Great Rivers Environmental Law Center

Patricia Schuba, president of the board of Labadie Environmental Organization, discusses what people can do to promote environmental change.

For those concerned about Superfund sites in Missouri and Illinois, the EPA’s newly announced cleanup plans for 49 sites across the U.S come as great news. But community members say it’s also a reminder of just how much work still needs to be done.

We wanted to share a follow-up conversation with Myisha Johnson, one of the three working members of State Street Tenant Resistance and the founder of Community First Plus, a new housing and environmental justice organization. She’s been connecting the dots between health problems and pollution from facilities like Kinder Morgan for over a decade. In this episode, we hear how Myisha felt when residents like her were asked to sign onto an administrative complaint to the EPA about the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Then, attorneys Sarah Rubenstein and Bob Menees of Great Rivers Environmental Law Center will share about what happened when they filed the administrative complaint to the EPA on behalf of the Missouri and St. Louis City NAACP and Dutchtown South Community Corporation.This is Part II of a two-part series on how tenants are organizing to hold problem landlords accountable, and what happens when large companies and the state need to be held accountable too. If you haven’t listened to Part I: Tenant Rights and Resistance, listen to it now!

Earlier this year, after being approached by the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center, Karisa Gilman-Hernandez and her colleagues at Dutchtown South Community Corporation added excessive air pollution to the list of things they're no longer willing to see the community they serve just put up with. She offered her perspective to "St. Louis on the Air," and host Sarah Fenske also talked with Great Rivers staff attorneys Bob Menees and Sarah Rubenstein about why the pollution burden in the Dutchtown area caught their eye — and how their legal efforts there fit in with other issues in their portfolio.

The Great Rivers Environmental Law Center, on behalf of three Missouri organizations, has filed a complaint with the EPA over permits issued by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The complaint says the permits allow excessive pollution in predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods.

Updated 9:40 a.m. with a statement from city officials. The St. Louis NAACP is considering a federal civil rights lawsuit to force St. Louis officials to…

Environmental attorneys have petitioned the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to ban commercial trapping of the state's freshwater turtles. The…

Updated at 5:00 p.m.A St. Louis-based environmental group has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for failing to provide information…

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 14, 2010 - "Litigation is not for the faint of heart," prominent St. Louis environmental lawyer…