Jeff Horstman

“The Chesapeake Legal Alliance (CLA) has been a strong partner and an invaluable asset to ShoreRivers and our four Riverkeeper programs over the last year. CLA has come to our aid on legal issues where the other side has well-paid legal staff and we need to find pro-bono legal expertise to help us stop pollution and protect our waterways. This has been true with NPDES permit reviews, direct legal challenges, interpreting COMAR regulations, and providing pro bono attorneys from their network for legal research to help us on a range of projects including permit reviews for agricultural operations and processing facilities. A CLA attorney also helped us with the corporate documents we needed to complete our recent merger. Currently, we have been working with CLA to interpret COMAR regulations that the Department of Natural Resources is interpreting incorrectly. Hopefully, this will result in submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) maps being redrawn to provide 20 to 30 % more geographical protection for rebounding SAV. We are also working with CLA to develop educational tools to help our local governments better enforce existing stormwater management laws. CLA is the best legal instrument we have!”