Extraction & Pollution Archives

Mar 27, 2024

AM I AN ACTIVIST?

Testimony of a Community Organizer CELDF’s Consulting Director, Tish O’Dell, submitted her testimony, “Am I an Activist?” to the 2024 Spring Activism Peace Chronicle publication. Tish has been involved in community rights and Rights of Nature work starting in her own community of Broadview Heights, Ohio, which led to the adoption of Ohio’s first Home… Read more »

Oct 12, 2023

CELDF’s Kai Huschke presents: Legalized Chemical Warfare – Community Resistance and Resilience to Protect the Future

In 2017 voters of Lincoln County adopted a community rights law banning aerial spray of pesticides by the corporate timber industry. CELDF was involved in assisting in the drafting of the law along with supporting the effort to get it adopted. In 2019 the courts, at the behest of the timber industry, overturned that law leaving public health and… Read more »

Sep 1, 2023

Beaver Creek Press Release

100% of the water from the Seal Rock Water District (SRWD) comes from Beaver Creek.

Aug 22, 2023

Trust the Children, Not the System

Featured photo: The plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana walking and chatting outside the courthouse. (Photo: Robin Loznak) It will take an extended commitment to community organizing to expand the Held ruling into tangible relief as a vital state constitutional protection for nature. The 16 child plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana, the Children’s… Read more »

Jul 25, 2023

Wouldn’t You Say? – Ignorance as License

Anti-intellectualism is as American as hot dogs.

Jul 10, 2023

How Do We Speak for the Trees When Our Human Right to Free Speech is Cut Down?

In our legal system, one is either a legal subject (humans and corporations) or a legal object (nature)

Jul 7, 2023

15 Questions that Are More Useful than “What New Regulation Should We Fight For?”

Difficult as it may be, we’d all be better off focusing on how to change the legal system itself instead of pleading for stricter regulations.

Jul 3, 2023

Wouldn’t You Say? – The Law Did not Save Grant Township’s Water, the People of Grant Did

If the persistence of the people of Grant Township in pursuit of justice took ten years for them to prevail, it is because they insisted on the primacy of justice over law that serves the interests of an opulent minority.

Jun 2, 2023

Wouldn’t You Say? – The Invisible Empire in Plain Sight

The American dream has turned out to be a nightmare. Wouldn’t you say?

May 31, 2023

Group announces PGE to plug controversial well

According to the CELDF, “not a single drop of frack waste has been injected within the township due to hard work, resistance and resilience.”

May 10, 2023

Unrepentant and Vindicated: Proposed Frack-Waste Injection Well in Grant Township to be Plugged and Abandoned

To date, not a single drop of frack waste has been injected within the Township due to hard work, resistance, and resilience.

May 1, 2023

Toledo voters approved a bill of rights for Lake Erie. A group wants the same for the Ohio River

Feature photo by Bill Rinehart/WVXU “An advocacy group wants Cincinnati to recognize the right of the Ohio River to thrive. Members of Citizens for the Rights of the Ohio River Watershed are circulating a petition to get an amendment to Cincinnati’s charter on the ballot. Susan VonderHaar says CROW members want to give the river a seat… Read more »

Mar 24, 2023

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:<br>Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:
Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage

A more honest report on the East Palestine disaster and details how the system itself is to blame and why these horrific and deadly events keep happening and our communities and nature keep bearing the brunt.

Mar 15, 2023

Watch the video: “Water is Us”

“Water Is Us” was moderated by ORCRN’s board member and CELDF organizer Kai Huschke. Joining him was: On February 22nd the ORCRN’s Webinar Wednesday meandered through a variety of water topics, from current conditions of water access and water quality to how the law sees water, to the growth of rights of nature to protect and preserve water, to… Read more »

Mar 10, 2023

Conservation Today: Kai Huschke and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Kai Huschke, with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, talks to us about the hierarchy of community rights, states rights, and corporate rights.

Dec 20, 2022

Grant’s Fight is Our Fight

As we head into the new year, please join us in continuing to stand with Grant Township. And let’s not only support them with words or dollars, but also follow their lead and bravely build on their efforts in the communities where we live.

Dec 10, 2022

Do No Harm: Protecting the Rights of Mangroves in Ecuador From Injury

Mangroves, according to the Ramsar definition, are considered wetlands – an area that CELDF is also helping to evolve coming out of the Declaration of the Rights of Wetlands.

