Lawyers Empowering Communities to Ban Fracking | http://www.cedclaw.org
CEDC is a public interest law firm, founded in 2009 by Ithaca based attorneys David Slottje and Helen Slottje. Together the Slottjes have over 30 years of combined “big law” experience, and have turned their knowledge of and experience in representing large corporate interests into weapons to fight corporate domination of our natural resources and communities.
CEDC’s goals are to protect the common wealth – water and other natural resources – using home rule and the public trust doctrine to combat corporate greed, to empower and engage citizens in the democratic process, and to facilitate conversion to sustainable energy sources (in large part by taking fracked gas “off the table”).
CEDC began by developing legal strategies, and engaging in public education and advocacy designed to prevent as many New York state communities as possible from becoming resource extraction colonies of the methane gas industry. We believe that fracking is the ultimate impediment to a clean energy future, because proceeding with fracking will literally cook our planet with methane emissions. Our original and innovative idea of using land use laws to prohibit fracking (even though localities may not regulate fracking) has been supported by every court that has considered the issue.
CEDC proposes to add a new layer to our work, a layer that is built upon the foundation that a community has a right to protect itself from fracking. Namely that communities have the right to protect their natural resources, to the argument that the local and state government have the obligation to defend public trust resources and the commonwealth (foremost water and from privatization and destruction.
CEDC’s activities include participating in educational forums on using land use laws to prohibit fracking, drafting local moratoriums and zoning amendments, assisting lawyers across the state in using the CEDC model to write their own local laws, and defending municipalities that have been sued by groups seeking to overturn these local laws. CEDC has taken a leadership role in challenging the SGEIS for gas drilling and the accompanying regulations, working to derail the enactment of gas drilling regulations by putting the DEC on notice that its process violated state procedural requirements and that it would sue if the DEC proceeded. CEDC also provides advice to a wide range of local Tompkins County groups, and groups across the state on local board conflicts of interest, understanding DEC permitting process, proposed disposal sites, pipeline proceedings. Recently, CEDC has taken a very active role in challenging the repowering proceeding with natural gas of the coal fired Cayuga power plant. CEDC supports the American Clean Energy Agenda and participates in nationwide conferences developing strategies to move away from water intensive (and destructive) energy production to clean, renewable and sustainable energy choices.
CEDC is nimble, assertive, innovative, and unrelenting. We do not have industry contributors to placate, and we do not have and would not accept a seat at some regulatory table. We provide hope and make available a framework of legal tools to citizen groups that are anxious and fearful of industry domination of their communities. We connect leaders across groups with one other, and are a trusted conduit between the national environmental groups (many of which are roundly distrusted by anti-frackers) and community level organizations. We have earned invaluable credibility with the grassroots by literally crisscrossing the state, meeting with people in diners, living rooms, back porches and libraries, and presenting at literally hundreds of town board and similar community meetings.
CEDC empowers communities to use land use laws (zoning) and other local laws to protect their health, safety and welfare from dangerous fossil fuel development, notably irresponsible fracking.
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