Power to the People:Seattle Residents Sue Big Polluters

[BR_Parkway]

The Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, a group of concerned and very active Seattle residents led by Sue Joerger (pictured above), has been utilizing the 1972 Clean Water Act to bring lawsuits against companies who are not meeting federal regulations. The law empowers citizens to bring lawsuits against individual polluters, and the Soundkeeper Alliance has been aggressively focusing on the biggest culprits with big results.

While defendants argue that companies are negligible polluters and that the suits slow the efforts of businesses to comply with regulations, Washington’s Department of Ecology supports the Alliance. Ron Lavigne, a senior member of the Department of Ecology, states that: “Congress recognized that given limited resources, states would have to set priorities … and there may be enforcement cases could not pursue. That’s the role citizens should be fulfilling, and generally that is the role these Soundkeeper suits are playing.” While none of the suits have gone to trial, most have resulted in significant pollution reductions and large business donations to ecologically-minded causes- by the offending businesses. As Joerger explains, “It’s Ecology’s job, but when they’re not enforcing the Clean Water Act, that’s the absolute brilliance of the law — it allows citizens to step in.”

It is inspiring to see citizens take action against companies that are polluting water runoff and not meeting regulations. It is equally baffling to read that same company’s lawyers claim that their client would have complied anyway or that the lawsuit was actually getting in the way of compliance. The Soundkeeper Alliance is a model of lawful, aggressive citizen activism that operates effectively within existing laws. Each of us who considers ourselves an Eco-activist can benefit from riding some of the Alliance’s wind and Sounding off on our own local causes.

http://planetsave.com/blog/2009/01/06/power-to-the-people/