UCLA Environmental Law Clinic students travel to the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Mississippi Gulf Coast to provide legal services

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005, the storm devastated the Gulf Coast town of Pascagoula, Mississippi.  Residents of the heavily-industrialized and lower-income town now had to cope with the destruction unleashed by the storm and the subsequent release of untold amounts of hazardous pollutants into the environment. 

In the midst of the town's recovery efforts, Chevron announced a major expansion of its Pascagoula refinery - the company's largest in the United States.  With thousands of Pascagoula citizens living in FEMA-issued trailers and struggling to get their lives back together, the town was ill-equipped to monitor the proposed expansion and ensure that the permit process adequately represented its interests.

Along came the UCLA Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic to the legal rescue.

Under the supervision of Professor Timothy Malloy and assisting instructor Ethan Elkind, eleven clinic students spent the past spring semester as the sole provider of legal services on the refinery expansion to the citizens of Pascagoula and its local Sierra Club Chapter.  The students worked diligently to master the technical details of oil refinery processes and to navigate the complex maze of state and federal Clean Air Act regulations that govern the proposed permit. 

After months of negotiating directly with Chevron representatives, the students traveled to Pascagoula in April to participate in the public hearing held on the draft permit.  The students spoke at the hearing and informed the public as to their findings.  The event received extensive coverage in the local print and television media.  "We still have significant concerns about the permit as it is proposed," Professor Malloy told officials at the hearing.  "Our conclusion is that the proposed permit, as it is, falls short of what the law requires. There are provisions that are so vague as to be practically unenforceable."  Second year law student Jamie Kendall told regulators at the hearing that the permit "should be denied" and cited the permit's failure to "include applicable regulatory requirements, consent decree requirements and application assumptions."  Third year law student Charlie Henty added comments regarding Chevron's "improper cost estimating," while second year student Amy Kusol discussed Chevron's "overly exaggerated" emissions decreases for various proposed facility upgrades.

The students received praise from community members for their work on the project.  "These young law students provided detailed technical comments in a very professional manner," said Becky Gillette of the Mississippi Sierra Club.  "They spoke the same language as the [Mississippi] regulators, and I am hopeful improvements in the project will result.  We owe them a debt of thanks."

Ultimately, the students themselves may have been the biggest beneficiaries.  As third year law student Gloria Labbad reflected, "Participating in the [environmental law] clinic this semester was without a doubt my most rewarding experience in law school.  It gave us an opportunity to apply what we learned in the classroom to a real-world situation.  However, the most rewarding aspect of the clinic was being part of a community's effort to control emissions of cancer-causing air contaminants."