Great Lakes Environmental Law Center

🌍 Serious about environmental justice? Take action with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center. Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed on critical legal efforts in Michigan and beyond.#EnvironmentalJustice #GLELC #NewsletterSignUp

Protecting our right to clean, safe drinking water requires perpetual diligence and examination of what dangers may emerge. Today is a good day in that stewardship.

Join us tonight, April 10, at the Eastside Community Network's "Special Semi-Truck and Air Quality Town Hall." Taking place from 6:00 PM 8:00 PM at the Stoudemire Wellness Hub on Conner, the town hall will include a panel featuring Great Lakes Environmental Law Center staff attorney Andrew Bashi and our client, Robert Shobe of Justice for Beniteau. #detroit #environmentaljustice #airquality

Weigh in on water quality issues for our greatest resource in the region.

Interested in electrifying your household? Check out Rewiring America's new "Personal Electrification Planner." The planner creates a free personalized electrification plan based on your responses to questions about your home and priorities. It also provides estimates of potential federal savings that may be available to you.

Our friends at the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition and Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice put together this incredible toolkit for Michigan ratepayers. Utilities not respecting your rights is not okay, and there are ways to take action. Please share and consider signing up to be a community advocate (which could be an incredible opportunity for law students 😉 ).

We love speaking to these young people each summer. Always an incredible bunch. Please consider sponsoring our next generation of environmental health leaders!

University of Windsor Faculty of Law students, don’t miss out on the Justice at Work Conference at the end of the month! This year’s keynote speaker will be Archana Ravichandradeva (she/her) of People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and the Peel District School Board. Our morning panel will feature Andrew Bashi, Great Lakes Environmental Law Center; Fatima Ahmed, Level. Changing Lives Through Law; Joanne Lau, Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic; and Sarah Rosales Zelaya, CAMH. The afternoon networking session will provide students with an opportunity to connect with lawyers representing 11 organizations. Students, please register on Symplicity (https://lnkd.in/gTi7ssGQ) if you plan to attend. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with the JAW Conference Committee, whose co-chairs are Joyce Dason and Pratibha Sivasithamparam and members are Cindy Lui, Jacqueline Gabriel, Luis Lara Palacios, Madeline Leigh Jones, Madison Watson, and Rebecca Zuker. Thank you as well to the PBSC team of Jonathan Solomon, Kunal Variawa, MA, Rachel McCallister de Abreu, and Rebecca Zuker.

Our staff attorney, Andrew Bashi, on the intersection of environmental justice and electric vehicles. "Across the United States, a person's race is the best predictor of whether they are exposed to elevated levels of industrial pollution. Unchanged, the drive to replace every car on the road with an EV of comparable size will further expand the already enormous discriminatory chasms in health and environmental outcomes in communities already overburdened by pollution. If we don't address this now, policymakers and manufacturers will further entrench current inequalities. Sadly, that seems to be the route we're headed, but it's not too late for us to do this right."

"A letter to MDOT from Great Lakes Environmental Law Center and signed by U.S. Rep Rashida Tlaib (D-Dearborn), Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor), Chang, State Sen. Darrin Camilleri (D-Trenton) and Detroit City Councilmember Gabriela Santiago-Romero, said that the bridge company itself had made the case for the inadequacy of the current bridge. While pursuing a permit to build a second span in 2009, owners told the U.S. Coast Guard that it was an “aging bridge” that was “near the end of its life span.” The company singled out issues like 11-foot-wide rather than standard 12-foot lanes and minimal safety shoulders that added to backups and congestion. The GLELC letter also cited safety issues related to private ownership and the bridge company’s use of private engineering firms rather than government inspectors."