the river

legal + technical levers - resources and tools

Legal and technical levers you can pull on to move your vision into action. Click on the River points below to find resources to help you navigate your situation.

River Table of Contents

  • Upriver Resources - You have time to make your vision come to action and want to make big, long-term impact.

  • Midriver Resources - You’ve heard rumors about something in your town or know of a proposed new development.

  • Downriver Resources - You are in crisis or harm has already been done.

Click here for Current (Community Organizing) Resources and Tools.

 

What are your strengths?

  • You build and nurture strong relationships, and build bonds between others.

    You may... be adaptable, believe things happen for a reason, believe in and love to help others, can feel the emotions of others, always helping others to find agreement, include others and make them feel welcomed, see each person’s uniqueness, see the glass as ‘half full’, have a few really close friends.

  • You take charge, speak up, and make sure others are heard.

    You may... speak up, take charge, be able to explain things and use your words well, be competitive, strive for excellence, believe in yourself, like to be appreciated and stand out from others, love meeting new people and getting them to like you.

  • You see and stretch thinking for the future.

    You may... ask lots of questions, like having ‘hard data’, learn from what’s happened in the past, dream about the future, get excited about new ideas, love to learn new things, love to think things through, find the best way forward even when things are confusing.

  • You make things turn into reality.

    You may... love to get things done, keep track of lots of moving pieces, have strong core values that give you direction, expect rules to be applied to everyone, plan ahead, love routines, set goals for yourself, feel responsible to follow-through, love to solve problems.

We all have our unique strengths. These are the activities that come naturally and that make us feel happy when we do them. Knowing your strengths can help you focus your organizing work on what you do best, and make sure you bring other people with you who can fill in your gaps.

The goal = have a full team that has all four strengths.

 

upriver

You have time to make your vision come to action and want to make big, long-term impact.

 

create or update comprehensive plan

A comprehensive plan is an official roadmap made by your county or municipality. The plan tells where the municipality wants to go in the next 5-10 years.

Usually - but not always - both counties & local municipalities have comprehensive plans.

Decision-Making Power = Municipal governing body and/or County governing body

update zoning laws

...to change the rules for different types of land use.

Zoning laws are the rules about how land in your community can be used. Zoning shapes our communities by informing where housing, industries, school, and parks are located, who can access them, and how they are built.

Zoning laws usually follow the roadmap the comprehensive plan has laid out.

Updating zoning laws can play a BIG role in the future of your community because it can create the conditions that could set your vision up for success.

Sometimes both counties & local municipalities can have zoning plans. The county’s zoning plan dictates how municipalities can organize their land.

Decision-Making Power = Municipal governing body and/or County governing body

  • Zoning has been used to create segregation and unequal access to opportunities, and higher exposure to environmental hazards for households with low-income and households of color. Here are some zoning strategies that can help Environmental Justice:

    • Public Participation: Meaningfully bring diverse groups of neighbors to be part of the process to create or update a comprehensive plan and zoning laws. This makes sure that zoning is developed to reflect the needs of the community. Zoning laws can also strive to be more proactive and inclusive of public input during decision-making of future developments by requiring more notification; additional or different structure for public meetings; and transparent and accessible assessments and reports by potential developers.

    • Citizen Involvement: Local boards (zoning hearing board, for example) make a lot of decisions that impact environmental justice, but often those who are part of these boards may not represent the full community. Appoint board members who represent the diversity of the community as a whole - including race, gender, income, homeownership, renters, and age.

    • Environmental Impact Reviews and Analysis: Require that developers address demographics and Environmental Justice matters in Environmental Impact Assessments (including: traffic studies, acoustic studies, air quality studies, hydrological studies, geological studies, pre-development and post-development testing). This can give municipalities ability to review and seek to ensure that cities have the power to reject these applications or require changes that mitigate their impacts. It also increases accountability and transparency.

    • Community Impact Statements: Mandate a process where members of the impacted community make a statement about what they believe the positive or negative impacts will be if a particular use is approved or allowed to expand. Local officials could be required to take the results of the community group's CIS into consideration.

