ADVOCACY in ACTIONQuarterly Protection Highlights from the Southern Environmental Law Center • SUMMER 2009

Ending the Era of Boss Highway in the South

T he South’s asphalt-centered approach to transportation contributes to nearly every

serious environmental problem we face to-day—from soot and smog to loss of rural lands to global warming. The time is ripe to move our region in new directions. Breaking a Vicious Cycle. For decades, a culture of Boss Highway has reigned in the South. State transportation departments have too often built highways and beltways that do little to improve mobility, safety, or our quality of life. Instead, they give rise to an all-too-familiar pattern: A new highway pushes development farther into the countryside. Over time, haphazard growth creates traffic congestion in the corridor, which generates pressure to widen the highway or build yet another bypass. And the pattern begins again. As a result, the South is now the fastest-sprawling region in the country, with some metro areas developing land at three to four times the rate of population growth―or more. Sprawling development, coupled with a failure to invest in transportation alterna-tives, has made the South’s per capita driving distances and tailpipe pollution levels some of the highest in the nation. This exacts a huge toll on our health and our environment.

Our Vision for Reform. The solution is a fundamental shift in policy at the federal, state, and community levels. Through our Power of the Law Campaign, SELC is en-gaged in a transportation initiative to inten-sify our efforts to advance sensible approaches to growth and to champion policies that

•Provide More Transportation Choices. We are spurring investment in cleaner and

more efficient alternatives to driving, such as transit, passenger rail, and freight rail.

•Fix It First. We are urging our states to repair thousands of roads and bridges and to improve the efficiency of existing highways, rather than pour money into new ones.

•Link Transportation and Land Use Plan-ning. We are promoting traditional develop-ment patterns that curb sprawl and the need to drive by placing people closer to jobs, schools, shopping, and other activities.

The Time Is Now. A number of factors have converged to provide the best opportunity in a generation to achieve meaningful policy reforms, including volatile fuel prices, grow-ing anxiety about dependence on foreign oil, shrinking gas tax revenues, rising road con-struction costs, and increasing concern about global warming. Major transportation and climate legislation now moving through Con-gress also provides avenues for change. SELC is working with governors, state lawmakers, and members of Congress to seize this momentum and to achieve more outcomes like the $17.7 billion for transit and rail we helped secure in the federal economic stimulus package this year. The result will be transpor-tation investments that reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, protect natural resources, and revitalize our communities.

Trip Pollard, leader of SELC’s Land and Commu-nity Program, sheds light on these and related is-sues in “Transportation: Challenges and Choices,” a chapter in the new book Agenda for a Sustain-able America. Learn more at SouthernEnviron-ment.org/virginia/transportation_ challenges_and_choices/.

IN THIS ISSUE

Regional Highlights . . . 1–3

What’s Happeningin Your State? . . . . . . . . . 4

The Inside Story . . . . . . . 6

SELC News . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Ways to Give . . . . . . . . . 8

JERRY GREER

FanofSELC.org

Twitter.com/SELC_org

SouthernEnvironment.org

It took eight years of sustained advocacy by SELC and its partners,

but Congress has at long last passed the Virginia Ridge and Valley Act, the first bill to designate new Wilderness areas in the Southern Appalachians in nearly a decade. The new law permanently protects 43,000 acres as part of the national Wilderness system, including seven new stand-alone tracts, and it pre-serves another 10,000 acres as two new National Scenic Areas, all in Virginia’s Jefferson National Forest. Stretching from Brush Mountain outside Blacksburg to Stone Mountain near the Virginia-Kentucky line, these wild public lands will remain free of logging, mining, and road building and are open to hiking, hunting, fish-ing, and other recreational uses. In collaboration with the Vir-ginia Wilderness Committee and the Southern Appalachian Forest Coali-

tion, SELC achieved this result by pushing the U.S. Forest Service to identify areas that could be included in the bill, by securing support from communities near the sites, and by

SELC’s Persistence Results in Permanent Protection for 53,000 Forest Acresworking with the bill’s chief patrons—Representative Rick Boucher, Senator John Warner (now retired), and Sena-tor Jim Webb—to craft the legislation and shepherd it through Congress.

REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

2

An SELC lawsuit has prompted the U.S. Department of the Inte-

rior to suspend an eleventh-hour Bush administration rollback that eased the way for mountaintop removal min-ing and the widespread destruction of coalfield streams. In December, the Bush adminis-tration issued a new regulation that gutted a longstanding requirement that mine operations maintain 100-foot protective buffers on both sides of streams. In January, we filed suit against the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and EPA to block the new rule, which effectively gave mining companies free rein to blast away mountaintops and dump tons of rock, dirt, and rubble into adjacent streams. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who oversees the Office of Surface Mining, responded to SELC’s suit by

SELC Blocks Rule That Eased the Way for Mountaintop Removal Mining asking a federal court to strike down the new regulation. He embraced our argument that the Bush administra-tion violated the law by failing to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the impacts of the rollback on threatened and endangered species. Even before the new rule was is-sued, mine operators were routinely allowed to ignore the stream buffer requirement, and as a result, hundreds of miles of Appalachian streams have been damaged or destroyed. The Interior Department’s action points the way to the development and en-forcement of tougher, more consistent stream protections. Watch our video on coalfield stream protections and mountaintop removal mining at SouthernEnvironment.org/multimedia.

HOLLY MARCUS

APPALACHIAN VOICES

sider a 2004 petition to clean up pollution from 11 upwind states—including five in SELC’s region—that prevents North Caro-lina from meeting healthy air standards. North Carolina submitted the petition under Section 126 (the “good neighbor” provision) of the Clean Air Act. If grant-ed, it would result in a 76 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide and a 70 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide from states stretching from Alabama to Penn-sylvania. After being forced by an SELC lawsuit to take action, EPA denied the petition in 2006. The court’s ruling rejected the basis for that decision.

SELC’s Persistence Results in Permanent Protection for 53,000 Forest Acres

S ELC’s tenacity paid off again on March 31, when a federal

court blocked the King William Reservoir—a massive and unneces-sary project that imperiled rivers and wetlands feeding the Chesapeake Bay. SELC has kept this threat in check for more than a dozen years. The victory overturns the Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of the 1,500-acre reservoir, which is being sought by Newport News, Virginia. It would have resulted in the largest authorized destruction of wetlands

More Than a Decade of Effort Produces Big Win for Virginia Rivers and Wetlands

SELC has been waging a court battle for years against the

Green Diamond project, a danger-ous and destructive plan to build a “city within a city” in the Congaree River floodplain outside Columbia, South Carolina. The project would encompass thousands of acres now occupied by forests and farms and would require miles of levees. In April, a federal appeals court dealt a serious blow to the proposal when it reinstated maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency showing severe flood risks in the area targeted for development. The maps, which had been tossed out by a lower court on a technical-ity, support our contention that the Green Diamond project would put people, property, and the floodway’s natural systems in harm’s way. “Now the developer will have to prove in court that FEMA’s conclu-sions—based on hard scientific evi-dence, gathered at a cost of millions of dollars—are wrong. That’s a tall order,” said SELC senior attorney Blan Holman.

Court Deals a Setback To Floodplain Project

in the mid-Atlantic since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. It also would have obliterated 21 miles of streams in the York River watershed, and it jeopardized shad fisheries vital to Native American communities. “The ruling affirmed our argument that the environmental costs of the reservoir far outweigh the benefits and that the region’s water needs can be met in much less destructive ways,” said SELC senior attorney Deborah Murray. Hear Deborah tell the King William story at SouthernEnvironment.org/multimedia.

F or more than a decade, SELC has been helping North Caro-

lina combat pollution from old, dirty power plants—from securing passage of its powerful Clean Smokestacks Act in 2002, to our U.S. Supreme Court victory against Duke Energy in 2007, to the latest round in our legal action to compel federal regulators to curb emissions from coal-fired plants outside the state. A recent victory in that case points the way to improving air qual-ity across the Southeast. In March a federal court ordered EPA to recon-

EPA Must Reconsider Petition to Clean Up Power Plants in 11 States

GARRIE ROUSE

ALABAMA

Murder Creek Dam. Is it for drinking water? Is it for recreation? Is it for agriculture? No one seems to be able to say for sure. All that is certain is that Conecuh County in southern Alabama is intent on building a 2,650-acre reservoir on a tributary of the Conecuh River for no clearly justifiable purpose. SELC and the Alabama Rivers Alliance are opposing this project, which would destroy more than 1,400 acres of wetlands and some 19 miles of streams. As the Army Corps of Engineers begins an environmental review of the proposal, SELC has weighed in to make sure the Corps recognizes that the need for the reservoir is dubious at best.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN YOUR STATE?

