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FOREST STANDS PROTECTED Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is one of North America’s greatest ecological treasures and major carbon sinks.
During the Trump administration, the Tongass faced a grave threat when President Trump gutted the Roadless Rule, stripping protections from millions of its acres and opening them up to road construction and logging operations.
Partnering with Alaska Native Tribes, as well as business and conservation groups, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit and, earlier this year, scored a huge win when the Biden administration announced its intent to reinstate the Roadless Rule in the Tongass.
The Biden plan, when finalized, will at last create durable protections for this precious forest.
CLEANER ALTERNATIVES Earthjustice delivered a win for clean energy and clean air in California when we successfully advocated before the state Public Utilities Commission to approve a $that prioritizes communities bearing the brunt of polluting vehicle emissions, and multi-unit dwellings historically excluded from charging investments.
This big new program complements many other clean energy victories achieved by Earthjustice’s “Right to Zero” campaign.
PERSPECTIVESPERSPECTIVES At the heart of every case is a partnership.
By working with frontline communities, and learning about their firsthand experiences, we understand what’s at stake, and we unite our strengths for robust collaboration.
Our legal expertise is amplified by the power of our partners, and we are proud to share their stories from recent victories and ongoing fights.
he Menominee people have lived on the river named for them since time immemorial.
“The Menominee were created as the Great Bear came out of the Bay onto the land at the mouth of the Menominee River.
That place still exists today there,” says Douglas Cox, director of land management and vice-chairman for the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.
“As he migrated on the Menominee River, [the Great Bear] looked for companions to take that journey with him.
This is the shortest version of how the five clans of the Menominee people came to exist, a narrative that is traditionally shared orally, and only during certain times of the year, during ceremonies and feasts over many days.
But knowing even the simplest version of this story speaks to how important the Menominee people’s relationship with the river is—there are many places along the waterway’s significance to the Tribe.
Archaeologists have found evidence of ancient agriculture, and European settlers witnessed the Menominee people on the river and the bay gathering wild rice.
The Menominee name means “People of the Rice,” although they call themselves Kiash Matchitiwuk, the Ancient Ones, because this is where they have always been.
Today, while some Menominee people use the river, they don’t live in their ancestral home, which spanned what is now known as the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois.
“As the government did with most tribes, when we signed treaties, they put us on Douglas Cox, Director of Land Management and Vice-Chairman of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, photographed at the Wolf River in Keshena, Wisconsin.
Despite that displacement, the Tribe still fights for the river, about away from their current home as the crow flies.
The pit would be the Statue of Liberty is tall.
“Within the footprint of the mine, there are known sites that potentially would be destroyed if the mine would go into operation,” says Cox.
Those sites include their ancestral garden beds, ceremonial mounds, dance circles, and burial mounds.
So, with Earthjustice attorneys representing the Tribe, they sued to stop Canada-based Aquila Resources from extracting copper, zinc, gold, and silver and processing the metals on the banks of (and even blasting a shaft beneath) their river in a project called the Back Forty mine.
In addition to wholesale destruction of the land next to the river, sulfide ore mines like this one can lead to acid mine drainage—acidic water laden with heavy metals that turns waterways bright yellow.
That’s as bad as it sounds—this toxic runoff is harmful to human, animal, and plant health, according to the EPA.
“When those water quality issues begin, they’re nearly impossible to reverse.
There’s no sulfide mine like this anywhere that’s operated for any significant period of time that hasn’t polluted the environment.
Today, the river is “far from pristine, but it’s a healthy river, well known for its smallmouth bass fishery—which you don’t get without having good water quality and good environmental protection on the river.
There’s a lot of measures of how the ecosystem is still healthy there,” says Cox, and he says the Menominee will always work to keep it that way.
After a five-year legal fight, the mine developer relinquished its permits and withdrew its applications to the mine site.
