GreenLaw

Clean Air

GreenLaw helped halt a coal-fired power plant that would have emitted 9 million tons of Carbon Dioxide - the same emissions as 1.5 million cars driving 12,000 miles each year.

Clean Water

GreenLaw prevented almost one ton of plastic from being dumped into the Oconee River each year by a newsprint recycling company in Dublin.

Environmental Justice

GreenLaw’s actions stopped a grain mill from emitting illegal and dangerous particles that covered a disadvantaged African-American community for decades.


GreenLaw in the News

Attachments
GreenLaw Newsletter Spring 2009 (PDF)

July 27, 2010 - A judge's ruling Monday in a Washington County power plant case will make it more difficult to pipe water from one Georgia water basin to another.
July 27, 2010 - Georgia’s environmental regulators failed to properly review a proposed power plant’s plan before giving it permission to take water from the Oconee River and use it in another river basin, according to a judge’s ruling announced Monday.
08/26/2009 - A prominent civil rights leader joined with a coalition of environmental groups in filing an appeal Wednesday seeking to block a $2 billion plan to build Georgia's first new coal-fired power plant in more than two decades.
03/13/2009 - A proposal to require state administrative law judges to defer to the Department of Natural Resources on permit appeals was defeated in the Senate on Thursday by one vote. Environmental groups had worried the measure could grease the skids for the approval of new coal-fired power plants.
3/12/2009 - SB 229 requires administrative law judges to defer to the DNR, which opponents say grants it immunity from judicial review.
03/10/2009
01/11/2009
1/05/2009
8/4/2008 - State chamber's amicus, joined by former AG and chief justice, says that ruling on CO2 could hurt hospitals, small farms.
GreenLaw Senior Attorney George Hays is quoted in the article countering some of the points.
7/16/2008 - GreenLaw Executive Director Justine Thompson - special to the AJC
At GreenLaw, we call June 30, the day of Judge Moore's decision, "the day the lights came on in Georgia," because the most important light bulb we can turn on is the one in our heads that makes the connection between the energy we use and where it comes from. That's illumination.
2/19/2008 - Opponents of a new coalfired power plant proposed for the banks of the Chattahoochee River in southwest Georgia’s Early County last week asked a Fulton County judge to review the permit approved by state environmental regulators last year.
11/30/2007 - Environmentalist are asking an administrative law judge to send a permit for a coal-fired power plant in southwest Georgia back to the state Environmental Protection Division for further study.
11/30/2007 - Environmental activists challenging a planned coal-burning power plant in Early County failed to poke sufficient holes in the permitting process, given the “deference” owed the government in such decisions, a state lawyer said Thursday.
11/30/2007 - Did the state drop the ball when it gave a permit to Georgia's first planned coal power plant in years? An administrative law judge will answer that question in the next few weeks, after nearly a month of arguments that ended Thursday.
11/30/2007 - Environmentalists are asking an administrative law judge to send a permit for a coal-fired power plant in southwest Georgia back to the state Environmental Protection Division for further study.
11/29/2007 - Environmentalist are asking an administrative law judge to send a permit for a coal-fired power plant in southwest Georgia back to the state Environmental Protection Division for further study.
11/28/2007 - Bobby McLendon enjoys the simple life in Early County. But his simple life has been complicated by plans for a coal plant.
10/10/2007 - The "A" in Atlanta may as well stand for "asthma." After all, our city was named the asthma capital of the nation earlier this year. The title is hardly surprising. Atlanta has never met the federal air-quality standards that were established more than 30 years ago.
5/27/2007 - Although the Georgia Power Co. is preparing to invest billions of dollars in new technology to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants, critics complain the risk of air pollution is greater than the need for cheaper electricity.
5/16/2007 - The state Environmental Protection Division gave the go-ahead this week for a new coal-fired power plant in southwest Georgia. It would be the state's 11th, and the only one built by an out-of-state energy company.
Environmental groups from across the state have campaigned against the plant’s construction for the last six years.
5/7/2007 - Georgia’s ambiguous pollution laws allow polluters to exceed limits on emissions.
1/30/2007 - For years, residents of south Gainesville's Newtown neighborhood have complained about grain dust emanating from the nearby Purina feed mill. Sometimes the area is blanketed with a thick film of particles, and neighbors worry about respiratory problems.
9/25/2006 - Earlier this decade, Taliaferro County set a standard of opposition to unwanted landfills - and it caused a ripple effect that still reverberates in Georgia.
10/18/2005 - The state has agreed to restore a wetland muddied by a prison construction project in south Fulton County.
8/20/2005 - Georgia's Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by developers hoping to establish a controversial landfill in Taliaferro County.
3/14/2005 - With so many construction sites and so few government-paid inspectors checking on them, environmental groups hope to step up enforcement by training citizen activists interested in knowing the laws governing construction sites and becoming a whistle- blower when things go wrong.
1/22/2005 - Tiny Taliaferro County, one of a handful of rural communities across the state trying to fend off landfills, claimed a big victory Friday.
Live Oak Landfill, which collects more waste than any facility in Georgia and is the city of Atlanta's lone trash depository, must close by December 2004, a judge ruled Monday.
The on-again off-again Sembler Atlanta project in Cherokee County has hit another bump. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withdrew a permit last week that would have allowed the company to cover over and pipe more than 5,000 feet of headwater springs on the 88-acre site at I-575 and Ga. 20.
Bookmark and Share
  © 2010 GreenLaw  
Search   Sign In