4

GEORGIA

Long Boat Docks. Excessively long boat docks are an increasingly common sight in Geor-gia’s coastal marshlands. These outsized structures stifle the biological pro-ductivity of the underly-ing marsh by ensnaring large amounts of “wrack” (rafts of dead and decay-ing vegetation), which kills aquatic grasses by robbing them of sun-light. In league with a developer-dominated stakeholder group, Georgia’s Coastal Resources Division is pushing for rule changes that would streamline the permitting process for community docks that can extend up to a thousand feet into the marsh. SELC and its partners are call-ing for the agency to drop its recom-mendations.

NORTH CAROLINA

Land Use Survey. Results of an SELC survey in a western North Carolina county show strong support for adopting local development poli-cies to conserve natural areas, shatter-ing common perceptions about public attitudes toward land use regulation in the region. The survey of voters in Watauga County indicates that 74 percent are concerned about development impacts and 80 percent support policies that protect resources such as wildlife habitat, mountain streams, and scenic views. Made possible by the Helen M. Clabough Charitable Foundation, the poll also shows that 87 percent support strate-gies for decreasing landslide hazards—a serious problem in rapidly develop-ing mountain communities.

SOUTH CAROLINA

Pee Dee Power Plant. By a split vote in March, the board of South Carolina’s environmental agency approved the air pollution permit for a coal-fired power plant proposed by Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility. SELC has gone to court to overturn the permit, which falls far short of Clean Air Act standards. Proposed for a site on the Great Pee Dee River, the 1,320-megawatt plant would release mercury emissions 31 times above fed-erally required limits, adding pollution to an area already known as the state’s “mercury triangle.” And at a time of growing concern about the effects of climate change in the state, the plant would spew out more than 10 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide each year.

TENNESSEE

Water Blueprint. SELC has joined more than 20 other conserva-tion partners in issuing Tennessee’s Water Blue-print, an overview of the ecological and economic

DAVID KAMINSKY

HUNTER NICHOLS

5

I-75 Corridor Study. As the Tennessee Department of Transporta-tion begins studying needed improve-ments to the Interstate 75 corridor from below Chattanooga to the Kentucky line north of Knoxville, SELC is calling for TDOT to fac-tor in reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, preserving rural lands, curbing polluted runoff, and easing congestion without adding more lanes. Among other things, the study should explore enhancing street networks to steer local traffic away from the interstate and provide more capacity for through traffic, and it should look at how better rail lines could reduce truck volume on I-75.

VIRGINIA

Hampton Roads Power Plant. SELC is urging the Old Do-minion Electric Cooperative and its board to abandon their plan to build a 1,500-megawatt coal-fired power plant near the Ches-apeake Bay. The massive plant would

be a major new source of air pollution and global warm-

ing emissions in the state, pumping out 14.6 million tons of carbon dioxide each

year. SELC and its partners provided the board with an independent analysis

documenting the enormous financial risks this $6 billion

project poses to the co-op and its ratepayers, emphasizing that proposed federal regulation of carbon emissions would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the plant’s annual operating costs.

Energy Efficiency. Virginia ranks 45th in the country in the percentage of utility revenues spent on energy ef-ficiency, but that should start to change. SELC and its allies won passage of state legislation this year that encourages power companies to develop large-scale energy efficiency programs and grants a fair rate of return on their investments in these programs. Lawmakers narrowly

rejected a specific target of meeting 19 percent of the state’s projected electricity needs through energy efficiency by 2025, a provision called for by the Governor’s Commission on Climate Change. We will continue to push for adoption of this goal. The new law helps level the playing field between energy efficiency and new power generation.

New Wilderness Areas: See page 2.Mountaintop Removal: See page 2.Power Plant Pollution: See page 3.Floodplain Development: See page 3.Virginia Rivers: See page 3.

value of the state’s water resources. Distributed to state leaders, the report also highlights threats to water quality and supply in Tennessee and the im-portance of such measures as safeguard-ing headwaters, maintaining natural stream buffers and other watershed protections, preserving aquatic wildlife habitat, stemming polluted runoff from construction sites and paved surfaces, halting mountaintop removal mining and similar practices, and implement-ing better statewide water planning and conservation policies.

