Current Cases

CBE's unique strategy combines grassroots organizing, environmental research and legal advocacy to empower underserved urban communities.  CBE and its attorneys equip residents and communities most impacted by industrial pollution with the tools to inform, monitor, and transform their environment.    Our legal team continues its successful record of using environmental and civil-rights laws to secure environmental justice for low-income communities of color.  Along with organizing and research, our legal work also helps local communities make their case before state and local government agencies. 

Toxics

ELF/CBE v. Atlantic

In 2008, CBE, Environmental Law Foundation and Our Children's Earth sued ten bus companies for violating Proposition 65, California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act by exposing passengers to diesel exhaust without warning them that diesel causes cancer. As a result, parents may be unaware that every day, going to and from school or on field trips, school buses are putting their children at risk of cancer and other serious illnesses. The effects of diesel emissions on the million California school children who ride diesel school buses each day are very serious. Diesel exhaust causes cancer as well as shorter-term health impacts like asthma. Children are even more vulnerable to environmental pollutants like diesel exhaust than adults, because their lungs are still developing, they have faster metabolisms, and they breathe faster than adults.

This case was filed on the heels of our settlement with California's two largest bus companies, Laidlaw and Durham. That case resulted in a single captioned Proposition 65 case on record, and the largest payment ever by a single entity. Under this agreement, Laidlaw will invest a minimum of 4.7 million dollars over the next five years to continue retrofitting buses in its California fleet that are more than five years old with air pollution control devices to reduce diesel exhaust. In addition, Laidlaw will make substantial investments in its fleet over the next seven years by either retrofitting additional buses or purchasing new buses that meet the most stringent air pollution standards in the country.

News "Settlement on School Buses Fixes to Cut Fumes" - Aug 7, 2008 (San Francisco Chronicle)

CBE v. DTSC/Industrial Service Oil Company

Industrial Service Oil Company Inc. (ISOCI), a hazardous waste facility located in South Los Angeles, was issued a permit to expand substantially both its capacity and the types of hazardous wastes that it handles. The facility is located within one-half mile of approximately 6,000 residents and an elementary school. The Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) issued a permit to ISOCI to accept hundreds of additional ignitable, carcinogenic, and extremely toxic wastes and to store those wastes long-term in rail cars. The Permit would expose the public, particularly those located in the communities that surroundthe ISOCI facility, to greatly increased cancer risk and other significant risks to human health. DTSC additionally issued this permit in the complete absence of the Tanner Act process. The Tanner Act establishes a detailed process to ensure community involvement in significant land use decisions concerning hazerdous waste facilities. As a result, thousands of local residents living and working in Los Angeles and Southeast Los Angeles were denied their right to fully and meaningully participate in the permitting pocess for the Project.

In August 2008, we filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging that DTSC had violated the Tanner Act and the California Environmental Quality Act. The City of Los Angeles Redevelopment Agency and the City of Los Angeles filed related lawsuits opposing ISOCI's permit.

Clean Air Act

CBE v. EPA

EPA is required to review and recise as necessary the air quality criteria documents and National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for carbon monoxide. NAAQS are public health and welfare based standards that describe how much air pollution is acceptable in our outside air. Carbon monoxide contributes to serious dangers ranging from adverse effects on the cardiovascular and nervous systems of adults and children and low birth weight, to effects on the atmosphere that may contribute to or exascerbate global warming. Despite these serious consequences and Congress' mandate that EPA conduct a review every five years, EPA has not reviewed carbon monoxide criteria documents and NAAQS for over a decade. CBE filed a lawsuit in federal court to force EPA to revise NAAQS for cabon monoxide and adhere to a proscribed schedule. The court agreed and EPA must complete its NAAQS for carbon monoxide by May 13, 2011 and meet a number of interim deadlines.

Power Plants

NRDC/CBE v. SCAQMD/Inland Energy et al (Priority Reserve II)

In September, 2007, CBE, Natural Resources Defense Council, Coalition for a Safe Environment, and California Communities Against Toxics filed suit against the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) challenging the inadequate Program Environmental Assessment ((PEA), the equivalent of an environmental impact report) for its amendments to the AQMD's Priority Reserve rule, Rule 1309.1, and adoption of a pollution credit accounting and generation rule, Rule 1315.

The rules would have first, allowed the District to create pollution credits for millions of pounds of air contaminants - including the very dangerous PM10 and, second, allowed power plant developers to purchase those air quality credits from the "Priority Reserve" account, which is AQMD's internal cache of pollution credits intended for use by essential public services like schools and hospitals. Although it offered credits at below-market rates, AQMD stood to profit roughly $420 million by selling Priority Reserve air credits to power plant developers.