The Menominee River as it flows along the border of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan near Cox Landing in Marinette County, Wisconsin.
Indian Tribe of Wisconsin ISSUE SUMMARY The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, represented by Earthjustice, challenged Aquila Resource’s wetlands permit as well as its mining permit for the Back Forty mine, a massive proposed heavy-metals mine and oreprocessing center.
In January won their case challenging the mine’s wetlands permit on the basis of flawed groundwater modeling.
Denial of the wetlands permit also sounded the death knell for Aquila’s mining permits, and the company withdrew its remaining permits and appeals.
Earthjustice and the Menominee Tribe remain vigilant, as the mine developer has already announced plans to submit yet another proposal to revive the ill-conceived project.
“That was big, great news for us,” says Cox.
But Aquila, soon to be Gold Resource Group, has stated its intent to reapply for the permits with a new mine site design.
The Tribe is thinking long-term: Some members have recently replanted wild rice at the mouth of Menominee River to connect the present to the past, and where the Tribe still has access to the land, they continue to practice ceremonies including both Menominee Tribal members and other Native people.
“The long-term dedication is our way,” Cox explains.
We are only here for a little while, but this land will forever be occupied by our future Menominee generations.
Menominee tribal members reach out to touch a dreamcatcher that hangs at a sacred Menominee tribal gathering site near Keshena, Wis.
T oday, Puerto Ricans stand on a dividing line between a dirty, destructive, colonialist status quo, and a clean, green, self determined future.
Almost in the rearview mirror: fossil-fuel-burning plants with transmission lines too-easily blown over by storms, which are likely to increase in our climate-changed future.
Coming soon: a localized, resilient, sun-powered energy infrastructure.
As Puerto Rico leaders stall in abandoning imported coal and gas, local activists are holding power to account.
One group of such activists, the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now, is a coalition that’s pushing for Puerto Rican energy independence with the help of legal representation from Earthjustice.
As alliance members point out, you don’t have to be an energy expert to know that the power system in Puerto Rico is beyond broken.
Not only are the territory’s aged power plants dirty and contributing to climate change, but outages are frequent.
Just this fall, university students went on strike protesting the continuation of business-as-usual coursework expectations made impossible by daily power outages.
So this is not something that happens once in a while, this is something that happens a lot,” says Amy Orta-Rivera, an environmental policy coordinator who works with El Puente’s Latino Climate Action Network, part of the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now.
A power outage occurred while Orta-Rivera was taking a class for her job.
She says, “People are frustrated — I’m frustrated as well.
Their dysfunctional system also costs more: Puerto Ricans pay those on the mainland for electricity.
Amy Orta-Rivera, Environmental Policy Coordinator for El Puente’s Latino Climate Action Network, photographed in Ceiba, P.R., in April 2021.
A fix has been long in the making.
After the disasters of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was tasked with proposing a new energy infrastructure plan.
The agency’s solution was to switch some oil-burning plants to fracked gas, a move that still relies on imported fossil fuels, carbon-belching power plants, and centralized electricity generation that requires distribution over storm-vulnerable power lines.
Also in the proposal, the privatized distribution company, Luma Energy, had no obligations to the community.
It would be free to simply move out of the area after another devastating storm.
All this risk for expensive, imported, fossil-fuel power — on an archipelago with abundant sunny days.
The people of Puerto Rico have a better plan.
Queremos Sol (“We Want Sun”) is the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now coalition’s proposed solution for independence, resilience, and affordability.
The plan calls for decentralizing power in Puerto Rico by way of installing distributed rooftop solar power on 75% of residential buildings.
“We support the plan for PREPA to install solar panels in every house — a house and be integrated into the electric system,” says Orta-Rivera.
In addition, repairs can be made faster in a localized system.
A group of volunteers help install a solar power system on a home in the Puente de Jobos community in Guayama, P.R., in March 2021.
Action Network The Alliance for Renewable Energy Now is making steady progress toward transforming Puerto Rico’s electricity system.