© S

HULL

PHO

TO

BILL

SUB

LETT

E

THE INSIDE STORY

6

B each driving is a popular tradition on the Cape Hat-teras National Seashore and

has long provided a way for anglers and beachgoers to reach remote spots along the barrier island. Unfortu-nately, the National Park Service let this practice get out of hand, and at its peak a couple of years ago, as many as 2,000 trucks and SUVs a day were turning fragile sec-tions of the seashore into highways and parking lots. As beach traffic skyrocketed, popu-lations of nesting shorebirds, sea birds, and sea turtles on the seashore—including threat-ened and endangered species—took a nosedive. It was easy to see why. These species hatch their young in shallow indentions in the sand. Off-road vehicles were disrupting nesting wildlife and creating deep ruts that trap fledgling birds and keep turtle hatchlings from reaching the sea. “The numbers were startling,” says SELC senior attorney Julie Youngman (photo above). “By 2007, nesting shorebird populations on the seashore were dropping rapidly, and two spe-cies, black skimmers and gull-billed terns, failed to nest at all.”

SELC Takes Action. On behalf of Defenders of Wildlife and the Na-tional Audubon Society, we filed suit to compel the National Park Service to bring beach driving under con-trol. This led to a court-sanctioned agreement, reached in April 2008, that requires the park service to close selected sections of the shoreline for

limited periods during wildlife breed-ing and nesting seasons. It also requires the agency to develop a long-term plan for managing beach driving on the seashore. “Through our lawsuit, all we were asking the park service to do was to

follow the best available science—that is, the recommendations of its own scientists —regarding how best to protect the birds and turtles at Cape Hatteras,” Julie explains.

Wildlife Stages a Recovery. In the first year of this agreement, fewer than 13 miles of the seashore’s 67 miles of beaches were closed to traffic for parts of the spring and summer to protect wildlife. Nesting species began to rebound almost immediately and soon

Results on the Ground: Rebounding Wildlife on Cape Hatterasposted very impressive gains: • Seaturtlenestsreachedarecord

high, their numbers up 47 percent above the average since 2001.

• Breedingpairsofpipingplovers,athreatened species, had their best year in a decade and nearly doubled their number of young from the previous year.

• FledglingAmericanoystercatcherswere up 70 percent from the year before.

At the same time, tourism on the Outer Banks continued to thrive.

Defending Our Progress. Four-wheelers are pushing back. Last year they convinced members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation to introduce legislation aimed at scuttling our agreement with the park service. Derb Carter, director of SELC’s Caroli-nas office and an expert on coastal law and policy, testified twice on Capitol Hill to give lawmakers a clear picture of the toll off-road vehicles were taking on vulnerable species and why driving limits are crucial to their recovery. We and our allies succeeded in blocking the bill, but it resurfaced in Congress this year.

New Threat to At-Risk Species. Now a four-wheeler group and two local counties have introduced a new threat to wildlife on Hatteras Island. They have filed suit to overturn federal designation of places on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and in the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge as critical winter habitat for piping plovers. We are participating in the case on the side of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and we will continue to defend wildlife safeguards. Watch Julie Youngman’s video on protecting Cape Hatteras wildlife at SouthernEnviron-ment.org/multimedia/.

LYND

A RI

CHAR

DSO

NNA

TIO

NAL

AUDU

BON

SOCI

ETY,

INC.

NATI

ONA

L AU

DUBO

N SO

CIET

Y, IN

C.

W e invite you to visit the expanded staff section on SELC’s website. You will now find profile pages on all

38 of SELC’s outstanding attorneys, including their current cases and protection projects and related articles, publica-tions, and videos. Take a look at SouthernEnvironment.org/about/offices/.

S ELC attorney Catherine Wannamaker was selected by the readers and edi-tors of Savannah’s Business Report and Journal as one of “40 under 40” dynamic

young leaders in the community. A member of our Atlanta office, Catherine is play-ing a central role in SELC’s Georgia coastal protection initiative and was recognized in a special issue of the journal.

Catherine Wannamaker One of “40 under 40” Leaders

Meet SELC Online

SELC NEWS

7

W hat are you doing right now? If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, you could be getting fast-breaking news from SELC. We are using these networking

tools to report important results as soon as they happen and to provide a forum where you can share your views about current environmental issues and threats facing our region. To join the conversation, visit SouthernEnvironment.org, or go directly to Facebook at http://fanofselc.org or Twitter at http://twitter.com/selc_org for instructions on how to sign up. If you have friends who would also be interested in engaging with SELC, please pass along these links.

