Where do they work?
Who works there?
What do they do?
What have they accomplished?
Financial data
How do they raise money?
Media and public discussion of the organization
Assessment by greendonor contributors

Earthjustice works primarily within the USA and to a much smaller degree with international environmental matters, most of which have some direct connection with the U.S.

Its headquarters are in Oakland, California, as is its International office, and it has regional offices in: Bozeman (Montana), Denver, Honolulu, Juneau (Alaska), Oakland, Seattle, Tallahassee, and Washington, DC. It also operates an environmental law clinic at Stanford University.

The Earthjustice website gives a complete staff listing, showing 121 positions: 42 at the headquarters in Oakland and 79 at the eight regional offices and one international office.

The regional offices each have a Managing Attorney, from three to seven Attorneys (there are 38 in total), an Office Manager, and one or two legal and/or office assistants. Its Washington, D.C. office also has staff who work in its Policy and Legislation program, including Legislative Counsels and Associates, a Judicial Counsel and Judicial Nominations Associate and Policy Press Secretary.

The International office has a Managing Attorney/Director of International Programs; 2 Attorneys; a Staff Scientist, a Law Clerk, and a Research Associate/Office Manager.

Earthjustice's headquarters is staffed with an Executive Director; Vice Presidents of each of the following departments (number of additional staff in parenthesis): Human Resources (1), Programs (1), Development (17), Finance & Administration (10), and Communications (9).

Eartjustice's Annual Report for 2003 lists 101 people as "Volunteers, Interns & Law Clerks" among its headquarters staff.

There is a 31-member Board of Trustees that includes a 7-member Executive Committee. It also has 7 Honorary Trustees.

Earthjustice is a non-profit law firm that works through the courts to enforce and strengthen environmental laws. Originally formed as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in 1965, and taking its current name in 1997, Earthjustice takes government agencies to court for failing to enforce U.S. environmental laws, and takes corporations to court for breaking these laws. It does that on behalf of various clients, often including NGOs like Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society, or on its own. It has successfully defended against efforts to weaken clean air and clean water regulations and has halted attempts to reverse the protection of national forests and wilderness reserves.

Earthjustice has a Policy and Legislation program at its Washington, D.C. office that works to "halt legislative backlash" that follows its courtroom victories, as well as to protect environmental laws and influence environmental policies.

Earthjustice also runs an environmental law clinic at Stanford University, training students in public interest environmental law. It has expanded to address global human rights and trade and the environment issues.

The organization's docket in 2005 consisted of 158 cases, in the following program areas.

Program Area	Number of cases in 2005
Air	20
Forests	14
Health and Communities	26
Oceans	10
Public Lands	21
Water	29
Wildlife	38
TOTAL	158

A short explanation of each case is given on Earthjustice's (highly readable) website. The number, breadth and substance of these actions is very impressive.

In an ideal world, agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would fulfill their mandates of environmental and wildlife/wildland protection, but the reality is far different, and the EPA in particular is a frequent target of Earthjustice legal action.

Questions

Q: How well does Earthjustice evaluate scientific information related to the cases takes on? Some issues are technically complex. For example, Earthjustice's International docket includes a case in which it is opposing a lawsuit by a Canadian energy company against the United States over measures to phase out use of the gasoline additive MTBE. A Blue Ribbon Panel convened by the EPA did in fact recommend reducing the use of MTBE nationwide, but the case against the chemical is complex. MTBE has been the primary agent for producing oxygenated ("reformulated") gasoline, which results in lower ground-level ozone and carbon monoxide and which was been mandated by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 for use in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution. Health effects from MTBE in water are of concern, but arguably not dire. The MTBE Blue Ribbon Panel concluded that MTBE problems have primarily been taste and odor concerns and that only in rare instances has MTBE been found in drinking water supplies at levels "well above EPA's drinking water advisory and some state standards". EPA's drinking water advisory for MTBE of 1997 states that MTBE concentrations of 20-40 parts/billion or less will likely avert unpleasant taste and odor effects, and this concentration is about 20,000 to 100,000 times lower than the range of exposure levels in which cancer or noncancer effects were observed in animal toxicology studies.

Q: A related question is whether Earthjustice selects its issues on a priority basis or whether it takes on cases as they are brought to it.

Q: What percentage of their cases are successful, partially successful, and unsuccessful?