First, they built up enough pressure on the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau that it rejected PREPA’s initial plan for modernizing, which relied too heavily on fossil fuels, and sent the plan back for a redesign.
They also fought for public input in the process, which had been notoriously opaque, according to Orta-Rivera.
Legislation signed in energy by 2050, with a reaffirmation in 2020 including a commitment to solar power.
But alliance members know there’s more to improving energy infrastructure than promises on paper.
That’s why organizers have continued to keep the pressure on to turn those statements into action, with Queremos Sol showing exactly what a just and equitable transition to clean energy looks like with their distributed rooftop solar plan.
“According to the Puerto Rico Distributed Energy Resource Integration Study, it’s actually $cheaper than the Integrated Resources Plan that the government is trying to pursue,” says Orta-Rivera.
Further, there’s enough money to begin the process.
Orta-Rivera is dedicated to changing the course of her island’s future, and she won’t rest until a clean, affordable, and resilient energy infrastructure for the entire archipelago is realized: “I’m really hopeful, because even though it’s difficult to fight the government or to fight big companies, we have seen wins in the past.
For comrades in the cause of reimagining energy infrastructure, she has a request: “Work in solidarity with us.
For decades Puerto Ricans have been pushing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and the government to address the grave economic and environmental issues presented by the current energy system.
Earthjustice attorneys are representing community and environmental groups as they press the government for meaningful action to transition to clean energy.
Work in this space includes acting as a watchdog to ensure the public has sufficient access to the decision-making process, holding power companies accountable for unapproved developments, and challenging dated and inaccurate environmental impact analyses.
Until Puerto Rico’s energy is clean, stable, and sovereign, we will never rest.
Peopled predominantly by working-class Latino communities, it has a strong agricultural history — it once was called the Orange Empire.
“It’s beautiful here — it’s a vibrant landscape, from forested mountaintops to deserts down below, to luscious chaparral.
There’s a lot of biodiversity and life,” says Yassi Kavezade, who speaks of her home as a place of people and history, defined by native animals and plants, where you can catch epic sunsets that need no filters.
For those in the shipping and logistics business, though, the Inland Empire is a major warehouse hub that connects to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach via several freeways and serves Americans’ ever-increasing online shopping habits.
The industry footprint is huge and still expanding, adding more warehouses.
“We’ve seen an expansion of heavy industries encroaching upon neighborhoods, and the communities encroached upon are often communities of color and frontline communities,” says Kavezade, who is also an organizer with the Sierra Club, which is part of a coalition of conservation, health, and environmental justice organizations that Earthjustice recently represented in a game-changing lawsuit.
What Kavezade is fighting against isn’t just enormous buildings going up where farmland and communities used to be—though that’s damaging enough.
These shipping hubs also mean more noisy, diesel-spewing trucks sitting for long periods on idle, waiting to drop off or load up.
And it’s not just trucks causing harm: “A lot of folks don’t think about the operations day-to-day at these warehouses.
In order to carry shipping containers from warehouse From left: Yassi Kavezade, an organizer with the Sierra Club, photographed near the future location of the World Logistics Center in Moreno Valley, Calif. Ulices Del Toro for Earthjustice; A protest on Cyber Monday in encompasses responsible development, quality jobs, clean air, and safe neighborhoods.
to warehouse, they use yard hustlers—they’re not efficient, their motors are old.
There’s also forklifting, and all sorts of cranes, that are all still relying heavily on gas and diesel.
They’re a burden on air pollution outside, but also on workers that are working inside,” says Kavezade.
All that equipment causes “diesel death zones,” so named for their dangerous levels of air pollutants like benzene, nitrogen oxides, and particulates.
Breathing this air leads to higher rates of heart disease, cancer, asthma, and more asthma attacks among those with the disease.
Those scenic Box Springs Mountains are beautiful, but they also hem that air in, creating some of the worst air quality in the United States, according to the American Lung Association.
“I myself experienced heavy respiratory issues moving into Riverside from Orange County,” says Kavezade.
“Normally I wake up with a dry throat, severe allergies, and coughs.
For almost a decade, Kavezade has been fighting for her community.

