APIEL 2024 Program
Recent Federal Actions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Transportation Sector
9:00-10:00 am ✦ Room 132 ✦ CLE
Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and regulatory actions, the Biden Administration has taken a variety of steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. This session will provide an overview of new planning requirements, funding opportunities, and regulatory actions to reduce transportation’s greenhouse gas emissions and improve the resilience of our infrastructure. The session will also discuss the comparative success of financial incentives rather than regulatory requirements in the current political and judicial environment.
Speaker: Brian Gist is a Senior Attorney in the Atlanta office of the Southern Environmental Law Center. Brian has a B.A. in Biology from the University of Cincinnati and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Brian joined SELC in 2004 and his work focuses on the intersection of air quality, transportation, and land use in the Southeast. Brian has worked to reduce the environmental impacts of our transportation system through litigation, legislation, and administrative advocacy.
#SaveHartford A Grassroots Collaborative to Defend the Southern Half of Cocke County From a Secret $2 Billion Development
10:15-11:15 am ✦ Room 241
CWEET works for the benefit of all living things, and we follow the basic ecological concept that all life is interconnected! Since March 2023 we have been fighting a $2 Billion development that is being planned and carried out in the Opportunity Zone around Hartford, TN with zero public knowledge, transparency, or accountability. The entire county government is also denying any knowledge or involvement in this "secret" development. The #savehartford campaign is fighting the biggest current threat to this region with a grassroots movement.
Speaker: Laurie Spring Duckett has been in love with Mother Earth since taking her first breath. Her formal education includes a bachelor's degree in green & sustainable enterprise management as well as various informal educational opportunities. Spring is the Community Organizer
for 501c3- Clean Water Expected in East Tennessee and CWEET. Her duties include administration, community networking, event planning, public education, grant writing, youth education and programs, and promotions.
The Legal and & Ethical Challenges in Achieving Environmental Justice
10:15-11:15 am ✦ Room 135 ✦ DUAL CLE
Environmental justice is rooted in an understanding that people of color and low-income communities are more likely than the population at large to suffer from major environmental permitting decisions. For decades, facilities like hazardous waste landfills, coal-fired power stations, and chemical manufacturing plants have been far more likely to be located in environmental justice communities than anywhere else. Zealously representing these communities may require a different understanding of the lawyer’s role than what is typically taught in law schools. Dr. Jarret will explore the legal and ethical challenges of achieving environmental justice at the local, state, and federal levels.
Speaker: Dr. Joe Jarret is an attorney and a federal and state mediator who has been practicing environmental law for over 29 years. Joe is also a full-time lecturer for UT’s Graduate School of Public Policy and Administration and an adjunct professor at UT Law School. He is an award-winning writer who has published over 85 articles in various professional journals. Joe holds a Bachelor of Science, a Masters in Public Administration, a Juris Doctorate, and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership.
Introducing "EL-T"-- a Law Teaching Program Where Law Students Teach Environmental Law to Undergrads
10:15-11:15 am ✦ Room 237
“EL-T,” a unique Environmental Law-Teaching program, trains and gives selected law students, in pairs, the opportunity to design and teach an environmental law course to undergraduates, with faculty status, before their graduation – and the panel will encourage law students and faculty to institute the EL-T program at their law schools. Originally conceived in 1972 at The University of Michigan Law School under the guidance of Professor Joseph L. Sax, the world’s first environmental law teacher, EL-T, the Environmental Law-Teaching Program for senior law
students, has subsequently been offered at 7 other law schools, providing 300+ law students with the experience of teaching a full semester law course to a total, since 1972, of more than 6000 undergraduates.
Speaker: Professor Zygmunt Plater is professor emeritus at Boston College Law School and adjunct professor offering the EL-T environmental law-teaching program at Maine Law School, where law students teach on two undergraduate campuses. He taught law and implemented EL-T at UTK College of Law in the 1970s, and with his students carried a major Tennessee case -- the snail darter/Tellico Dam case to success in the US Supreme Court, and into international recognition.
