Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Environmental Advocacy Clinic files amicus brief in D.C. Circuit supporting federal ruling compelling Grand River Dam Authority to acquire interests in lands subject to flooding
SOUTH ROYALTON, Vermont (December 23, 2024) — Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Environmental Advocacy Clinic has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on behalf of its client, Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency, Inc. (LEAD), a native-led, nonprofit environmental justice organization in northeast Oklahoma. The brief asks the court to uphold federal orders, sought by the City of Miami, that would help protect communities upstream from the Pensacola Dam from the impacts of dangerous flooding events, which the dam makes worse.
“The clinic is proud to help our client LEAD bring to the D.C. Circuit the concerns of northeast Oklahoma communities facing the unjust impacts of toxic flooding. For too long, the Pensacola Dam’s operator has tried to evade responsibility for these dangers,” Christophe Courchesne, director of the Environmental Advocacy Clinic, said. “The court should affirm FERC’s lawful decisions here, which will help upstream communities obtain some measure of accountability and environmental justice.”
The brief urges the court to uphold orders of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that would require Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA), the state-controlled entity responsible for the Pensacola Dam, to take accountability for flooding impacts in upstream communities by paying for property rights on lands subject to flooding. These communities include the City of Miami, which brought the case to FERC in 2018.
The dam has played a significant role in exacerbating recent flooding events upstream from the dam along the Grand River and the highly contaminated Tar Creek, one of the country’s first Superfund sites — and still one of its most polluted. These events can redistribute toxic sediments and threaten the health and safety of neighboring communities and Tribes, which have experienced harms from toxic pollution originating from long-abandoned lead and zinc mining operations in the area.
GRDA’s license for the Pensacola Dam requires it to acquire all property necessary or appropriate for project operations. Miami argued that GRDA has been violating its license for years by failing to acquire approximately 13,000 acres of lands flooded by project operations. After FERC initially sided with the GRDA, the case made its way to the D.C. Circuit in 2021, when the court agreed with the City on several issues and returned the case to FERC for further proceedings. FERC issued a series of orders this year ruling that GRDA needed to comply with these terms of its license. GRDA is now challenging those orders in the current appeal before the D.C. Circuit.
VLGS Environmental Advocacy Clinic Director Christophe Courchesne and Environmental Advocacy Clinic student attorneys Evan Kern, Lauren Carita and Matt Dederer prepared the brief.
###
About Vermont Law and Graduate School: Vermont Law and Graduate School, a private, independent institution, is home to a law school that offers ABA-accredited residential and online hybrid JD programs and a graduate school that offers master’s degrees and certificates in multiple disciplines, including programs offered by the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment, the Center for Justice Reform and other graduate-level programs emphasizing the intersection of environmental justice, social justice and public policy. Both the law and graduate schools strongly feature experiential clinical and field work learning. For more information, visit vermontlaw.edu, Facebook and Instagram.
About LEAD Agency: Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency, Inc. (LEAD) is an environmental justice organization in northeastern Oklahoma that seeks to raise awareness about the effects of contamination on human health and the environment. Through public education, outreach, action, involvement with appropriate government agencies, and litigation, LEAD works to organize a citizen response toward cleanup and restoration of environmental harms, while striving for pollution prevention and environmental sustainability. For more information, visit www.leadagency.org and follow on Facebook.