FOREST STANDS PROTECTED Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is one of North America’s greatest ecological treasures and major carbon sinks.

During the Trump administration, the Tongass faced a grave threat when President Trump gutted the Roadless Rule, stripping protections from millions of its acres and opening them up to road construction and logging operations.

Partnering with Alaska Native Tribes, as well as business and conservation groups, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit and, earlier this year, scored a huge win when the Biden administration announced its intent to reinstate the Roadless Rule in the Tongass.

The Biden plan, when finalized, will at last create durable protections for this precious forest.

CLEANER ALTERNATIVES Earthjustice delivered a win for clean energy and clean air in California when we successfully advocated before the state Public Utilities Commission to approve a $that prioritizes communities bearing the brunt of polluting vehicle emissions, and multi-unit dwellings historically excluded from charging investments.

This big new program complements many other clean energy victories achieved by Earthjustice’s “Right to Zero” campaign.

PERSPECTIVESPERSPECTIVES At the heart of every case is a partnership.

By working with frontline communities, and learning about their firsthand experiences, we understand what’s at stake, and we unite our strengths for robust collaboration.

Our legal expertise is amplified by the power of our partners, and we are proud to share their stories from recent victories and ongoing fights.

he Menominee people have lived on the river named for them since time immemorial.

“The Menominee were created as the Great Bear came out of the Bay onto the land at the mouth of the Menominee River.

That place still exists today there,” says Douglas Cox, director of land management and vice-chairman for the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.

“As he migrated on the Menominee River, [the Great Bear] looked for companions to take that journey with him.

This is the shortest version of how the five clans of the Menominee people came to exist, a narrative that is traditionally shared orally, and only during certain times of the year, during ceremonies and feasts over many days.

But knowing even the simplest version of this story speaks to how important the Menominee people’s relationship with the river is—there are many places along the waterway’s significance to the Tribe.

Archaeologists have found evidence of ancient agriculture, and European settlers witnessed the Menominee people on the river and the bay gathering wild rice.

The Menominee name means “People of the Rice,” although they call themselves Kiash Matchitiwuk, the Ancient Ones, because this is where they have always been.

Today, while some Menominee people use the river, they don’t live in their ancestral home, which spanned what is now known as the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois.

“As the government did with most tribes, when we signed treaties, they put us on Douglas Cox, Director of Land Management and Vice-Chairman of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, photographed at the Wolf River in Keshena, Wisconsin.

Despite that displacement, the Tribe still fights for the river, about away from their current home as the crow flies.

The pit would be the Statue of Liberty is tall.

“Within the footprint of the mine, there are known sites that potentially would be destroyed if the mine would go into operation,” says Cox.

Those sites include their ancestral garden beds, ceremonial mounds, dance circles, and burial mounds.

So, with Earthjustice attorneys representing the Tribe, they sued to stop Canada-based Aquila Resources from extracting copper, zinc, gold, and silver and processing the metals on the banks of (and even blasting a shaft beneath) their river in a project called the Back Forty mine.

In addition to wholesale destruction of the land next to the river, sulfide ore mines like this one can lead to acid mine drainage—acidic water laden with heavy metals that turns waterways bright yellow.

That’s as bad as it sounds—this toxic runoff is harmful to human, animal, and plant health, according to the EPA.

“When those water quality issues begin, they’re nearly impossible to reverse.

There’s no sulfide mine like this anywhere that’s operated for any significant period of time that hasn’t polluted the environment.

Today, the river is “far from pristine, but it’s a healthy river, well known for its smallmouth bass fishery—which you don’t get without having good water quality and good environmental protection on the river.

There’s a lot of measures of how the ecosystem is still healthy there,” says Cox, and he says the Menominee will always work to keep it that way.

After a five-year legal fight, the mine developer relinquished its permits and withdrew its applications to the mine site.

The Menominee River as it flows along the border of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan near Cox Landing in Marinette County, Wisconsin.

