BREAKING NEWS!

LEAF Wins 7th Circuit Appeal in RCRA Citizen Suit Case: Appeals Court Agrees Citizen Suits Are Necessary Because Government Often Does Not Protect People From Polluters!
Most people are not aware that Congress has enacted powerful laws that allow citizens to protect themselves when their communities are impacted by environmental contamination. These "citizen suit" laws allow impacted residents to sue the polluter to stop illegal activities and force a clean up. Citizen suit claims are available not just when the polluter is refusing to comply with environmental mandates but also when the polluter is working with EPA or IDEM to "study" or "address" the problem. 

Even with agency involvement, the polluter's aim is to do as little testing and clean up work as they can get away with, spend the smallest amount of money they have to, and drag things out as long as possible. By bringing a citizen suit, the community can assert its residents' views on how and when their property is to be made safe again. And, the decision-maker is an impartial judge who will have heard the views of the families' lawyers and experts about what needs to be done, not the polluter deciding how and when to spend its own money under the less than watchful eye of state or federal regulators.

Because citizen suits threaten the polluter's control over the scope, cost and timing of clean up, polluters hate these claims and go to great lengths to try and fight them off. One of their pet arguments, raised repeatedly as a defense in these cases, is that the court should "abstain" (a fancy legal term for throwing the families out of court) and allow the polluter to address the problem to the satisfaction of IDEM or EPA.

LEAF recently convinced a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court that had decided to "abstain" from hearing a RCRA citizen suit. The decision is great news for communities and drives a stake through the heart of polluters' beloved "abstention" defense. In LEAF's case, brought on behalf of residents who live near a waste dump in Elkhart, Indiana, the operator of the dump argued that the residents' suit should be tossed aside so that IDEM could dictate what action should be taken. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and held for the community. In a lengthy opinion, the court held that there is a strong policy in favor of citizens' suits, and that courts should therefore defer to environmental agencies only in the very narrow circumstances specified in the citizen suit statutes.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the opinion is the court's candid, yet sobering, statement that citizen suits are necessary because government often does not effectively protect people from polluters:

"[C]ongress enacted the citizen suit provisions of RCRA and other environmental laws because the world is not ideal, because government agencies face many demands on their resources, because administrations and policy priorities change, and because regulatory agencies are subject to the phenomenon of 'agency capture.'"

That agency capture, a fundamental breakdown in how government is supposed to work, exists with our environmental regulatory agencies is no surprise to Indiana's environmental advocacy groups, including LEAF. We see it all the time. LEAF's appellate win, fortunately, makes it much more likely that citizen suit claims will be heard and decided on their merits.
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WHY SHOULD YOU SUPPORT LEAF?

Teams of lawyers represent industy interests in gutting environmental regulations and thwarting enforcement of environmental laws. Unfortunately, hiring even one lawyer can be prohibitively expensive for most Indiana residents who want to address the causes of pollution in their communities. The result is a power imbalance where the environment and our health lose.

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