Motion DENIED.

• Author: WU, FRANK
• Position: Louisiana retaliates against Tulane Law school environmental law clinic

Louisiana retaliates against Tulane law students

Richard Exnicios was a student at Tulane Law School. Wanting some hands-on experience, he enrolled in an environmental law clinic. Soon he and other students at the clinic were given an interesting case. They represented residents of Convent--a town of 2,676 people, 80 percent of whom are African American, and 40 percent of whom live below the poverty line. These residents organized their community to oppose a plan by the Shintech Corporation to construct the world's largest polyvinyl chloride plant near their homes.

Encouraged by tax breaks from the state of Louisiana, Shintech hoped to build a $700 million facility on 3,700 acres near Convent. It was expected to produce 6.8 million gallons of waste water daily and release 600,000 pounds of toxic emissions annually. The Shintech operation would have joined another dozen facilities in the area known as "Cancer Alley."

"Once I went out there to Convent, met a client, her kids, her grandkids, I realized they're fighting for their lives, and we're these people's last resort," recalls Exnicios. With that sense of responsibility, Exnicios and his colleagues dedicated themselves to their work. They skipped Mardi Gras to prepare a 2,000-page response to a motion from the company.

"To me," Exnicios said, "that was the best education. I learned more than I did from two years of classes."

The Tulane students were able to forestall the project and persuade the Environmental Protection Agency to override a state decision favoring Shintech. As a result, the company announced last September that it would reduce the size of the plant, move it twenty-five miles upriver, and place better controls on its emissions.

"We're only doing what any good law firm would do," says Tulane professor Robert Kuehn, who directed the clinic.

But even before the Tulane students had prevailed, they drew the wrath of Governor Mike Foster.

Speaking to the New Orleans Business Council in the spring of 1997, Foster declared that the clinic students had "gone too far." He described them as "a bunch of modern-day vigilantes who are just making up reasons to run businesses out of the state." Foster appeared on local television and called the law school faculty "a bunch of big fat professors drawing big paychecks to run people out of Louisiana." During the TV program, Foster said the clinic clients ought to "use their own money" to hire legal counsel. He said he would call for an...