environmental Law Clinic
A Collaboration between the Chicago Legal Clinic
and Chicago-Kent College of Law
Mission - The mission of the Chicago Environmental
Law Clinic is to enable people who are confronting urban environmental
problems to have equal access to environmental justice. The Clinic offers
environmental law students the opportunity to learn by serving people
who, but for the Clinic, would be unrepresented in environmental matters
that directly affect the health, safety and welfare of their families
and communities. The Clinic does not impose an environmental agenda or
ideology on its clients, but rather provides legal education, advocacy
and volunteer services in response to community-directed concerns.
Services - In order to accomplish its mission,
the Chicago Environmental Law Clinic provides:
1. legal education and advocacy services to people confronting urban environmental
problems in the Chicago area; 2. the highest quality educational experience
to environmental law students through actual service to people in need;
3. a professionally rewarding opportunity for environmental attorneys
and professionals to do “pro bono publico”; and, 4. the means
for recurrent policy issues in urban environmental cases to be articulated
and advanced.
History - The Chicago Environmental Law Clinic
is a collaboration between the Chicago Legal Clinic, Inc. and Chicago-Kent
College of Law. The Chicago Legal Clinic has provided legal education,
advocacy and volunteer services in Chicago since 1981 and, in 1989, initiated
one of the first full-time environmental poverty law programs in the nation.
Chicago-Kent College of Law maintains the highest ranking Environmental
& Energy Law Program in the Midwest. More than 300 attorneys have
received certificates from the Environmental & Energy Law Program
since its inception 15 years ago. The Chicago Environmental Law Clinic
is the result of a May, 1999 agreement between the Chicago Legal Clinic
and Chicago-Kent to form a Clinic to begin operating in Fall, 1999. The
creation of the Chicago Environmental Law Clinic enables the Chicago Legal
Clinic to increase its environmental legal services to clients exponentially,
while providing up to eight students in Chicago-Kent’s Environmental
& Energy Law Program with a clinical service learning experience each
semester. The Clinic also enables environmental professionals to volunteer
their services in public interest environmental cases, and offers new
opportunities to explore the policy implications found in environmental
cases that arise in urban settings. The Chicago Environmental Law Clinic
is also formally supported by Northwestern University’s School of
Engineering and NWU’s Law School, both of which provide students
and faculty to work on cases originating from the Chicago Environmental
Law Clinic.
Administration - The Chicago Environmental Law
Clinic is directed by Keith Harley. Keith initiated the Chicago Legal
Clinic’s environmental law practice in 1989, shortly after graduating
from Chicago-Kent. Keith has represented clients in local, state and federal
environmental actions for the past thirteen years. The Clinic is supported
by experienced environmental attorneys, many of whom are Chicago-Kent
graduates. These attorneys volunteer their services on specific cases
to ensure clients are receiving the highest quality legal services and
students are receiving the highest quality learning experiences. CELC
has formal agreements for “pro bono” services with Gardner,
Carton & Douglas, Jenner & Block and Winston & Strawn. Many
other law firms and attorneys accept cases on an “as available”
basis. John Watson, the head of the Environmental Law Section at Gardner,
Carton & Douglas, chairs an Advisory Committee for the Environmental
Law Clinic that includes the chief environmental attorneys for U.S. EPA-Region
5, R.R. Donnelley, Motorola as well as the Director of the Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency.
Location - The Chicago Environmental Law Clinic
is located in a 4000 sq. ft. office on the 4th Floor at 205 West Monroe.
This building is owned and operated by the Claretians, a Catholic service
organization with longstanding ties to the Chicago Legal Clinic. The Environmental
Law Clinic’s portion of the space is a former printing shop reconstructed
into an advanced law office that includes three large offices, two smaller
offices, multiple work stations and a large conference room. The Environmental
Law Clinic will be located in this office for at least five years beginning
in October, 1999. In order to support environmentally beneficial initiatives
and to provide opportunities for Chicago-Kent students, portions of the
office are sublet to Illinois Wind Energy, which is developing the first
utility scale wind farm in Illinois, and to the Healthy Schools Campaign,
a coalition of more than 70 organizations committed to providing environmentally
safe schools for Illinois children.