Ecological Considerations for Development of Policy on Mature and Old-Growth Forest
10:15-11:15 am ✦ Room 132
This one-hour session will trace forest policy development during the Biden Administration and consider the possible ecological ramifications into the next administration. Mature and old-growth forests are important for combating the biodiversity and climate crises, maintaining fire resilience, performing ecosystem services, and providing opportunities for recreation and spiritual renewal. Biden directed the federal government (such as the U.S. Forest Service) to undertake a series of tasks aimed at developing plans to protect mature and old-growth forest. However, the direction of forest policy is likely to change, but how it will change depends on the outcome of the election. Time will be reserved during the last third of the hour for questions and discussion of the future of our forests.
Speaker: Donald Winslow grew up in Indianapolis and studied at Indiana University and Michigan State. His dissertation project addressed the effects of forest management practices on breeding birds in southern Indiana. He has also studied birds in the field in Michigan, Saskatchewan, California, Wyoming, and Oklahoma. Dr. Winslow has taught biology and environmental science at Indiana University, Michigan State University, St. Gregory’s University and Rose State College in Oklahoma, Ivy Tech in Indiana, and the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities. He lives with his wife, two sons, and three cats in Hagerstown, Indiana.
Carbon Capture: Promises vs Reality
11:30-12:30 pm ✦ Room 237
Captured and compressed carbon dioxide (CO2) being transported or injected underground is a toxic substance that can sicken or kill people and animals when a spreading plume of dense CO2 reaches them. At this session, panelists will: explain how a CO2 pipeline rupture, well blowout, injection site eruption, or leakage can result in plume dispersion and pose a danger to health; describe community and legal actions that have been taken to avert harms; provide guidance to audience members based on hands-on experience with legal actions and community organization; inform the audience about a pending, proposed federal regulation to invite waste CO2 injection and burial in our national forests.
Speakers: June Sekera is a public policy practitioner with 30 years of experience and a scholar whose work focuses on the public economy and government’s role in addressing climate change. She and her team studied mechanical and biological methods of carbon capture; the findings were published in 2023 in a paper titled Carbon dioxide removal–What’s worth doing? She holds a Master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School.
Victoria Bogdan Tejeda is a staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. There, she fights false climate solutions such as carbon capture and storage, as well as polluting industries such as biomass energy, through litigation and administrative advocacy. Prior to joining the Center, Victoria was an associate attorney with Earthjustice, where her role included litigating toxic chemical regulations and assisting overburdened communities in advancing environmental justice. She holds a J.D. from U.C. Davis School of Law.
Green Amendments: The People’s Fight For a Clean, Safe & Healthy Environment
11:30-12:30 pm ✦ Room 132
Green Amendments are an area of constitutional law focused on recognition and protection of environmental rights. The session will discuss: the legal need for constitutional protection of environmental rights; the legal elements of a Green Amendment; decided and emerging litigation in the three states that currently have this protection (PA, MT, NY); and constitutional language that has been considered in the state of Tennessee in 2023 and 2024.
Speaker: Maya K. van Rossum is the Founder of the national Green Amendments For the Generations movement and organization. Maya, in her role as the Delaware Riverkeeper, was the lead and only environmental plaintiff in the landmark case Robinson Township, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, et. al. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that breathed new life into Pennsylvania’s environmental rights amendment. Van Rossum envisioned that every state across the nation, and ultimately the U.S. constitution, should have a constitutional environmental right as powerful as Pennsylvania’s. In 2014, van Rossum coined the term “Green Amendment” and carefully defined it. Her award-winning book, The Green Amendment: Securing our Right to a Clean, Safe & Healthy Environment, was first published in November 2017.
Community Benefits Agreement
11:30-12:30 pm ✦ Room 241
This panel covers Community Benefits Agreements and how they can be used to create enforceable responsibilities on the part of companies to help the community. The discussion would go over what CBAs are, how they have been used in the past, and tips on drafting and negotiating. Speakers: Tim Fitchett grew up in Southeastern Pennsylvania and received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Pennsylvania State University, and later, a J.D. Tim was an active volunteer with Friends of Trees, at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), and with Friends of the Columbia Gorge. He interned at OPAL Environmental Justice helping to ensure equal access to public transit, he externed at the Oregon Supreme Court under former Justice Virginia Linder, and at Crag Law Center.
Andrew Early graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia University, where he studied Philosophy. The C8 water crisis in his hometown showed him that the law was a tool that could be used to protect people and the environment. He received his JD from the University of Cincinnati College of Law and served as president of the College’s Environmental Law Society. His work at Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services centers around the regulation of the petrochemical industry.