Results on the Ground: Rebounding Wildlife on Cape Hatteras

Follow SELC on Facebook and Twitter

Virginia writers Rick Van Noy and Nicole Anderson Ellis received

SELC’s 2009 Phillip D. Reed Memo-rial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment. Van Noy, a member of the English faculty at Radford University, won in the Book category for A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids with Nature through the Seasons. The book is both a guide for fellow parents and an account of encounters with na-ture shared with his two young children. Ellis won in the Journalism category for her story “Land Grab,” which appeared in Richmond’s Style Weekly. The piece looks at the struggles of landowners seek-ing to preserve their rural properties in rapidly developing areas around Rich-mond. SELC presented the awards during the 2009 Virginia Festival of the Book. To hear the writers read from their work, visit SouthernEnvironment.org/philreed.

2009 SELC Environmental Writing Award Winners Explore Kids in Nature and Rural Land Issues

Conserving the South’s wild places, clean air, clean water, and livable communities for future generations

Frederick S. Middleton IIIExecutive Director

Jeffrey M. GleasonDeputy Director & Director of

Regional Programs

Derb S. Carter, Jr.Director, NC/SC Office

David H. PopeDirector, GA/AL Office

Holly L. HuestonDirector of Finance & Administration

E. Marie HawthorneDirector of Development & Marketing

For a complete staff list, see SouthernEnvironment.org.

Joel B. Adams Paul K. Brock, Jr.Dell S. BrookeMartin S. Brown Marion A. Cowell, Jr. Dennis M. CrumplerJ. Stephen Dockery IIIJames G. Hanes IIIMatthew E. HapgoodElizabeth H. HaskellAnna Kate HippMark B. Logan Nimrod W.E. Long IIIMary Lib Lupton

Dennis W. BarnesRobert L.V. FrenchTerry E. GrantPricey Taylor HarrisonDouglas E. JonesHugh C. Lane, Jr.Hunter LewisWilliam Martin Michael MorencyGeorge L. Ohrstrom II

Allen L. McCallie Frederick S. Middleton III Edward M. MillerDeaderick C. MontagueSusan S. MullinStephen E. O’Day William H. SchlesingerJ. Rutherford Seydel II Terence Y. SiegKathryn S. Smith Thomas F. Taft, Sr.William L. Want Nancy Hanes White

Mark P. Pentecost, Jr.Martha M. PentecostGinna McGee RichardsJohn B. Scott, Jr.Alice M. StanbackBradford G. StanbackFred Stanback, Jr. Jennifer T. StanleyCameron M. Vowell Bradford W. Wyche

BOARD OF TRUSTEESJeanie Nelson, Chair

PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL

FanofSELC.org Twitter.com/SELC_org SouthernEnvironment.org

CRAI

G TA

NNER

/WW

W.T

MEL

IVE.

COM

VA/TN Office (Headquarters)201 West Main St., Suite 14Charlottesville, VA 22902(434) 977-4090

NC/SC Office200 West Franklin St. Suite 330Chapel Hill, NC 27516(919) 967-1450

GA/AL Office127 Peachtree St.Candler Building, Suite 605Atlanta, GA 30303(404) 521-9900

SouthernEnvironment.orgPrinted on recycled paper using soy-based inks

NonprofitOrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDCharlottesville, VA

Permit No. 449

I n March of this year, SELC—and the southern environment—lost

two longtime friends and devoted conservationists. William R. Ireland, Sr., was a business and philanthropic leader in Birmingham. Remembered in the Birmingham News as “one of the best friends the environment of Alabama has ever had,” Bill Ireland was in-strumental in creating Forever Wild, a program established by the state in 1992 to purchase public recreational lands. He was a former member of SELC’s President’s Council. Dudley Porter, Jr., was a retired Chattanooga attorney and insurance executive. Also a former member of SELC’s President’s Council, he was a co-founder of the Tennessee Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, a co-founder of the Tennessee River

Two Longtime Friends of SELC Leave Enduring Conservation Legacies

Gorge Trust, and a member of the first board of directors of the Chattanooga Nature Center. We were honored to learn that Dudley Porter had made a $50,000 planned gift to SELC in

BETH

YO

UNG

honor of his nephew, Rick Montague, former chairman and current member of our Board of Trustees. Dudley’s be-loved wife, Mary Rhoda, had previously made a planned gift to SELC as well.