Clinical Component – Chicago-Kent students
participate in CELC for four, three or one credit(s) or as volunteers.
At the beginning of each semester, case profiles are distributed to students.
The cases are part of the Clinic’s ongoing environmental law practice.
Each student is assigned one case that will be his/her primary responsibility
throughout the semester. During the course of the semester, students may
also be asked to participate in short term activities on other cases.
Depending on the status of the case, student work can involve the full
range of legal activities, always under the direct supervision of a staff
attorney. It is common for students to conduct interviews, develop the
factual and legal bases for cases, to communicate findings and strategize
with clients, and to participate in administrative proceedings, negotiations,
litigation and community education initiatives. At the conclusion of the
semester, students turn in a notebook containing the work product they
developed and the primary sources they used to develop this product. This
work product is given to the client and becomes part of the Clinic’s
file of ongoing work on the case.
Classroom Component – Students receiving
three and four credits also participate in the classroom component of
CELC. This is optional for one credit and volunteer students. The classroom
component focuses on three things. First, the classroom sessions develop
skills needed by environmental practitioners, including interviewing,
fact finding, developing legal theories, communicating effectively with
clients, developing action strategies and executing these strategies through
litigation, administrative proceedings, negotiations, and/or education.
Second, the class meetings are a weekly opportunity for students to discuss
their projects. At the conclusion of the semester, each student is expected
to teach a class session based on the case he/she was assigned. Third,
the classroom component can include substantive lectures on environmental
laws, focusing on opportunities for public participation in the execution
of these laws.
Funding/Budget - Initial funding for the Chicago
Environmental Law Clinic is being provided from fees from Chicago Legal
Clinic toxic tort cases, grants, contracts for services and individuals.
Funds provided to support the Chicago Environmental Law Clinic’s
activities are matched by funds which are available through Chicago-Kent’s
Galvin-Pritzger Challenge Grant. Funds generated for the Chicago Environmental
Law Clinic are placed in a restricted fund available only for the purposes
of the Environmental Law Clinic. These funds are available through a monthly
invoice that details the expenses of the Chicago Environmental Law Clinic,
including staff salary and benefits, rent and operating costs.
Case Examples - These are ten examples of Chicago
Environmental Law Clinic cases. The Clinic receives between 50 and 125
requests for environmental legal services each year.
Lockport Public Water Supply – For years, the 15,000 residents
of Lockport, Illinois received notices with their water bills that their
drinking water did not comply with standards originating in the federal
Safe Drinking Water Act. On behalf of a local community group, CELC staff
and students assembled a comprehensive factual and legal record of the
nature and extent of the non-compliance, initiated a citizen enforcement
action and negotiated with local officials and state regulators. Within
months, local officials agreed to change the public water supply source
in order to eliminate violations that had existed since the mid-1970’s.
Clean Air Act, Title V Program – The Clinic represents a
Midwest advocacy group in an action under the Clean Air Act against the
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to address IEPA’s failure
to review hundreds of permit applications according to strict deadlines
for action. Following several months of factual and legal research, the
Clinic initiated a citizen enforcement action against IEPA. Following
a short negotiation period, an action was filed in federal district court
seeking a court-ordered, enforceable schedule for the issuance of these
backlogged permits.
Contaminated School Sites, Rulemaking – The Clinic represented
an advocacy group seeking to prevent former industrial sites from being
used for new school construction until the sites have completed state-supervised
cleanup efforts. In order to accomplish this goal, the Clinic initiated
and conducted a rulemaking before the Illinois Pollution Control Board
that culminated in new statewide regulations mandating enhanced public
participation and prohibiting school construction on unremediated sites.
At the conclusion of the successful rulemaking, the Clinic produced a
guide for other citizen groups to initiate rulemakings before the IPCB.