In total, AQMD's rules would have created millions of pounds of pollution and subsidized new power plants and other facilities in the Southland at the expense of air quality. In July 2008, the court ruled that AQMD's environmental anlysis of its rules violated the California Environmental Quality Act, and the rules were therefore void. In November, the court ordered the AQMD to rescind the two rules and rejected AQMD's request to continue relying on the rules while it decides whether to reissue them.

As a result of the decision and judgement, no power plant awaiting approval or in the application process can buy cheap credits unless the AQMD re-adopts the rules and conducts full CEQA review. This includes the proposed Vernon Power Plant (aka Southeast Regional Energy Center), which is at the center of a key CBE campaign concerning regional transition to clean energy. A recent AQMD report confirmed that constructing just one of the 11 proposed power plants will cause annual mortality in the area anywhere from 4 to 11 persons, resulting in hundreds of premature deaths over the life of the facillity. The plant is also planned for construction next to a heavily populated working class community of color. The AQMD recently appealed this decision.

News:"SoCal Power Plants on Hold" - July 29, 2008 (LA Times)

NRDC/CBE v. SCAQMD (AQMD "Credit Laundering")

In August 2008, CBE, Natural Resource Defense Council, Coalition for a Safe Environment, and Desert Citizens Against Pollution filed a federal Clean Air Act action against the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) for providing unregulated and invalid pollution credits to polluting companies throughout the South Coast Air Basin. The suit uses the state's data to expose 17 years of credits unlawfully sold and provided to energy companies and other polluting facilities in Southern California, at the expense of air quality in the state's more polluted air basin.

The AQMD proposes to continue allowing polluters to use millions of pounds of invalid pollution credits. Specifically, we are alleging that AQMD violated the Clean Air Act and its own rules by distributing invalid emission reduction credits that are not real, permanent, quantifiable, surplus and federally-enforceable. These invalid credits either have been used or remain in use. This case is part of a CBE organizing campaign concerning regional transition to clean energy.

Oil Refineries

CBE v. SCAQMD/ConocoPhillips

In 2004, the AQMD issued a permit to ConocoPhillips Oil Refinery in Wilmington to produce ultra low sulfur without conducting full environmental review despite the fact that the project could increase daily emissions of nitrous oxide (NOx) by 455 pounds per day. NOx pollution causes asthma and other serious respiratory problems, respecially in children. Even though ultra low sulfur diesel is cleaner than some other diesel fuel, its production is much dirtier and causes more pollution, which is a major concern to Wilmington residents living on the fenceline to Conoco and to workers.

We filed a lawsuit in state court. We argued that, among other things, the AQMD had used a distorted interpretation of "baseline" to conclude that Conoco's increased NOx emissions were not significant. The Court of Appeal agreed with us that the baseline must reflect the actual environment at the time that environmental review commences for the project, and that there was substantial evidence that NOx emissions from the project may exceed the CEQA significance threshold. The defendants requested and the California Supreme Court granted review. All of the court briefs have been submitted.

CBE v. City of Richmond/Chevron

The City of Richmond issued a permit to Chevron to significantly expand its Richmond refinery, allowing it to process low-quality crude (including tar sands) and export hydrogen to the other four Bay Area oil refineries. The project will increase release of mercury, selenium, sulfur flare gas, and greenhouse gases, and increase accident risk at the refinery, among other things. But instaed of first disclosing the full scope of the project and mitigating its impacts, the City accepted an 11th hour $61,000,000 package from Chevron that, among other things, requires the City to consider rules to exempt Chevron from future use permitting requirements.

This project has been subject of a two year CBE Campaign to respond to Chevron's most current threat to community health and justice. CBE and others are demanding no not pollution increase (a crude cap), a fund for Richmond's future, and public process including recirculation of the EIR.

In September 2008, CBE, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, and West County Toxics filed a lawsuit under CEQA to force the City to revise and recirculate the EIR disclosing, analyzing and mitigating this project's many serious environmental health and justice impacts.

Transportation Justice

Darensburg/CBE v. MTC

In April 2005, CBE, Sylvia Darensburg, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192 and other individuals filed a Title VI (class action) lawsuit in federal court against the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission for maintaining a "seperate and unequal" transit system by discriminating against AC Transit riders, who are nearly 80 percent people of color. AC Transit riders are lower income and more likely to depend on public transit than users of BART or Caltrain, yet those systems receive much larger subsidies per passenger than AC Transit riders. We also alleged violations of section 11135, the state corollary to Title VI. In September, the court dismissed our intentional discrimination claim under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act but retained jurisdiction of our state law disparate impact claim (under Cal. Gov. Code section 11135). Trial was held in October 2008 with closing arguments in December. We are now awaiting a final decision.

Read Darensburg/CBE v. MTC-related Press Release from April 23, 2009.

Policy

The legal team is also involved in various policy issues, particularly those involving climate justice and California's AB32 implementation, and cumulative impacts.