Inaugural Fred Tutman Fellow Covers CLA’s Critical Cases
In June, CLA welcomed Lilly Howard, the University of Maryland junior who was selected as the first Fred Tutman Fellow. The Fred Tutman Fellowship, spearheaded by the Environmental Justice Journalism Initiative (EJJI) and in partnership with CLA and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, honors Fred Tutman, the Patuxent Riverkeeper who for decades has been a champion of the Chesapeake Bay through his activism, journalism, writing, and litigation.
Similar to Fred, Lilly has a strong understanding of the Chesapeake Bay and its various challenges having been raised on a farm near Chesapeake City, and also like Fred, she is passionate about securing a better and more just future for residents of the watershed. In addition to pursuing journalism, Lilly has a background in environmental science and policy, making her the perfect candidate to cover some of CLA’s most intricate and salient cases.
Over the course of the summer of 2023, Lilly worked with CLA attorneys and staff to better understand two of our cases that have major implications on local and traditionally underserved communities.
Read Breathing Lessons: Southern Arundel Residents Struggle to Fight Pollution, which covers how a 56-year-old special exception permit for a sand and gravel mining operation has detrimentally impacted residents of the Lothian community by clicking here; and click here to read ‘Zombies’ on the Bay: Environmental Groups Fight for Permits that Reflect Current Discharges, which dives into CLA’s suit against Valley Proteins, a poultry rending facility on the Eastern Shore and the largest polluter of the Transquaking River watershed that had been operating on an expired permit for 15 years before CLA challenged the facility.
