The Environmental Advocacy Clinic

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Overview

As one of the nation’s top-ranked environmental law schools, Vermont Law and Graduate School offers students the chance to apply what they learn in the classroom by working in one of the best environmental law clinics in the country: the Environmental Advocacy Clinic.

The Environmental Advocacy Clinic is an in-house clinic that operates as a public interest law office, teaching students how to be lawyers by representing clients in need. Clinical experience helps students become well-rounded, skilled professionals who can develop arguments and claims from the ground up, explore strategies and options, as well as communicate effectively with clients, courts, agency officials, scientific experts, and opposing parties.

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Our Mission

• To provide a high-quality, skills-based educational experience for law students who learn how to become competent, ethical attorneys with expertise in the field of environmental and natural resources law.
• To provide pro bono representation for individuals and organizations who could not otherwise afford legal services.
• To ensure that laws protecting health, wildlife, and the environment are properly interpreted, implemented, and enforced to protect people and places for the benefit of this and future generations.

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Highlights

In the Clinic, students serve lead attorneys, supervised by experienced lawyers, representing clients – including leading national conservation organizations, and local community groups to promote access to justice on important environmental and natural resources issues. We’ve created positive outcomes for clients in a variety of areas including:

Protecting New England’s Mature Forests
VLGS students are advocating for the protection of mature forests critical to the region’s climate resilience and biodiversity, representing our client Standing Trees, a grassroots membership organization that works to protect and restore New England’s forests for the benefit of the climate, clean water, and biodiversity, with a focus on state and federal public lands in New Hampshire and Vermont.

Students are now challenging several U.S. Forest Service proposed logging projects in the White Mountain National Forest that seek to log mature forests with outstanding natural resource value and have filed formal objections to these projects. Students are also using the Freedom of Information Act and state public records laws to obtain important agency documents about these projects and other forest and wildlife protection issues. The students’ advocacy seeks to ensure that the Forest Service uses the best available science in considering logging projects and fully complies with relevant federal environmental protection laws and guidance –  including the National Forest Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

Protecting Communities from Pollution
A team of students filed comments with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) calling for a comprehensive analysis of flooding and natural resource impacts on the relicensing of the Pensacola Dam in northeastern Oklahoma. The dam exacerbates flooding upstream, especially along the highly contaminated Tar Creek.

One of the first superfund sites in the country, Tar Creek is laden with toxic pollution from long-abandoned lead and zinc mining operations in the area. Students are continuing to work to ensure that during the relicensing process, FERC takes responsibility for comprehensively analyzing upstream flooding exacerbated by the dam, climate change impacts on the dam’s operations, impacts of toxic pollution, and compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

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Environmental Advocacy Clinic Cases

The Environmental Advocacy Clinic works on a range of state, regional, and national environmental issues concentrated in four program areas: Water, Climate, Wildlife, and Healthy Communities.

Water

The Environmental Advocacy Clinic works to protect and restore surface waters, groundwater, and aquatic ecosystems. We’ve filed citizen suits, challenged agency actions, counseled neighborhood groups, and advocated for regulatory and policy changes in multiple venues. A few examples:

Protecting Alaska’s Most Treasured Salmon Fishery

Suing the Environmental Protection Agency’s action to clear the way for a massive copper mine to be in permitted in the heart of the Bristol Bay watershed, one of the world’s most productive fisheries.

Cleaning Up Polluted Mountain Streams

Appealing a permit issued by Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources that would have allowed Jay Peak Resort to continue discharging sediment into impaired mountain streams.

Protecting Vermont’s Water Quality through Systemic Reform


Petitioning the United States Environmental Protection Agency to either assume control of Vermont’s Clean Water Act program, or to require Vermont to properly administer the Act.

Climate

The Clinic’s Climate projects offer student clinicians the chance to work on cutting-edge issues relating to global climate change and energy using a variety of legal tools and strategies. Much of the Clinic’s climate work involves the coal and oil industries because of their overwhelming contribution to the climate crisis and harmful impacts on human health and the environment. A few examples:

Protecting Montana Citizens and Ranchers from New Coal Mining Activities

Working with the Northern Plains Resource Council to prevent harmful coal development in Montana’s Powder River Basin.

Protecting Jobos Bay and Puerto Rico’s Clean Energy Future

Challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision to approve an offshore liquefied natural gas port and pipeline without the proper environmental impact and endangered species review.

Wildlife

Since its inception, the Clinic has been devoted to protecting wildlife, endangered species, biodiversity, healthy ecosystems, and wild places for their own sake and for the benefit of current and future generations. These irreplaceable resources face a wide array of human-induced threats, including climate change, industrial activities, and government programs that encourage rapid development without adequate attention to environmental consequences. A few examples of the Clinic’s work:

Halting the Unlawful Roundup of Wild Horses

Securing a legal victory on behalf of Wild Horse Fire Brigade to halt the Bureau of Land Management’s roundup of wild horses from private lands in and around the Pokegama Wild Horse Management Area.