    • Eliminating Non-Conforming Uses: Usually, developments that have been in the community already are 'grandfathered' in, which means they do can continue functioning even if they do not meet a town's new zoning laws. You could:

      • In some states, you can adopt a local amortization law to eliminate the use. Amortization laws give developments that do not follow new zoning laws a certain amount of time, or a change in owners, to either comply with new zoning laws or stop functioning. Unfortunately, this is not legal in PA, and may not be legal in West Virginia and Ohio.

      • Pass new zoning laws. If you change the underlying zoning rules and the existing development tries to change into a different type of development in the future, they will need to re-apply for a non-conditional use approval. For example: imagine a new zoning rule creates a residential neighborhood, and a restaurant has been in that neighborhood for years. The restaurant can continue to exist in that residential neighborhood because it’s already there. If the restaurant gets popular and wants to expand, it can build a patio without any problem because it’s still the same business – serving food. But now let’s imagine the restaurant wants to change to be a bar. This may not be allowed under the new zoning rules because it is now trying to operate as something different – it would need to try and apply to be a non-conforming use. This gives the municipality a chance to say ‘no, you can’t – this doesn’t align with our new zoning rules.’

      • Pass and enforce public nuisance ordinances to meet the updated plan and zoning codes and create accountability for industries to follow updated laws.

      • Ohio law allows zoning regulations to eliminate non-conforming uses if the use has been voluntarily discontinued for at least six months.

    • Conditional or Special Use: Ensure new developments that may harm health or wellbeing comply with additional requirements before they are approved.

    • Overlay Zones: Create additional requirements over an existing zoning district to ensure additional protections. Overlay zones designate specific areas within the community that require higher protections. For example, environmental, public health, or historic zones.

    • Industrial Siting + Buffer zones: create districts that serve as a transition between two or more uses that may not be good next to each other.

      • Watch Out! If your goal is to have a new zoning map to keep all industry together in a specific industrial zone, make sure to also think about how it could still lead to inequities. Why? Historically and today, policies and funding have meant that low-income neighbors and communities of color are more likely to live near industrial zones. Updating zoning to mandate that industry can only be in this part of a neighborhood could make it worse by inviting more or higher polluting industries located near low income or households of color. To decrease that, think about buffer zones to include physical screening, landscaping, significant setbacks, open spaces, affordable housing programs, and even other lower-intensity commercial uses.

    • Exactions and mitigation fees: fees that municipalities can assess developers to reimburse the costs associated with their new development that can be spent on Environmental Justice issues.

    • Banning - ban specific land use or industries that harm health and/or environment. This is the most direct way to impact change but can be challenged in court and may have significant industry push-back.

      • Watch Out! Exclusionary zoning says you cannot create any zoning ordinance that prohibits an economically viable use everywhere in a municipality. The question to ask is: when a zoning ordinance is created, at that time, does it prevent some particular business from operating anywhere in the municipality? It often arises when municipalities try to exclude something with extreme setbacks. For example, an ordinance that says that methadone clinics or fracking wells cannot be placed anywhere within 3,000 feet of a school, church, playground, or nursing home. While that ordinance is not outright saying it’s not allowed, it's also limited it so strictly that there wouldn’t be a place in the whole municipality that fits the description, which means it has, effectively, prohibited this across the whole municipality which is not allowed.

  • This activity may be easier for someone or a team who has these strengths:

    • Relationship Building + Feeling

    • Influencing + Motivating

    • Strategy + Thinking

    • Executing + Doing

  • What Is Zoning Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fbfikDbRtU

    Exclusionary Zoning and It's Effect of Racial Discrimination: https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/06/17/exclusionary-zoning-its-effect-on-racial-discrimination-in-the-housing-market/

    Understanding Exclusionary Zoning and It's Impact on Concentrated Poverty: https://tcf.org/content/facts/understanding-exclusionary-zoning-impact-concentrated-poverty/?agreed=1

    How Zoning Can Reduce Pollution: https://millmanland.com/industry-news/how-zoning-laws-can-reduce-pollution/?fbclid=IwAR3i4Wg8ulYKmGerTDUQyAL0px7-lqycxgV6O25V30h3Nu5amlMyz2raOcU#:~:text=Prohibiting%20Specific%20Land%20Uses,the%20environment%20and%20public%20health

