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Fellow Profile
MICHELLE ALVAREZ
 Michelle Alvarez, ELP Fellow 2001-2003, is a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council's New York office where she litigates environmental justice cases and works on regional and national policy initiatives. Previously, Michelle represented low-income community organizations while working at Alternatives for Community & Environment, an environmental justice law and education center.
What environmental justice cases are you pursuing at NRDC and what are your goals for the litigation?
Late last year, NRDC began its stand in solidarity with South Camden Citizens in Action (SCCIA) in their nationally watched fight to prevent the opening of a cement plant in their New Jersey neighborhood. In line with a coalition of organizations including the Sierra Club, NAACP, ACLU, and Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, NRDC and Environmental Defense together participated as amici curae ("friends of the court") in SCCIA's lawsuit, which alleged that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, by issuing permits for the plant, discriminated against the predominantly Hispanic and African American neighborhood in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. NRDC and Environmental Defense argued that the 60 tons of dust emitted annually by the plant and the toxic diesel exhaust generated by 77,000 diesel truck trips each year would harm public health and the environment. Sadly, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently dealt a harsh blow to SCCIA's case by ruling that Title VI only permits claims of intentional discrimination by a regulatory agency (which is extremely difficult to prove), as opposed to claims of discriminatory impacts. Today, the cement plant has become yet another polluting neighbor in a long lineup of public health threats to South Camden residents, including two Superfund sites, a sewage treatment facility, and a power plant. We await SCCIA's next moves and are anxious to see how Title VI, which held so much promise as a tool for environmentally devastated communities to hold regulatory agencies accountable for their actions, fares in other similar cases.
Given the many loopholes in occupational safety laws and the systematic lack of enforcement by federal agencies, workers often have few avenues to address dangers caused by toxics on the job. My colleagues and I are working to test innovative litigation using traditional environmental laws, which we hope will create a new legal tool for workers combating toxic hazards in the workplace.
Lastly, I've been developing litigation against a city that has been conducting shoddy lead paint abatement work with millions of dollars in federal funding, thereby endangering hundreds of families. Lead poisoning is still the most common childhood environmental disease (asthma being another front runner), eclipsing all other hazards in the residential environment. The goals of the litigation include forcing the city to abate lead hazards properly and continuing to shine the spotlight on a pervasive environmental justice problem (lead paint poisoning disproportionately affects low-income families and African-Americans).
When is litigation the right strategy for dealing with environmental problems?
It's important to remember that environmental justice battles, at their very core, are struggles for political and economic power. This is evident in the common threads that run throughout environmental justice fights all across the country - battles for a voice in decision-making processes within government; for safe workplaces and livable wages; for healthy homes and schools, etc. While litigation can be useful, it is just one piece of the puzzle in the fight for environmental justice. For example, if a regulatory agency hasn't given a community the public participation opportunities that a particular environmental law requires, or if a corporation seeking to build a facility hasn't adequately considered the environmental impacts as required by law, then a lawsuit may be helpful in advancing a community's goals. Therefore, litigation should complement grassroots organizing efforts, the leveraging of political resources, the building of resident-driven coalitions and networks, the development of legal and technical expertise within the community, and the effective use of the media.
From your vantage point working at NRDC and ACE, what do you consider the most pressing challenges facing the environmental justice movement?
One of the most pressing challenges facing the environmental justice movement is a hostile administration, including the courts, that is rolling back civil rights (as we saw in the South Camden case) and environmental protections. Many of these decisions will directly and adversely affect low-income communities and communities of color. For example, we see this in the Department of Energy's short-sighted push to store all of our country's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain near the Western Shoshone tribe (a community that has already endured decades of nuclear testing); the administration's unwillingness to clean up dirty power plants; and the U.S. EPA's refusal to investigate several dozen civil rights complaints challenging the siting of noxious industries in environmentally devastated communities.
How did you come to the work you do?
My commitment to the social justice movement is longstanding. During my college days at New York University in the late 1980's, I was involved in AIDS activism, the pro-choice movement, and the fight to stop U.S. military intervention in Latin America. When I realized that it was time to take my protest to the next level, I decided to go to law school and took clinical courses in domestic violence advocacy and poverty law, and did internships with the Employment Law Center in San Francisco and the Center for Reproductive Law & Policy in Manhattan. Interestingly, I didn't take a single environmental law class and didn't even see myself as an environmentalist. After I graduated from law school in 1994, I spent a year doing reproductive rights litigation at the Center for Reproductive Law & Policy. When my fellowship ended, I thought I'd take some time off and move to San Francisco. As I was making concrete plans to head out west, I noticed a job posting for a staff attorney position with Alternatives for Community & Environment (ACE), an environmental justice law and education center in Boston. I interviewed for the position and received an offer, but then struggled for some time to understand how environmental justice work fit into my personal and professional "plans." Again, I had never seen myself as an environmentalist. In fact, at the time I was an avid jet-skier, snow-mobiler, and even drove an SUV! Then, one day it all fell into place in my heart and mind. All of my social justice work was aimed toward achieving my vision of a kinder, gentler and more just world - working to ensure women's access to health care and freedom from violence, working to end workplace discrimination, etc. I realized that fighting for safe and healthy places to live, work and play is just another piece of my vision of the way I want the world to be.
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Michelle Alvarez,
Jennifer Hill-Kelley,
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