Earthjustice claims "a major role in the development of environmental law" and a track record including "many landmark victories". It has a large docket of cases that appear substantive and important. It has a webpage describing its "major accomplishments", which include the following: expanding Redwood National Park; increased protection of old growth forests in the Pacifc Northwest and Alaska; protection of critical habitat for Steller sea lions in Alaska; forcing the EPA to strengthen air pollution regulations; suspension of motorcyle races in California deserts harboring rare desert toirtoises and desert plants; amendment of the Endangered Species Act to include habitat as well as individual animals; a successful suit against the Union Oil Company for discharging contaminated water into San Francisco Bay; defending Native Hawaiians' traditional subsistence gathering of shrimp (threatened by a golf course and resort development); increased protection of Alaska parks from placer mining; and addressing environmental contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon homeland of the Huaorani Indians from oil exploration by US companies.

In addition to its court and legislative successes, Earthjustice's work presumably has the effect of keeping government agencies and legislators more on their toes than they would be otherwise, and producing some degree of deterrance effect on attempts to weaken environmental protection.

What follows is a small sample of the organization's achievements.

Through publicity and court actions, Earthjustice has used the environmental agreements of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to draw attention to the failure of governments to enforce environmental laws.

Earthjustice sometimes achieves success even when it loses in court, as it did when it filed a lawsuit to prevent Walt Disney from developing the Mineral King Valley in Sierra Nevada into a ski resort. Earthjustice was able to block the project pending an environmental study. The organization persisted with litigation and Disney grew tired of the notoriety and pulled out of the project.

In May 2001, Earthjustice, representing several conservation groups, filed suit when the state of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) exempted concentrated animal feeding operations — large dairies and feedlots — from obtaining discharge permits for their polluted runoff. In March 2004, the Florida Circuit Court ruled that these exemptions were illegal loopholes, and that the DEP was required to protect water quality from these polluting dairy and feedlot operations.

When the US Fish & Wildlife Service rejected the plan proposed by the state of Wyoming and several livestock and hunting interests to permit unregulated killing of wolves throughout most of the Wyoming range, Earthjustice defended the USFWS. On March 18, 2005, the federal court ruled against the state of Wyoming and its allies. The state is appealing the decision. Nonetheless, the decision in favour of USFWS has allowed safe passage for wolf packs outside Yellowstone National Park.

In a March 2005 ruling, the federal district court rejected the US Fish & Wildlife Service's approval of a massive industrial mining operation on the edge of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. It found that the USFWS overlooked serious concerns that the proposed Rock Creek Mine would drive the region's grizzly bears and bull trout to extinction. The mine would have dumped up to three million gallons of waste water each day into the Clark Fork River, and threatened to destroy the bull trout population in Rock Creek, a tributary of the Clark Fork. The proposed mining operation would also have resulted in the loss of more than 7,000 acres of grizzly habitat.

In the last few years, Earthjustice has been vigilent in helping to safeguard environmental laws the Bush administration has been trying to erode. Here are several examples of this work:

Shortly after taking office, the Bush administration modified the Roadless Area Conservation Rule by removing protections for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. Earthjustice defended the rule, intervening in nine separate suits, and the rule has yet to suffer a fatal setback. After nearly three and a half years, not one road has been built in an area protected by the Roadless Rule, nor have any trees been cut.

The public's right to challenge Forest Service timber sales was upheld because of a suit by Earthjustice. Under the Bush administration, the Undersecretary of Agriculture signed off on a post-fire logging sale involving 46,000 acres in the Bitterroot National Forest without seeking public hearings. In February 2002, Earthjustice's actions resulted in an agreement between conservation groups and the Forest Service such that 27,000 acres were protected, while some logging in an already roaded portion of the Bitterroot was allowed.

Shortly after the Bush administration took over, mining and energy companies and off-road vehicle manufacturers brought suits challenging the establishment of monuments that were established to protect acres of scientific and archeological interest. Among them were the Canyon of the Ancients in Colorado, Giant Sequoia National Monument in California, and Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona. Earthjustice intervened and successfully fended off every case brought by industrial groups to overturn the national monument designations.

In April 2003, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act and revealed a timber industry campaign to triple the amount of timber cut from Northwest federal forests. This would have weakened protection for salmon, clean water, and old growth ecosystems under the Northwest Forest Plan. Earthjustice intervened in industry suits and succeeded in keeping critical habitat in place for northern spotted owls. Earthjustice is still working to protect salmon.

