Read how Chesapeake Legal Alliance staff, volunteer attorneys, and our community partners are working to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay and its communities.
Congratulations to Midshore Riverkeeper Conservancy, Sassafras River Association, and the Chester River Association on their recent merger. CLA Volunteer attorneys Scott Gluck, Amauri Costa, and Law Clerk Alison Hopkins (Duane Morris LLP) assisted the organizations in drafting the merger agreement and closing documents to facilitate the merger process. Mr. Gluck and Mr. Costa practice in the area of corporate […]
CLA volunteer attorney Emily Russell was successful in negotiating the sale of a 6.5 acre parcel of property that will now be placed in a permanent conservation easement! The property, adjacent to an urban park in a part of Henrico County adjacent to the City of Richmond, was slated to be clear-cut by a developer […]
Wednesday afternoon, the Anne Arundel County Board of Appeals decided that both South County Citizens for Responsible Development (SACReD) and the West/Rhode Riverkeeper have standing to contest a hotly disputed housing development in Churchton, MD – Turtle Run at Deep Cove – proposed by Snyder Development Corporation. The 12-plus yearlong battle to save one of […]
The City of Annapolis is planning to purchase 4.4 acres of contiguous forest close to Quiet Waters Park and place it in a permanently protected conservation easement, open to the public! For the past five years, a total of seven (7) CLA attorneys have been involved in the fight to ensure that the Parkside Preserve […]
In April 2017, the Maryland General Assembly designated $400,000 of the state’s FY2018 budget to fill vacant enforcement and compliance positions within the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) and the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE). This action reverses years of declining funding for enforcement of environmental laws by MDA and MDE, whose limited resources […]
The efforts of CLA volunteer attorney Lawrence Liebesman, working on behalf of the South River Federation (SRF), prompted the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) to file a lawsuit in November 2012 against the owners of a landfill in Crownsville, MD. The site is a former landfill closed after the discovery of several pollution permit […]
In a monumental win for the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed, in July 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), or “Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint or Cleanup Plan,” after it was challenged by the American Farm Bureau Federation and other special interest groups. […]
Over the course of three years, from 2013 to 2016, CLA volunteer attorneys assisted the Gunpowder Riverkeeper in challenging Columbia Gas Transmission, LLC’s proposal to extend an existing natural gas pipeline an additional 21 miles across Maryland from Baltimore County to Harford County. The pipeline would cross and potentially impact about 80 waterways, including trout […]
For decades, the 2,300-acre sprawling former steelmaking complex at Sparrows Point, just south of Baltimore, has been releasing hazardous substances to the Patapsco River, which flows to the Bay. This is the legacy of over a century of steel mill operations, by Bethlehem Steel until its bankruptcy in 2002, and thereafter by a series of […]
Find an excellent summary of a historic victory for the Bay – it’s history, importance and implications for Bay recovery! Please click HERE.