Indian Tribe of Wisconsin ISSUE SUMMARY The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, represented by Earthjustice, challenged Aquila Resource’s wetlands permit as well as its mining permit for the Back Forty mine, a massive proposed heavy-metals mine and oreprocessing center.

In January won their case challenging the mine’s wetlands permit on the basis of flawed groundwater modeling.

Denial of the wetlands permit also sounded the death knell for Aquila’s mining permits, and the company withdrew its remaining permits and appeals.

Earthjustice and the Menominee Tribe remain vigilant, as the mine developer has already announced plans to submit yet another proposal to revive the ill-conceived project.

“That was big, great news for us,” says Cox.

But Aquila, soon to be Gold Resource Group, has stated its intent to reapply for the permits with a new mine site design.

The Tribe is thinking long-term: Some members have recently replanted wild rice at the mouth of Menominee River to connect the present to the past, and where the Tribe still has access to the land, they continue to practice ceremonies including both Menominee Tribal members and other Native people.

“The long-term dedication is our way,” Cox explains.

We are only here for a little while, but this land will forever be occupied by our future Menominee generations.

Menominee tribal members reach out to touch a dreamcatcher that hangs at a sacred Menominee tribal gathering site near Keshena, Wis.

T oday, Puerto Ricans stand on a dividing line between a dirty, destructive, colonialist status quo, and a clean, green, self determined future.

Almost in the rearview mirror: fossil-fuel-burning plants with transmission lines too-easily blown over by storms, which are likely to increase in our climate-changed future.

Coming soon: a localized, resilient, sun-powered energy infrastructure.

As Puerto Rico leaders stall in abandoning imported coal and gas, local activists are holding power to account.

One group of such activists, the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now, is a coalition that’s pushing for Puerto Rican energy independence with the help of legal representation from Earthjustice.

As alliance members point out, you don’t have to be an energy expert to know that the power system in Puerto Rico is beyond broken.

Not only are the territory’s aged power plants dirty and contributing to climate change, but outages are frequent.

Just this fall, university students went on strike protesting the continuation of business-as-usual coursework expectations made impossible by daily power outages.

So this is not something that happens once in a while, this is something that happens a lot,” says Amy Orta-Rivera, an environmental policy coordinator who works with El Puente’s Latino Climate Action Network, part of the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now.

A power outage occurred while Orta-Rivera was taking a class for her job.

She says, “People are frustrated — I’m frustrated as well.

Their dysfunctional system also costs more: Puerto Ricans pay those on the mainland for electricity.

Amy Orta-Rivera, Environmental Policy Coordinator for El Puente’s Latino Climate Action Network, photographed in Ceiba, P.R., in April 2021.

A fix has been long in the making.

After the disasters of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was tasked with proposing a new energy infrastructure plan.

The agency’s solution was to switch some oil-burning plants to fracked gas, a move that still relies on imported fossil fuels, carbon-belching power plants, and centralized electricity generation that requires distribution over storm-vulnerable power lines.

Also in the proposal, the privatized distribution company, Luma Energy, had no obligations to the community.

It would be free to simply move out of the area after another devastating storm.

All this risk for expensive, imported, fossil-fuel power — on an archipelago with abundant sunny days.

The people of Puerto Rico have a better plan.

Queremos Sol (“We Want Sun”) is the Alliance for Renewable Energy Now coalition’s proposed solution for independence, resilience, and affordability.

The plan calls for decentralizing power in Puerto Rico by way of installing distributed rooftop solar power on 75% of residential buildings.

“We support the plan for PREPA to install solar panels in every house — a house and be integrated into the electric system,” says Orta-Rivera.

In addition, repairs can be made faster in a localized system.

A group of volunteers help install a solar power system on a home in the Puente de Jobos community in Guayama, P.R., in March 2021.

Action Network The Alliance for Renewable Energy Now is making steady progress toward transforming Puerto Rico’s electricity system.

First, they built up enough pressure on the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau that it rejected PREPA’s initial plan for modernizing, which relied too heavily on fossil fuels, and sent the plan back for a redesign.

