Wins for the Bay

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.

This morning, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that the Bay Clean Up Plan is LEGAL under the Clean Water Act!!! CLA volunteer attorneys, Ridge Hall, Russ Stevenson and Bob Sussman, submitted an Amicus Brief (friend of the court) on behalf of the city of Annapolis in support of EPA, counseled groups who drafted […]

A team of CLA volunteer attorneys assisted the Potomac and Shenandoah Riverkeepers and Gerrardstown, WV prevent a quarry operator from clear cutting a mountaintop to operate a surface mine. The litigation before a mining board in West Virginia resulted in required forest replanting, stream protection, and reduction of trucking through Gerrardstown, as well as implementation […]

The Pines on the Severn Community of Arnold Maryland was dumbfounded when its permit to build a living shoreline to replace a crumbling bulkhead and collapsing banks of Chase Creek was denied by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE). Construction of a living shoreline, a natural stabilization technique which recreates habitat and improves water […]

Instead of a major residential and commercial projects being constructed on the Bay, hundreds of acres of conservation area in Northumberland County, VA were placed in preservation in 2012. The proposed development project would have destroyed migratory bird habitat, oyster bars, and other wildlife habitat as well as degraded inland waterways. Victory comes after a […]