    Local Policies for Environmental Justice, A National Scan: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/local-policies-environmental-justice-national-scan-tishman-201902.pdf

    Chicago Looks to Overhaul Its Zoning and Land Use Policies to Address Environmental Discrimination: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15082023/chicago-environmental-justice-zoning-policies-pollution-cumulative-impact/

    Ohio Zoning 101: https://odh.ohio.gov/wps/wcm/connect/gov/791e1124-7fd6-4782-8392-367a68257391/FAQ_Factsheet_Land+Use+Zoning.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CONVERT_TO=url&CACHEID=ROOTWORKSPACE.Z18_M1HGGIK0N0JO00QO9DDDDM3000-791e1124-7fd6-4782-8392-367a68257391-mJMzfuy

create or update local laws (ordinances)

Ordinances are local laws that are made by the municipality. Ordinances can proactively create a new future, or be in response to a complaint, concern, or need.

Your municipality may already have a law about the issue you care about, but maybe it can be updated to meet the full vision.

Decision-Making Power = Municipal governing body

Transparency + Public Participation:

River Access:

Nuisances (dust, soot, smells, debris, sounds):

Green Spaces + Beautification:

Health, Housing + Safety

Solar + Wind Energy

create resolution(S)

A resolution is a formal expression of opinion or intent by a municipal body.

Resolutions can be a statement of values, which can help when future decisions are made.

Resolutions can be a nudge toward accountability for community members (here is what you said would happen about x, y, and z), and planning tool for decision-makers (here is where we want to go and what we support, now let’s make decisions that match this resolution.”)

Resolutions generally are about a topic that is special or temporary.

Decision-Making Power: Municipal governing body

create or connect with your local land bank

A land bank is a community-owned organization that takes care of and finds new uses for empty, abandoned, deteriorated, and foreclosed properties.

Decision-Making Power: Municipal Governing Body + Community

    • Research if there is a local or county land bank in your area already.

    • If there is a land bank, you can:

      • Attend meetings;

      • Comment at meetings with your thoughts and ideas;

      • Look for a chance to join their Board.

    • If there isn’t a land bank, you can:

      • Build relationships with your local leaders to provide some education to them about land bonks.

    • Share funding and resources that support land banks.

    • Talk with housing nonprofits or community development agencies to see what interest they have in developing a land bank.

    • Be part of your local committees or boards who work on housing and land issues.

    • Be part of your city or county governing body that can pass an ordinance about land banks.

  • This activity may be easier for someone or a team who has these strengths:

    • Relationship Building + Feeling

    • Influencing + Motivating

    • Strategy + Thinking

    • Executing + Doing

  • National Land Bank Map

    OH:

    PA:

    WV:

Encourage equitable and sustainable economic development

Leading your community’s economy from one that is reliant on only a few industries; may cause harm or not be a good neighbor; or may be unequal in how it benefits the community is long-term work. But, encouraging a just transition can be a vision-led, community-driven approach that:

In this short video, Canary Media and The Solutions Project unpack what a just energy transition is and how it can benefit everyone.

  • Addresses past harms;

  • Creates new relationships;

  • Builds new power;

  • Dismantles barriers and expands opportunities for communities of color, low-income communities, LGBTQ+ communities, and other marginalized groups;

  • Grows quality jobs, entrepreneurship, ownership; and

  • Moves from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

Decision-Making Power: Community; Local Organizations + Nonprofits; Education; Municipal Governing Body; Local or County Economic or Community Development Corporation.

 

midriver

You’ve heard rumors about something in your town or know of a proposed new development.

 

file right to know requests

The public has a right to access, read, and review all government records, with a few exceptions. This includes documents, papers, letters, maps, books, tapes, photos, sound recordings, email, and other information stored by a local, county, state, and federal agency.

Filing a Right to Know Request allows you to see those communications to understand what is being discussed and debated and who is involved.

Decision-Making Power: Community

  • It’s important to do these with some frequency (example: quarterly, every 6 months). This will allow you to stay up-to-date and catch new decisions coming down the pipeline, and ideally catch them early enough to impact.

    The earlier you find out about a new development that doesn’t align with your vision, the more time and options you have to drive your vision.