They also fought for public input in the process, which had been notoriously opaque, according to Orta-Rivera.

Legislation signed in energy by 2050, with a reaffirmation in 2020 including a commitment to solar power.

But alliance members know there’s more to improving energy infrastructure than promises on paper.

That’s why organizers have continued to keep the pressure on to turn those statements into action, with Queremos Sol showing exactly what a just and equitable transition to clean energy looks like with their distributed rooftop solar plan.

“According to the Puerto Rico Distributed Energy Resource Integration Study, it’s actually $cheaper than the Integrated Resources Plan that the government is trying to pursue,” says Orta-Rivera.

Further, there’s enough money to begin the process.

Orta-Rivera is dedicated to changing the course of her island’s future, and she won’t rest until a clean, affordable, and resilient energy infrastructure for the entire archipelago is realized: “I’m really hopeful, because even though it’s difficult to fight the government or to fight big companies, we have seen wins in the past.

For comrades in the cause of reimagining energy infrastructure, she has a request: “Work in solidarity with us.

For decades Puerto Ricans have been pushing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and the government to address the grave economic and environmental issues presented by the current energy system.

Earthjustice attorneys are representing community and environmental groups as they press the government for meaningful action to transition to clean energy.

Work in this space includes acting as a watchdog to ensure the public has sufficient access to the decision-making process, holding power companies accountable for unapproved developments, and challenging dated and inaccurate environmental impact analyses.

Until Puerto Rico’s energy is clean, stable, and sovereign, we will never rest.

Peopled predominantly by working-class Latino communities, it has a strong agricultural history — it once was called the Orange Empire.

“It’s beautiful here — it’s a vibrant landscape, from forested mountaintops to deserts down below, to luscious chaparral.

There’s a lot of biodiversity and life,” says Yassi Kavezade, who speaks of her home as a place of people and history, defined by native animals and plants, where you can catch epic sunsets that need no filters.

For those in the shipping and logistics business, though, the Inland Empire is a major warehouse hub that connects to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach via several freeways and serves Americans’ ever-increasing online shopping habits.

The industry footprint is huge and still expanding, adding more warehouses.

“We’ve seen an expansion of heavy industries encroaching upon neighborhoods, and the communities encroached upon are often communities of color and frontline communities,” says Kavezade, who is also an organizer with the Sierra Club, which is part of a coalition of conservation, health, and environmental justice organizations that Earthjustice recently represented in a game-changing lawsuit.

What Kavezade is fighting against isn’t just enormous buildings going up where farmland and communities used to be—though that’s damaging enough.

These shipping hubs also mean more noisy, diesel-spewing trucks sitting for long periods on idle, waiting to drop off or load up.

And it’s not just trucks causing harm: “A lot of folks don’t think about the operations day-to-day at these warehouses.

In order to carry shipping containers from warehouse From left: Yassi Kavezade, an organizer with the Sierra Club, photographed near the future location of the World Logistics Center in Moreno Valley, Calif. Ulices Del Toro for Earthjustice; A protest on Cyber Monday in encompasses responsible development, quality jobs, clean air, and safe neighborhoods.

to warehouse, they use yard hustlers—they’re not efficient, their motors are old.

There’s also forklifting, and all sorts of cranes, that are all still relying heavily on gas and diesel.

They’re a burden on air pollution outside, but also on workers that are working inside,” says Kavezade.

All that equipment causes “diesel death zones,” so named for their dangerous levels of air pollutants like benzene, nitrogen oxides, and particulates.

Breathing this air leads to higher rates of heart disease, cancer, asthma, and more asthma attacks among those with the disease.

Those scenic Box Springs Mountains are beautiful, but they also hem that air in, creating some of the worst air quality in the United States, according to the American Lung Association.

“I myself experienced heavy respiratory issues moving into Riverside from Orange County,” says Kavezade.

“Normally I wake up with a dry throat, severe allergies, and coughs.

For almost a decade, Kavezade has been fighting for her community.