What's In The Air?: Ethylene Oxide and Other Air Quality Issues
11:30-12:30 pm ✦ Room 135
Ethylene Oxide (EtO) is a petrochemical, in gaseous form, used in a wide variety of industrial processes ranging from plastics manufacturing to medical grade sterilization. It is also known for having many serious human health implications. A recent study by Johns Hopkins scientists showed that rates of industrial emissions of EtO are far higher (as much as 3x higher) than official EPA estimates. EtO emissions are known to impact communities across the globe, including Puerto Rico, Louisiana – where a lot of EtO is made – and here in the Appalachian Region in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia. In this session, a diverse panel will speak on the legal framework for toxic emissions in WV.
Speakers: Corey Zinn is the Executive Director of Create West Virginia, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering innovation and economic development through restorative industries. Corey and Create WV team members launched a community air quality monitoring project in the Kanawha Valley which continues to grow.
Kathy Ferguson is a community activist from the unincorporated district of Institute, WV. Ms. Ferguson is the former Executive Director of Our Future WV, a progressive statewide non-profit in West Virginia. She currently serves as a lead organizer with People Concerned About Chemical Safety - focused on fence-line environmental issues and improving health outcomes and quality of life for those in her community.
Patrick Boyle is a Corporate Accountability Attorney for CIEL’s Fossil Economy Program. His work focuses primarily on developing legal strategies and supporting campaigns to hold the petrochemical industry accountable for the harms it causes. Patrick earned his J.D from UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings) and received a B.A. in English from Tulane University.
Moderator: Dustin White is a Senior U.S. Campaigner on Plastics and Petrochemicals based in the so-called “Chemical Valley” of West Virginia with the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Before joining CIEL’s Fossil Economy team, Dustin worked for nearly a decade throughout his home state and the Appalachian Region in rural environmental justice communities.
Media, Law, The Snail Darter, And Democracy How a Little Group of Tennesseeans Carried a Little Fish Through the Corridors of American Power Against a Notorious TVA Dam
12:45-1:30 pm ✦ Room 132 ✦ CLE
An analysis of one of the three most controversial environmental media stories of its decade, the story of Tellico, the TVA’s last dam, built on the Little Tennessee river mostly for real estate development of a pretend city, and for recreation. For 19 years scores of citizens fought the dam — farmers fighting to stop their lands being condemned for re-sale, and flowing-water fishermen coming from up to a hundred miles away fighting for the river’s trout fishing. But the state and national media carried a destructively different story.
Speaker: Zygmunt Jan Broël Plater has taught on eight law faculties in the U.S. and abroad. He chaired the State of Alaska Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill Commission’s Legal Research Task Force. He has written and worked on multiple environmental problems including toxics contamination, endangered species, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, whale entanglements, national parks, strip-mining regulation, predatory land condemnations, and chemical pollution in the USA and abroad. With his students, Plater carried the nation’s first major endangered species case through congressional and court proceedings, and a presidential Cabinet-level economic review, arguing successfully in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies, Artificial Intelligence, and the Environment
1:45-3:15 pm ✦ Room 132
✦ DUAL CLE
Blockchain technology involves the use of distributed databases to manage transfers. It is a way of introducing nonhuman intermediation into business and personal transactions. It can make transacting significantly more efficient and secure. However, certain blockchain operations, including cryptocurrency mining, use an extraordinary amount of energy. Similarly, generative artificial intelligence, increasingly present in our everyday lives, has the capacity to both solve environmental problems and intensify them. This panel identifies and explores legal and ethical aspects of the environmental effects of cryptocurrencies (and other blockchain applications) and artificial intelligence.
Speakers: Dr. Stephen A. Smith has led the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) as its executive director since 1993. He currently serves on the Knoxville Mayor’s Climate Council and on the board of Floridians for Solar Choice.
Melanie Faizer is a professor of practice in the Journalism & Media Department at the University of Tennessee, where she has taught 2012. In 2023-24 she served as interim news director at 91.9 WUOT-FM. Faizer continues to freelance, and her investigative story about cryptocurrency mines in the Southeast aired on NPR in January 2024.
Bradley R. Finney is an assistant professor at The University of Tennessee College of Law. His courses and scholarship focus on environmental law subjects. His latest publication discusses crypto mining’s energy consumption and potential regulatory solutions to this growing problem.