    • Make specific asks with specific timeframes.

    • Avoid broadness or fishing for information – this just delays the process.

    • Do not use the Right To Know to ask questions.

    • Make sure to add the full company name (ex: Company, LLC or Company Inc.]

    • Make sure to include email if you want all communications (some administrators don’t think that email is included in communications so will only send back letters.)

    Example: “All communications, including applications, reports, emails, or other submissions, between [Company Name] and [the Dept, etc.] regarding [Address of Company], since May 16, 2023..

  • This activity may be easier for someone or a team who has these strengths:

    • Executing + Doing

  • Tips:

    Some agencies have their own Right to Know Request Forms. When possible, use the agency’s specific form. If there isn’t a form, you can find great examples and tips here:

    • PA: https://www.openrecords.pa.gov/RTKL/HowToFile.cfm

    • Ohio: https://www.acluohio.org/en/news/so-you-want-submit-public-records-request

    • West Virginia: https://www.nfoic.org/west-virginia-foia-laws/

    Example Right to Know: https://www.nfoic.org/ohio-sample-foia-request/

learn the approval process for the rumored facility

Layers of Decision-Making: Each ‘layer’ has to follow the laws and rules created by the layers out the outside of it. For example: county needs to follow rules of state and federal. Municipalities need to follow the rules of county, state, and federal.

All small and large industrial facilities need to get a number of different stamps of approval before they can move forward.

Knowing the approval process can help communities know what to pay attention to and where to look to be ready for public commenting.

Decision-Making Power: Community

  • Here are some of the approvals needed for many industrial facilities. The specific workings of the facility and the rules of the local municipality and the state dictate the specific stamps of approval needed.

    Local municipality:

    • Decides how land can be used and where different kinds of development can be located.

    • Decision-Makers: Design Review Committee; Board of Zoning Appeals & Planning Commission, City Council

    County:

    • Creates county plan; sometimes approve some stream crossing, roads, and waste.

    • Decision-Makers: Board of County Commissioners (if there is zoning) & Development Districts

    State

    • Implements federal expectations for the issue and oversees day-to-day monitoring.

    • Power over many environmental permits.

    • Decision-Makers: State Department of Environmental Protection, Department of Natural Resources, Public Utilities Commission, State Economic Development Department, or State Department of Health

    Federal

    • Creates the big-picture vision for the issue.

    • Creates the expectation for different issues.

    • Give $ to states to implement the vision.

    • Permitting over cross-state impacts or especially big environmental emissions.

    • Decision-Makers: US Environmental Protection Agency, US Dept. of Transportation, US Dept. of Energy

  • This activity may be easier for someone or a team who has these strengths:

    • Strategy + Thinking

    • Executing + Doing

  • Citizen's Guide to the Permitting and Approval Process for Land Development in Pennsylvania: https://www.delcocd.org/DevGuide.pdf

request and attend a public meeting or hearing

A public meeting can bring community together to express their opinions, hear a speaker or plan, learn together about a topic, or work together to develop a solution.

Sometimes public meetings are required for different approvals, but sometimes they may not be.

Requesting a meeting can make sure that everyone in community understands the project and has the chance to voice their concerns.

You can:

  • Request a meeting if it's not required,

  • Request the meeting be a different format to be a stronger meeting for community participation, and

  • Can attend and be part of the public meeting or hearing.

Decision-Making Power: Approval body - whoever gives final approval for the project has the power to schedule a public meeting or hearing.

  • Strength in numbers: Requests for a meeting or changes to a meeting format from many people.

    Providing specific details about out how complicated the proposal is and how the community needs help understanding it.

    Environmental Justice issues

  • There are no requirements about how the public meeting is conducted, and your goal can be to avoid the “dog & pony show” where developer is just trotting people out to make it look good. Some “asks” that you can make to make the meeting meaningful:

    • That the meeting happen weeks and even months before the vote is going to happen. Try to avoid the public meeting happening immediately before the vote is going to happen.

    • Public members to be allowed to ask questions and make comments.

    • Questions to be answered immediately, instead of “thank you, we will get back to you.”

    • The right people to be there. This includes people who may have the answers to questions, and those who actually make the decisions. You can ask for specific people to be there.