Jul 1, 2022

Wouldn’t You Say? – Personhood

The Right of Free Speech Includes the Right to Clean Air to Speak With Look, if corporate property can be called a legal person, and if that person has a right to speak freely, but no mouth, and if corporate-cozy judges can make us all pretend for real that spending money is the way corporate… Read more »

May 4, 2022

A Court Hearing for Grant Township: Eight Years Later, and Still No Injection Well

As many are aware, CELDF has stood with the people and ecosystems of Grant Township (Indiana County, PA, population 700) in their courageous efforts to keep a frack waste injection well out of the community.

Mar 16, 2022

Lucrative Losses & Poisonous Profits Symposium: An Overview of the Domestic and Global Exploitation of Nature and the Way Forward

CELDF’s Tish O’Dell is speaking on Panel #4, “Contamination of Water.” This Panel will take place on Friday, March 25 from 11:40 AM – 12:45 PM.

Terry Lodge, activist attorney with CELDF, is speaking on Panel #2, “Contamination of Land.” This panel will take place on Thursday, March 24 from 11:50 AM – 12:55 PM

American University Washington College of Law’s Program on Environmental and Energy Law and Sustainable Development Law & Policy Brief, in association with the Animal Law Society, Energy Law & Policy Society, Environmental Law Society, and Native American Law Students Association are excited to host this year’s annual Symposium, “Lucrative Losses & Poisonous Profits: An Overview of the Domestic and Global Exploitation of Nature and the Way Forward” over Zoom from 10 AM – 1 PM on March 24 and 25, 2022. Over the course of four panels—activists, professors, legal and policy experts, climate scientists, and professors will discuss the international and domestic contamination and overuse of water and land from modern environmental law, indigenous, and rights of nature perspectives. The panelists will explore the devastating impacts of some of nature’s biggest threats, including pollution, deforestation, and industrial fishing.

Sep 23, 2021

Corporation Asks Nottingham, N.H. For Legal Fees After Suing Over Climate Ordinance

The Freedom From Chemical Trespass Rights-Based Ordinance asserted residents’ rights to a healthy climate and banned corporate activities that would interfere with those rights, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 per day.

Sep 10, 2021

Newsletter: Asheville Climate Bill of Rights Begins Signature Gathering

A new ordinance seeks to place a Climate Bill of Rights on the 2022 ballot, which explicitly challenges North Carolina’s infamous state preemption scheme and privileges afforded private corporations.

May 21, 2021

Newsletter: Featured Online Film Screenings

The new award-winning documentary THE PEOPLE VS. AGENT ORANGE is now screening in theaters near you! CELDF is proud to sponsor limited nationwide screenings ahead of the national premiere on PBS, forthcoming in summer 2021. CELDF is sponsoring screenings in California, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, and… Read more »

Feb 2, 2021

Protect the Protectors: Stop Line 3

Tribal nations, community and environmental groups in Minnesota have fought to stop the Line 3 Enbridge pipeline in Northern Minnesota. The pipeline violates several treaties with the Ojibwe people that establish their right to hunt, fish, and gather along the proposed route. The pipeline would cross 200 bodies of water, including the Mississippi River twice.

Jan 8, 2021

Newsletter: Momentum for Constitutional Change in Pennsylvania

In 2020, members of the Pennsylvania Community Rights Network engaged in a statewide support campaign for a state constitutional amendment to place the rights of people over the interests of private corporations – empowering communities to heighten state protections for civil, human and ecosystem rights.

Jan 4, 2021

$Grant Township sued again over refusal to allow fracking water$

Grant Township sued again over refusal to allow fracking water

Coverage on the ongoing Rights of Nature efforts in Grant Township – see the full original article by the Indiana Gazette.

Dec 15, 2020

BREAKING: Gas Company Files Federal Lawsuit To Overturn Small Pennsylvania Township’s Rights of Nature Law…Again

Gas company PGE sues Grant Township over democratically enacted law. The PA Department of Environmental Protection also sued Grant in 2017, making this filing the third lawsuit against the Township (pop. 700) for trying to protect its drinking water.

Dec 11, 2020

Truthout: The American Petroleum Institute Is Working to Kill Voting on Local Measures

Over the past five years, organizers in seven Ohio communities (three cities, four counties) have qualified ballot measures to recognize enforceable rights of ecosystems and human rights to water. All take the historic and bold step of elevating these basic rights above the legal privileges currently enjoyed by private corporations in the United States.