John Nolt is Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, where he taught from 1978 to 2022. He has published eight books, including four on environmental topics, two of which deal specifically with the Southern Appalachian environment. He also moonlighted as an environmental activist; helping lead Project Witherspoon in the 80s and 90s, a community-based effort to force cleanup of toxic and radioactive waste sites in South Knoxville.
Joan MacLeod Heminway is the Rick Rose Distinguished Professor of Law, and a fellow of the C. Warren Neel Corporate Governance Center, the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, and the Center for the Study of Social Justice at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her scholarship focuses on a variety of business law subjects, including topics at the intersection of regulation and technological innovation.
Kingston Coal Ash Litigation
1:45-3:15 pm ✦ Room 135 ✦ CLE
The Tennessee Valley Authority/Jacobs’ Engineering Kingston Coal Ash spill was one of the largest environmental and industrial disasters in United States history. On December 22, 2008, a coal ash pond holding decades of industrial waste ruptured, releasing over 1 billion gallons of coal ash into the surrounding community. The spill and consequent litigation received significant international press, and last summer resulted in an unprecedented settlement as compensation for the deleterious health effects suffered by the clean-up workers as a result of their unprotected exposure to coal ash. In this session, the lead attorneys
and the experts on the case will discuss the challenges in establishing both the science and the law in this landmark environmental disaster.
Panelists:
Billy Ringger, Partner at Davis, Johnston, & Ringger, PC.
Gary Davis, Senior Partner at Davis, Johnston, & Ringger, PC
Angela C. Hind, M.D., physician and clinical toxin consultant.
Norman Kleiman, PhD, Professor of Environmental Health Science at Columbia University.
Ohio Citizen Activists vs. the Oil and Gas Industry
2:00-3:15 pm ✦ Room 241 ✦ CLE
This panel will discuss several areas in which citizen activists are fighting back against fracking and frack waste in Ohio: forced fracking of public lands, frack waste injection wells, a track record of accidents and contamination, and legal approaches.
Speakers: Chris Tavenor has represented the Ohio Environmental Council as general counsel before the Ohio Supreme Court, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, the Ohio Power Siting Board, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Review Appeals Commission, and beyond. They have drafted numerous regulatory comments, testimony, and other publications in pursuit of a healthy environment for all who call Ohio home. In working toward a healthy democracy, they led the OEC’s fight for a fair redistricting process in 2021 as a member of the Ohio Citizens’ Redistricting Commission.
Jenny Morganis founder and chair of Leave No Child Inside Collaborative Ohio and a member of the Ohio Brine Task Force fighting frack waste. LNCI encourages outdoor play, learning and lifelong connection with nature. Her animated video “Stand Up” is on YouTube at https://bit.ly/440qCVK
Roxanne Groff is a member of the Athens County Future Action Network and Buckeye Environmental. Roxanne has been protesting Class II injection wells in southeast Ohio since 2011. She continues to criticize The Ohio Dept of Natural Resources for their failures in their duties to protect the community.
Loraine McCosker is a member of Save Ohio Parks and an Appalachian environmental and social justice advocate for 20 years seeking protections from coal, fracking, frack waste, forest extraction, solid waste monopolization. She is a retired Ohio University environmental studies educator.
Advocacy through Storytelling
2:00-3:15 pm ✦ Room 237
Being able to tell the story of the people your group seeks to elevate, support, and advocate for is essential for any advocacy effort. Stories that get at the heart of your organization’s mission make you more memorable, significant, and appealing to the people you are trying to reach. Advocacy groups need to be able to tell two types of stories effectively: the organization’s story the individual story. The purpose of this workshop is to guide advocacy groups in determining their most important stories and deciding how they want to tell them.
Speakers: María De Moya is the Charles Tombras, Sr. Endowed Professor at the Tombras School of Advertising and Public Relations, University of Tennessee. Her research explores messaging, advocacy, and public diplomacy practices by communities, organizations, government, and political actors. She co-edited the book Diaspora Public Diplomacy in Latin America, published in 2020. She was a Fulbright Scholar from the Dominican Republic while at New York University. Moonhee Cho is an Associate Professor and DeForrest Jackson Professor in the Tombras School of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Her primary research focuses on public relations and strategic communication management in both forprofit and nonprofit sectors. In her research, she has explored nonprofit public relations, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social/political advocacy (CSA), sustainability, social movement, and activism mainly in the socially mediated context.
