“You’ve got to be an environmental scientist or an engineer to respond to these permits," Gary resident Doreen Carey said during an October panel held at Indiana University Northwest.
Though he may not be an engineer, attorney Mike Zoeller has been helping Lake County community groups parse dense environmental permits for over a year. Now Zoeller is working with the Conservation Law Center, which operates out of Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, to establish an Environmental Legal Aid Program that will provide free legal services to residents of Gary, Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago — all cities that have been overburdened with pollution for decades.
Question: What initially drew you to environmental justice issues, and how has your commitment to this cause evolved throughout your legal career?
Ferraro: Early on in my practice, I was involved in a legal challenge of a Clean Air Act permit that Indiana’s environmental agency issued for the BP oil refinery inWhiting, Indiana. The permit authorized BP to expand its already massive refinery on the shores of Lake Michigan to process heavy crude oil extracted from the Canadian tar sands and piped in via the controversial Enbridge pipeline. Making matters worse, this permit exempted BP from having to install pollution controls. This allowed for the release of cancer-causing air toxics, smog-forming pollutants, and climate-warming greenhouse gases from processing tar sands, which is a fuel even dirtier than coal.
Conservation Law Center is making that investment each day by working to protect and improve the health, diversity, beauty and resilience of the planet and defend our shared natural heritage in Indiana and beyond.
In Essroc Cement Corp. v. Clark County Bd. of Zoning Appeals & Sierra Club, the Center has been working to fight hazardous waste pollution from contaminating the air of neighborhoods and schools in southern Indiana. So far, the latest decision remains in favor of Clark County.