Protecting Canada Lynx from Trapping

Suing the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for issuing an Incidental Take Permit that allows trappers in the state of Maine to harm the threatened lynx species.

Protecting Puerto Rico’s Rich Ecosystems from Proposed Via Verde Pipeline

Fighting to protect over 300 acres of wetlands, numerous streams and surface waters, protected natural reserves, unique limestone karst formations, ancient archaeological sites, and more than 40 federally listed endangered species.

Protecting the Gray Wolf in the Northeast

Requiring the United States to maintain Endangered Species Act protections for the gray wolf.

Saving Passamaquoddy Bay

Challenging the federal government’s failure to properly consider the cultural, spiritual, and environmental impacts of a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal on the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s Pleasant Point Reservation.

Healthy Communities

A key component of the Healthy Communities program is to help communities in northern New England address contaminated sites and polluting facilities in their neighborhoods, often in partnership with the New England-based advocacy group Toxics Action Center. This program also includes broader advocacy work directed toward advancing healthy, sustainable policies for the planet. Some examples include:

Advancing Environmental Justice

Partnering with Earth justice and the Ironbound Community to combat pollution disproportionately impacting communities in Newark, New Jersey.

Protecting Virgin Islands Communities from Hazardous Incinerator Emissions

Protecting the health of U.S. Virgin Islands residents by preventing FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers’ from burning more than 600,000 cubic yards of debris—roughly 200 Olympic swimming pools—following Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Requiring Labels for Genetically Engineered Foods

Providing legal support to advance Vermont’s trailblazing labeling law for genetically engineered foods, and helping to defend the law in court.

Defending Local Communities’ Ability to Protect their Natural Resources

Advising groups how to protect communities from local impacts of large, interstate, and international energy projects.

Opposing Smokestack Industry Next to Residential Community

Representing residents of Graniteville, Vermont, to protect them from air pollution, dangerous traffic, and other threats posed by a new asphalt plant and rock crusher.

Helping Neighbors of Factory Farms

Providing tools to help people who live near factory farms challenge their property tax assessments.

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Amicus Briefs

Standing Trees Peabody West Objection

​​​​​​In June 2023, Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Environmental Advocacy Clinic, on behalf of forest protection group Standing Trees, submitted an objection with the U.S. Forest Service, seeking reconsideration of the flawed Peabody West Integrated Resource Project (Project) proposed for the White Mountain National Forest, near Gorham, New Hampshire. The Project would authorize more than 2,200-acres of commercial logging just north of the Great Gulf Wilderness and Mount Washington, in close proximity to the Appalachian Trail.

Read the Amicus Brief

Conowingo Dam Appeal

​​​​​​In February 2022, the EAC filed an amicus brief in the case representing the National Wildlife Federation. The Federal Energy Commission reissued a permit for the Conowingo Hydroelectric Dam that failed to include water quality criteria imposed by the Maryland Department of Environment. The shoddy permit would lead to increased water pollution that would harm aquatic life in the Chesapeake Bay. Our brief supported the appelants, urging the court to set aside the license issued by FERC.

Read the Amicus Brief Here

Appalachicola River Appeal

In January 2021, the EAC filed an amicus brief in the case representing underserved communities throughout the Apalachicola region that have been negatively impacted by the Corps’ water management practices. The Corps’ failure to adequately consider these impacts is a violation of NEPA and the 1994 Executive Order addressing the impact of federal actions on environmental justice communities (EO 12898).

Read the Amicus Brief Here

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Who We Are

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Environmental Advocacy Clinic News and Events

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Event

The Forest for the Trees: Short-circuiting Environmental Review for National Forest Cuts

June 8th

Featuring Jim Murphy and Mason Overstreet, Environmental Advocacy Clinic, Vermont Law School Each lecture is worth one VBA CLE credit. Lecture…

Read More

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Contact Us

If you have questions about the Environmental Advocacy Clinic at Vermont Law School, you are welcome to contact us. Please note that the Clinic does not typically take cases on behalf of individuals, particularly in situations involving complaints against neighbors. We select cases and projects based upon our capacity, and the degree to which they advance the public interest in environmental protection. The Clinic does not represent commercial interests.

Contact

Christophe Courchesne, Director
Phone: 802.831.1630

Taylor Cox, Program Coordinator
802.831.1630
Email: [email protected]

Mailing Address

Environmental Advocacy Clinic
Vermont Law School
PO Box 96
South Royalton, VT 05068