Earthjustice worked with other national environmental groups and with pro-environment senators to defeat the energy bill based on the Bush administration's National Energy Policy. Of particular concern was the provision to authorize exploration of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Earthjustice participated in a five-year effort to defeat industry's attacks on the new standards of the Clean Air Act. However, the Bush administration has still failed to implement the standards that the act requires. Earthjustice returned to court again in 2002 and was successful in requiring EPA to identify the areas that need to be cleaned up. As a result, EPA issued a rule in April 2004 identifying hundreds of counties around the nation where pollution levels exceed the new ozone standard.

Finally, Earthjustice reports progress in its effort to persuade the United Nations that the right to a safe, healthful environment is a basic human right.

Table 1: Basic financial data for Earthjustice for the most recent years.

FISCAL YEAR	FINANCIAL DATA rounded to million (M) or thousand (K)		EXPENDITURES percent of total expenses
2004 (ending July 31, 2004)	Total revenue: Total expenses: Total assets (yr-end): Total liabilities (yr-end):	$21.8M $19.8M $32.7M $4.93M	Programs: Administration: Fundraising: ------------------ wages/benefits: professional & consulting fees:	64% 10% 25% ------------------ 55% 12%
2003 (ending July 31, 2003)	Total revenue: Total expenses: Total assets (yr-end): Total liabilities (yr-end):	$19.3M $18.9M $29.7M $4.50M	Programs: Administration: Fundraising: ------------------ wages/benefits: professional & consulting fees:	65% 11% 24% ------------------ 53% 12%
2002 (ending July 31, 2002)	Total revenue: Total expenses: Total assets (yr-end): Total liabilities (yr-end):	$18.0M $21.1M $28.6M $4.76M	Programs: Administration: Fundraising: ------------------ wages/benefits: professional & consulting fees:	70% 11% 19% ------------------ 49% 14%
NOTES:
Source: IRS Form 990 (courtesy of www.guidestar.org).
Assets: in the most recent year (2003-2004), the main components were: securities (73%) contributions receivable (14%) land, buildings, & equipment (7%) pledges receivable (3%) prepaid expenses and deferred charges (1%) savings and temporary cash investments (1%)
Liabilities: in the most recent year (2003-2004), the main components were: liabilities relating to split interest gift agreements (71%) accounts payable & accrued expenses (25%)
The figure for wages/benefits is the amount across all 3 categories (program, administrative and fundraising) as a percent of total expenses. Likewise for professional/consulting/contract fees.
Professional fundraising fees averaged $2,083,334 for the three years (35% of fundraising expenditures).

Table 2: Breakdown of revenue for the 2003-2004 financial year.

Revenue Category	As percent of total revenues
Private individuals, companies, foundations1	79%
Program service revenue (including government contracts)	16%
Net investment income & interest	4%
Other2	1%
NOTES: Of public contributions, 91% were in cash and 9% were non-cash donations.

1 We will ask for a breakdown of this category into the three components.
2 "Other" revenue: net revenue from: rent, asset sales other than securities, inventory sales, and special events, plus "other income".

Table 3: Breakdown of program expenditures by program.

Program	As percent of total program spending
Legal work	77%
Increase awareness of public, media and policy makers of environmental issues and the law	20%
Grassroots and direct lobbying	3%

Lobbying expenditures amounted to $414K in 2003-2004, of which 26% was for grassroots lobbying. Lobbying made up 3% of program spending.

Table 4: Compensation for senior full-time staff for the 2003-2004 financial year.

Compensation	Number of individuals	Job title(s)
$175,000	1	Executive Director
$101K-$133K	6	Vice Presidents
$113K-$122K	5	Attorneys

Table 5: Compensation for the five highest paid independent contractors (firms or individuals) for professional services in 2003-2004.

Service	Compensation
graphics & printing - direct mail	$281K
consulting - direct mail	$227K
consulting - direct mail	$226K
consulting - direct mail	$225K
consulting - direct mail	$176K

Earthjustice's 2003 annual report gives a breakdown of "sources of support" as follows: individuuals 45%; foundations 36%; donated services 11% and court awards 8%. But it also shows a long list of companies and foundations providing corporate matching gifts, so we don't know where corporate donations were accounted for.

Data from the IRS Form 990 (Table 5, above) indicates that direct mail was an important method of fundraising. [further info pending]

[This section awaits the accumulation of input from visitors to the greendonor site.]