Introduction to the Appalachian Justice Research Lab
3:30-4:30 pm ✦ Room 135
The UT Appalachian Justice Research Center launched in early 2024 as a transdisciplinary research and training collaborative for students, faculty, and community partners in Appalachia working to address the most pressing community justice issues in our region. The AJRC's new curricular offering, the Appalachian Justice Research Lab (AJRL), is a space for community justice research, based upon an innovative merging of participatory research and clinical legal education. The AJRL is born out of direct requests across Appalachia and a coalition of faculty and students at UTK seeking to do this work in the region.
During this panel, UT students in the AJRL will discuss current research projects in the lab and the impacts of a course grounded in a sociolegal, community collaborative model on their own education.
The Electricity System Transition
3:30-4:30 pm ✦ Room 241
We are on the verge of a transformation in how electricity is generated, distributed, and used in the United States. New pathways are being conceived, financed, and rolled out. The workshop will provide an overview of “Local Power Networks” – in which self-generation by households, municipal and public entities, schools, small businesses and other small-scale entities is networked with community solar and battery storage, enabling all income levels to participate in locally-controlled mini-grids. It will explore a series of questions about different energy services.
Speaker: June Sekera is a public policy scholar whose work focuses on the public economy and government’s role in addressing climate change. June is a Visiting Scholar at The New School for Social Research, where she has directed projects to study climate change mitigation methods from the perspective of public need. June is also a Senior Research Fellow at Boston University, and the Director of the Public Goods Institute. Her book, The Public Economy in Crisis, was published in 2016.
Managing Expectations in Tough Cases: A Primer on Communication Skills
3:30-4:30 pm ✦ Room 237 ✦ CLE
The session will discuss some communication skills that have, up until this time, largely been used in the medical setting. However, they transfer easily to legal situations where people are often in some of the worst situations of their lives. The skills help to build connection with the client, understand their wants and needs, and appropriately respond to them. As lawyers, we are taught how to problem solve and explain, which is often the least effective means of communicating with clients during a crisis. The skills presented help to circumvent that natural tendency and instead to react and respond empathetically to our clients.
Speaker Bio: Tim Fitchett Staff Attorney and Legal Education Director with Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services in Pittsburgh, PA.
Buffalo Trace: Traveling an Ancient Path to the Future
3:30-4:30 pm ✦ Room 132
This session will discuss efforts to preserve the nationally significant historic Buffalo Trace and the Hoosier National Forest in Southern Indiana in lieu of the USFS proposed Buffalo Springs and Houston South Forest management projects. Collaboration is at the heart of determining the best solution to preserve and manage our public forests and the resources they contain with a holistic approach that is optimal for a complete and healthy forest ecosystem and the culture that it supports. Speakers: Steven Stewart is a graduate of Indiana University Bloomington with a degree in history and anthropology. He worked in the non-profit sector and the field of preservation. He is a strong public forest advocate and has spent his whole life in the forest learning its ways and history. Steven is on the Board of Directors for Heartwood, started the Buffalo Trace Preservation Group, is an officer of Protect Our Woods and the Hoosier National Forest Program Director for the Indiana Forest Alliance.
Mick Harrison is a public interest attorney with 31 years of experience litigating environmental protection, environmental whistleblower, false claims (qui tam), Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and government oversight lawsuits nationwide. Attorney Harrison is a graduate, summa cum laude, of the District of Columbia School of Law. Attorney Harrison is formerly the Co-Director of the EPA Watch Program at the non-profit Government Accountability Project in Washington D.C., and more recently the litigation director for the Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry.
APIEL is organized by a University of Tennessee registered student organization for the engagement of the campus community. As a public university, our campus is a marketplace of ideas. The university embraces debate and will protect the freedom of our campus community to vigorously discuss ideas. Please respect the speakers, the students who organized this event, and your fellow students in attendance by allowing the speaker to be heard. University policy and state law prohibit substantial obstruction or interference with this event. Those who attempt to interrupt speakers or otherwise prevent them from speaking will be asked to leave and may be subject to disciplinary action or arrest. Thank you for your cooperation.