Great Lakes Law

Equal Justice Works Fellow Erin Mette joins the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center to focus on children’s health in Detroit and Flint

Equal Justice Works has awarded recent Wayne Law graduate (and former GLELC student fellow) Erin Mette a two-year fellowship to work with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center on urban children’s health. Erin’s project will focus on protecting children in Detroit and Flint from home-based environmental health hazards. As a staff attorney with GLELC, Erin will provide legal counseling and representation to affected families and work for policies that address the root causes of this... Read more →

Environmental Justice in Practice - national conference at Wayne Law

Wayne Law is hosting a national conference on environmental justice Friday January 26, 2018. Environmental Justice in Practice features a superb line-up of advocates, attorneys, community leaders, organizers, and policy-makers. Panels will cover energy and climate justice, water access and affordability, urban air quality, and careers in environmental justice. The conference is co-sponsored by Wayne Law's Transnational Environmental Law Clinic and Environmental Law Society, CURES at Wayne State, the University of Chicago Law School's Abrams... Read more →

Detroit Enacts New Ordinance to Protect Residents From Dust Pollution

Guest post by Great Lakes Environmental Law Center staff attorney Nick Leonard. On a summer day in July of 2013, a dangerous dark cloud of dust blew along the Detroit River between Windsor, Canada and Detroit. Video captured by an individual showed several people standing along the riverfront transfixed by the dust cloud as it completely obscured their view of the Ambassador Bridge, a normally omnipresent visual landmark for Detroit and Windsor residents alike. The... Read more →

Great Lakes Environmental Law Center adds two new attorneys

I am very excited to share news that two superb attorneys have joined us at the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center. Oday Salim, most recently Senior Attorney at Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services, brings the same title to GLELC. Oday was previously a Staff Attorney at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law’s Environmental Law Clinic. Oday is a Wayne Law graduate and was one of my best students. After earning his J.D., he continued... Read more →

The Flint Water Crisis, KWA and Strategic-Structural Racism – Guest post by Professor Peter Hammer

The following guest post is by my colleague Professor Peter Hammer, Director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne Law. In his testimony before the Michigan Civil Rights Commission last week, Professor Hammer offers an explanation of the causes and methods behind the Flint water crisis that goes far deeper than the standard account. (The Flint Water Crisis, KWA and Strategic-Structural Racism is also available on SSRN.) He explains why and... Read more →

Petcoke on the Detroit River – a tar sands byproduct threatens local public health and Great Lakes water

In the early spring of 2012, a black pile three stories high and as large as many of the surrounding buildings appeared along the shores of the Detroit River. This pile was made up of petroleum coke, or “petcoke,” a byproduct created by the process of transforming heavy tar sands oil into useable fuel. While petcoke is not traditionally burned in the United States, competitive markets exist for petcoke in the developing world. This pile’s... Read more →

Students working in Wayne Law’s Transnational Environmental Law Clinic challenging massive highway expansion in midtown Detroit

The following student post is by Patrick Tully (B.A., University of Massachusetts; J.D., Wayne State University Law School, expected 2014). While in law school, Patrick received a Wayne Law public interest fellowship to work with Massachusetts Department of Conservation, Office of the General Counsel. He also interned at the Michigan Court of Appeals and worked a large Michigan law firm, where he will be returning to practice this fall. Patrick was one of the Wayne... Read more →

Searching for solutions to environmental injustice

Low income and minority communities across the country from Detroit to Los Angeles continue to struggle for environmental justice. The relatively strong pollution control laws and legal enforcement tools that work in most settings consistently fail to remedy the ongoing problem of toxic hot spots, dirty air, and polluted rivers that disproportionately afflict these neighborhoods. This week, a new Title VI Civil Rights administrative complaint was filed by the Center on Race, Poverty and the... Read more →

Water access and shut-offs in Detroit: a legal analysis – guest post by Matthew Clark

Water affordability and access is a complex and contentious issue, even in regions that enjoy a relative abundance of freshwater. Widespread poverty, state tax policy, and years of infrastructure underinvestment have made water shut-offs a pressing challenge in Detroit. This guest post by Matthew Clark summarizes the legal issues and offers some suggestions for policy reform. Matt will be graduating from Wayne Law this spring, and his experience includes clerking with a local law firm,... Read more →

Coyotes in Detroit – Guest Post by Bill Dodge

When I first heard about coyotes that roam Detroit, it sounded like an urban legend. But like many urban legends in Detroit, the tales of coyotes are very much real. To learn more, a friend connected me with Bill Dodge, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences at Wayne State University. Bill is studying the ecology of coyotes in urban areas of southeastern Michigan. The primary focus of his research is (1) to... Read more →

Putting the Civil Rights Act to Work for Environmental Justice

This guest post is by Chris Winter, Co-Executive Director & Staff Attorney of the Crag Law Center in Portland, Oregon. Chris and I went to law school together, and despite his Pittsburgh roots, he moved out west after graduation. After several years in private practice with Stoel Rives LLP, Chris founded the Crag Law Center to provide affordable legal assistance to groups working on environmental and natural resource issues. Chris had a huge victory this... Read more →

Genesee County’s proposed Lake Huron water withdrawal would drain public resources and undermine regional cooperation

The following guest post on Genesee County’s proposed Lake Huron water withdrawal is by Nick Schroeck. Nick wears several hats – attorney and regional representative at the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Regional Center, board member of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, and professor at Wayne State’s new Environmental Law Clinic. He is also a former Sea Grant Fellow with the Great Lakes Commission. Nick’s work focuses on water protection at the local, regional,... Read more →

Keep Burning Trash? A debate over the incinerator in Detroit

As the City of Detroit faces a looming decision about the future of its incinerator and waste management, the Detroit Free Press has published a series of debating op-eds on the greenhouse gas implications. My op-ed recommends that the city stop using the incinerator for many reasons, which now includes the potential regulatory cost of millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Not surprisingly, the op-ed by the private company that operates the incinerator (and... Read more →