Announcing CELDF's Proposed Rights of Nature Principles

Sneak Peek! -- End of Year Newsletter 2022: We are Nature

Book: ‘Death by Democracy’

Extraction & Pollution

AM I AN ACTIVIST?

CELDF’s Kai Huschke presents: Legalized Chemical Warfare – Community Resistance and Resilience to Protect the Future

Beaver Creek Press Release

Trust the Children, Not the System

Wouldn’t You Say? – Ignorance as License

How Do We Speak for the Trees When Our Human Right to Free Speech is Cut Down?

15 Questions that Are More Useful than “What New Regulation Should We Fight For?”

Wouldn’t You Say? – The Law Did not Save Grant Township’s Water, the People of Grant Did

Wouldn’t You Say? – The Invisible Empire in Plain Sight

Group announces PGE to plug controversial well

Unrepentant and Vindicated: Proposed Frack-Waste Injection Well in Grant Township to be Plugged and Abandoned

Toledo voters approved a bill of rights for Lake Erie. A group wants the same for the Ohio River

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:
Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage

Watch the video: “Water is Us”

Conservation Today: Kai Huschke and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Grant’s Fight is Our Fight

Do No Harm: Protecting the Rights of Mangroves in Ecuador From Injury

Wouldn’t You Say? – Personhood

A Court Hearing for Grant Township: Eight Years Later, and Still No Injection Well

Lucrative Losses & Poisonous Profits Symposium: An Overview of the Domestic and Global Exploitation of Nature and the Way Forward

Corporation Asks Nottingham, N.H. For Legal Fees After Suing Over Climate Ordinance

Newsletter: Asheville Climate Bill of Rights Begins Signature Gathering

Newsletter: Featured Online Film Screenings

Protect the Protectors: Stop Line 3

Newsletter: Momentum for Constitutional Change in Pennsylvania

Grant Township sued again over refusal to allow fracking water

BREAKING: Gas Company Files Federal Lawsuit To Overturn Small Pennsylvania Township’s Rights of Nature Law…Again

Truthout: The American Petroleum Institute Is Working to Kill Voting on Local Measures

Support just, fair, and sustainable communities

Announcing CELDF's Proposed Rights of Nature Principles

Sneak Peek! -- End of Year Newsletter 2022: We are Nature

Book: ‘Death by Democracy’

AM I AN ACTIVIST?

CELDF’s Kai Huschke presents: Legalized Chemical Warfare – Community Resistance and Resilience to Protect the Future

Beaver Creek Press Release

Trust the Children, Not the System

Wouldn’t You Say? – Ignorance as License

How Do We Speak for the Trees When Our Human Right to Free Speech is Cut Down?

15 Questions that Are More Useful than “What New Regulation Should We Fight For?”

Wouldn’t You Say? – The Law Did not Save Grant Township’s Water, the People of Grant Did

Wouldn’t You Say? – The Invisible Empire in Plain Sight

Group announces PGE to plug controversial well

Unrepentant and Vindicated: Proposed Frack-Waste Injection Well in Grant Township to be Plugged and Abandoned

Toledo voters approved a bill of rights for Lake Erie. A group wants the same for the Ohio River

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage

Watch the video: “Water is Us”

Conservation Today: Kai Huschke and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Grant’s Fight is Our Fight

Do No Harm: Protecting the Rights of Mangroves in Ecuador From Injury

Wouldn’t You Say? – Personhood

A Court Hearing for Grant Township: Eight Years Later, and Still No Injection Well

Lucrative Losses & Poisonous Profits Symposium: An Overview of the Domestic and Global Exploitation of Nature and the Way Forward

Corporation Asks Nottingham, N.H. For Legal Fees After Suing Over Climate Ordinance

Newsletter: Asheville Climate Bill of Rights Begins Signature Gathering

Newsletter: Featured Online Film Screenings

Protect the Protectors: Stop Line 3

Newsletter: Momentum for Constitutional Change in Pennsylvania

Grant Township sued again over refusal to allow fracking water

BREAKING: Gas Company Files Federal Lawsuit To Overturn Small Pennsylvania Township’s Rights of Nature Law…Again

Truthout: The American Petroleum Institute Is Working to Kill Voting on Local Measures

Support just, fair, and sustainable communities

The Trains Don’t Always Run on Time:
Yet the System Keeps Rolling, and We’re Just Collateral Damage