This year is an exciting time for the Southern Environmental Law Center. This non-profit organization is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, with the same mission as in 1986 of using law and policy to protect the environment of the South.This year is also exciting for the SELC because it is opening a new office in Nashville, Tenn., an addition to their current offices in Charlottesville, Ashville and Atlanta.
The SELC is unique in that they are all about the South, specifically six states: Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Virginia. Focusing on these six states is all the SELC does, and it knows this region from the mountains to the coast, says Marie Hawthorne, director of development and marketing for SELC. Hawthorne explained the role the SELC plays within these states: “When we say law and policy, it’s a very flexible and powerful and high leverage set of tools. It is working in congress and in the state legislatures to inform lawmakers and help create the laws. The majority of what we do is working with regulatory agencies at the national, regional, state, and local levels to implement the law and policy levels that are in place either at the local or state levels.”
This allows the SELC the skills to go to court to prevent a bad thing from happening or to set up an important precedent that will affect future law and policy, Hawthorne says.
The new SELC office in Tennessee will enable them to expand on their current work in the state, which includes work on air and clean energy issues, transportation, growth and land use, water quality, and preservation of Tennessee’s national treasures such as the Southern Appalachian National Forest and national and state parks.
“We really do a wide variety of work that relates to air quality, water quality – the natural treasures we all think about when we think of the environment – and then the character of our community and countryside,” she says. The SELC also works in close partnership with a broad range of other organizations, complementing their skills, talents and local expertise with SELC’s regional perspective, special law and policy skills that it brings, Hawthorne says.
“When we open [the Tennessee] office, we are going to continue to have a constant local presence and impact, and continue to be part of the Tennessee community with our partner organizations,” she says. This community is already a supporter of the SELC through the Lyndhurst Foundation. “The Lyndhurst Foundation has been a steadfast contributor to the [SELC] since 1986,” according to Bruz Clark, who serves as president of the foundation and has coordinated Lyndhurst’s environmental grant-making program for over two decades.
“Our most recent two-year grant totaling $400,000 was earmarked for the Power of the Law Campaign, and will be used to assist SELC in establishing [the] state office in Tennessee later this year. “SELC’s geographic scope and mission to celebrate and protect the natural heritage and scenic beauty of the southeast region are a close fit with the conservation priorities of Lyndhurst,” Clark says. “We have enjoyed our association with SELC over the past quarter century and are inspired by its leadership and results-oriented approach in promoting energy efficiency, public health, innovative land-use and transportation planning, and the protection of forests, watersheds, wildlife, and working landscapes.”
Allen McCallie, an attorney with Miller and Martin, is a trustee on the SELC board. He says it doesn’t take long for anyone growing up in the Southeast or moving here to work to realize that this region is blessed with extraordinary beauty and natural resources. From beautiful mountain ranges and upland plateaus to large valley rivers and small mountain streams, the Southeast is bursting at the seams with resources worth preserving.
McCallie says he became involved on the SELC board because there are many great organizations in our area that are involved in conservation on a local, regional or even state-wide basis, but virtually no one was out there with the capacity to look at the Southeast as an interconnected whole, and to provide the resources needed to identify and protect our natural resources. SELC has tried, and has notably succeeded, in addressing this challenge over the last 25 years, he says.
“Think for a minute about how many large environmental issues are not localized, and you can see why SELC fills such a vital role across the region,” McCallie says. “For example, air pollution, water pollution, climate change, and long-range energy planning are not ‘local’ issues and do not lend themselves to local solutions. SELC does a great job in staying on top of these problems over the entire region, and, when necessary, taking the tough legal actions in court, which are necessary to enforce existing environmental regulation.”
Issues like state highway pro-ject planning, National Forest management and strip mining/mountaintop coal removal regulation can be very complicated, technical issues, often too deep or difficult for an individual concerned citizen to feel like they can get involved or make much of a difference, McCallie says. “SELC attempts to develop this type of expertise in its staff members to be available to help ‘environmental clients’ through offices in each of our Southeastern states. SELC’s work often requires presence in state capitols and/or the halls of Congress, and the attorneys and support staff assembled by SELC for this work are as good as can be found anywhere in the country,” he says.
McCallie’s role is on the SELC’s large board of trustees which is drawn from people from the Southeast area who have been dedicated for many years to conservation causes.
McCallie has served on the SELC’s Litigation Review Committee an independent com-
mittee of the board that must review and approve all active litigation matters before SELC can initiate a court proceeding, for several years. He says the real nuts and bolts work of SELC is done at the level of the staff attorneys, and it’s where the real strength and expertise lies.
“I have no doubt that those of us in the South have continued to enjoy better quality of life, outdoor recreational opportunities, and environmental health than many other areas in the country, and I am confident that SELC has been a major part in keeping this so over the past 25 years,” he says.