Trip: Notes from our President

Trip Era Begins At Earthjustice

In Brief: Earthjustice's new President, Trip Van Noppen, emerged from his childhood in North Carolina enchanted and repulsed by what he had experienced. In his own words, Trip describes how those early days shaped his character and may shape the future of Earthjustice.

01/15/08

(Editor's Note: Earthjustice's new President, Trip Van Noppen, distinguished himself as a powerful legal advocate for human and environmental rights before joining Earthjustice in 2005 as Vice President for Litigation. In his first monthly column, he describes his path into this work.)

My passion about social justice and my passion about the environment developed out of where I grew up and the circumstances in which I lived. As a boy roaming the mountains of North Carolina, I experienced the awe and wonder of nature, but I also saw enormous social and economic disparities, for this was the segregated south in the 1960s. People suffered under rules that were stacked against them, so -- as a young man -- I decided to do something.

I became a lawyer to learn how to use the machinery of government and the leverage of people's political rights to make change happen. I started in a small, progressive law firm in North Carolina that represented people who had been discriminated against in their jobs or at the voting booth or injured by unsafe working conditions . There, I was able to really connect with people and with what was going on in their lives. I found that I loved going into the courtroom and trying to persuade a judge or a jury by making a human connection -- a story-telling connection. Not just reciting the law, but showing what is really at stake in a compelling way.

Eventually I began to do more and more environmental cases like representing people who lived near an out-of-control hazardous waste incinerator. The plant workers were developing all kinds of serious medical problems, and the plant's neighbors had to wear gas masks to go outside their homes. It took nearly seven years of litigation to shut that place down and start a clean-up and to get compensation flowing to the injured employees and neighbors -– a long, hard slog of a fight that was very gratifying to win.

Another time, after I moved to doing full-time environmental litigation at the Southern Environmental Law Center, I represented oyster growers in North Carolina who were having problems with water pollution. Developers had dug 18 miles of massive ditches to drain coastal wetlands, fouling the premier oyster beds in the state. I spent some cold days in December and some hot ones in July with one of the oyster growers in his boat, checking water quality, tracking pollution, running up on alligators on the banks. But through successful cases in the state and federal courts, we got the ditches filled back in, the site restored, and funds to make other improvements to water quality. The cases breathed some life back into the growers' way of making a living.

It's been fascinating to evolve from litigating cases to working full-time to strengthen an organization and make it more effective. Although I sometimes long for the courtroom, the transition has actually been easy because I'm passionate about the importance of an organization like Earthjustice and the essential work it does. The responsibilities I have today -- guiding an organization that enables 55 great lawyers across the country to bring the most important cases and to achieve the biggest impact -- is just as fulfilling as doing the litigation myself.

I'm excited about continuing Earthjustice's long-time and very effective work protecting public lands and wildlife and bringing landmark air quality and water quality cases. I am equally excited about our expanding work on global warming and environmental health. Last year we had major successes in global warming cases and our investment in that fight will continue to grow. We've long done work on health issues, addressing some of the ways that environmental problems affect people, and we are now at the threshold of an exciting expansion in that area as well.

We are making great progress with our litigation all over the country and so there is a lot of reason for hope. The courts continue to have a critical role in shaping environmental policy, and no one has an impact through the courts like Earthjustice. I look forward to reporting back to you regularly, and welcome your thoughts and questions.

(Click here to read Trip's view of the environmental movement and his vision of Earthjustice's role in meeting challenges of the future.)

Trip Van Noppen, President
trip@earthjustice.org