Soil Contamination In Public Housing – The Clinic represents
a class of Chicago Housing Authority residents whose public housing community
was constructed on a former gas storage and distribution facility, resulting
in highly contaminated soil. In the initial phases of representation,
the Clinic negotiated for immediate action to be taken to address a bare
soil playground area with particularly high levels of some contaminants.
After this area was remediated, the Local Advisory Council of residents
requested representation to seek damages against their landlord and the
private company, giving rise to a case now pending in the Circuit Court
of Cook County.
Wind Farm Siting Standards – The Clinic convened a statewide,
multi-stakeholder task force to develop uniform local siting standards
for utility scale wind farms. Illinois’ ability to achieve the benefits
of this clean renewable energy source is being delayed because local officials
and members of the public do not have local siting standards addressing
the unique aspects of wind farms, including turbine noise, tower setbacks,
shadow flickers, ice throws, avian impacts, tower construction and site
decommissioning. In response, the task force is developing uniform local
siting standards to be distributed to the full range of local officials,
to enable them to review wind farm proposals in a knowledgeable, more
consistent manner.
Chicago Cumulative Risk Initiative - CLC represents eleven community
organizations. CLC filed a Petition pursuant to a rarely used section
of the Toxic Substance Control Act asking U.S. EPA to evaluate the cumulative
effects of multiple toxins from multiple sources on children living in
Cook County, Illinois and Lake County, Indiana. The negotiated resolution
of this Petition gave rise to the Chicago Cumulative Risk Initiative,
a first-of-its-kind effort by U.S. EPA to evaluate the cumulative environmental
risks to children being raised in a complex urban setting, including the
development of unique tools to characterize cumulative environmental loading
and to screen communities for environmental hazards. These tools, in turn,
form the basis for highly sophisticated risk targeting and intervention
strategies.
Title VI - CLC filed the first two Complaints from Illinois with
U.S. EPA’s Office of Civil Rights under Title VI of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964. Both Complaints focus on the performance of the Illinois
Environmental Protection Agency, which is federally funded to implement
a variety of federal environmental protection programs. The first Complaint
was resolved when IEPA voluntarily terminated the contested permit. The
second Complaint, filed on behalf of a group opposed to IEPA’s decision
to issue an operating permit to the Robbins incinerator, became one of
very few Complaints ever accepted by U.S. EPA for investigation, and the
first to focus on the IEPA.
Calumet Site Cluster - CLC represents an ecological group that
is seeking to covert a 230-acre cluster of former waste disposal sites
in Southeast Chicago into an ecological park. To this end, for three years,
CLC facilitated a process by which the remediation and ecological reclamation
of the cluster is accomplished through cooperative action among development
organizations, businesses, academic institutions, community groups and
government agencies. The Illinois EPA recently committed 15 million dollars
to accomplish this effort. A portion of the cluster will be devoted to
creating the largest solar energy field in the nation.
Calumet River Sediment Remediation – CLC represents groups
and individuals from Southeast Chicago who have filed a Petition pursuant
to 9605(d) of CERCLA, the federal Superfund law. This Petition imposes
a non-discretionary duty on U.S. EPA to complete a comprehensive analysis
of the threats to human health and the environment posed by contaminated
sediments found in two sets of slips adjacent to former steel making sites
on the Calumet River. This Petition is the culmination of technical work
completed by Northwestern University’s School of Engineering and
legal work largely performed by Chicago-Kent students.
Illinois Environmental Regulatory Review Commission – The
Director of the Chicago Environmental Law Clinic has been appointed by
the Governor to IERRC, a multi-stakeholder initiative to make the Illinois
Environmental Protection Act more effective at achieving its purposes,
and more understandable to members of the public, regulators and the regulated
community. The Director also served as Co-Coordinator of IERRC. Chicago-Kent
students, volunteer attorneys and other CELC participants have worked
on each phase of IERRC.
Keith Harley
Chicago Environmental Law Clinic
205 W. Monroe, 4th Floor
Chicago, IL 60606
(312) 726-2938
(312) 726-5206 (fax)
kharley@kentlaw.edu
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