    • That all participants are allowed to make a 3-minute statement and ask questions.

    • That the meeting is accessible, this could mean: asking for a bigger room; write-in options before or after the meeting for those who aren’t able to join at that particular time; online participation; closed-captioning; languge translations.

  • This activity may be easier for someone or a team who has these strengths:

    • Relationship Building + Feeling

    • Influencing + Motivating

    • Strategy + Thinking

  • EPA Public Participation Guide: https://www.epa.gov/international-cooperation/public-participation-guide-public-meetings

make verbal or written comments

Public comments are a comment to an agency to provide feedback to a proposed rule, regulation, or permit application under consideration.

Commenting can help provide your facts and perspectives to decision-makers before they make a decision.

Commenting may stop a project or provide changes to the permit. By submitting a comment, you can:

  • Provide additional information;

  • Give the chance to make your voice heard; and

  • Ensure that the approving agency is aware of all pertinent concerns.

In many situations, the agency may be required to respond to all comments.

Comments are the strongest when people make strong, personal, unique, or technical comments. Form letters, postcards, and petitions do not always have the strongest impact.

Decision-Making Power: Community

create a community benefit agreement

Community Benefit Agreements are legal private contracts between prospective developer and community representatives that specifies benefits that the developer will provide in exchange for the community representatives’ support on the project.

Community Benefit Agreements are good:

  • When coalition can support development IF certain conditions are met.

  • Across a range of development projects, including retail or office complexes, brownfields, sport fields, new energy developments.

  • Community has leverage.

  • Reactively (in resonse to a proposed development) and Proaictively (when community creates a vision and are alerted by leaders about potential developments in the future).

Decision-Making Power: Community and Business Developer

20 minute overview of Community Benefit Agreements

 

downriver

You are in crisis or harm has already been done.

 

report environmental concerns to the appropriate agency

You can make complaints and tell authorities about environmental concerns. These can include:

  • Air Quality/Asbestos/Odor/Open Burning

  • Water Quality - Lakes, Rivers, Streams/Stormwater/Sewage Odor

  • Open Dumping/Solid Waste/Landfill Odors

  • Drinking Water

  • Hazardous Waste/Used Oil

In some cases, somebody will come check on the concern, and in other cases it will be logged for the agency to keep an eye on.

As always, the more people making the complaint the more power it may have. Engage your relationships to make your voices louder.

Decision-Making Power: Community

make sure decisions aren’t made behind closed doors

Sunshine Act and Open Government laws require that all agencies talk about issues out loud and take official action on agency business in an open and public meeting. Most debate and deliberation needs to happen in public, although there are some special exceptions.

These laws require that meetings have prior notice, and that the public can attend, participate, and comment before an agency takes that official action.

Decision-Making Power: Community

negotiate a good neighbor agreement

Good Neighbor Agreement - issues and solutions examples

A Good Neighbor Agreement is an agreement between a coalition of community groups and a local company that has already been operating and in business.

The Agreement includes behaviors the company will change, or things they will start doing, to reduce bad impacts they are having on the community.

Agreements can be legally binding contracts or can be ‘hand-shake’ agreements. Legally binding contracts can help community have stronger enforcement.

Decision-Making Power: Community Coalition and Local Company

  • GNA’s are helpful when the community wants to force the company to address their public health, environmental, or nuisance issues and the community has some leverage, such as:

    • Company needs a permit or public approval.

    • Company is vulnerable to a lawsuit;

    • Company wants good public relations (usually to expand)

    • Company changes ownership

    • The company has been ignoring community complaints.

  • This activity may be easier for someone or a team who has these strengths:

    • Relationship Building + Feeling

    • Influencing + Motivating

    • Strategy + Thinking

    • Executing + Doing

  • Evaluating the Use of Good Neighbor Agreements Report: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1018&context=books_reports_studies

    Northern Plains Resource Council Good Neighbor Agreement Example & Resources: https://northernplains.org/good-neighbor-agreement/

Get Legal help

If a decision has already been made and you or your community is being harmed, hurt, or injured, it may be time to talk to an attorney. An attorney can help when:

  • The fight reaches its culminating point.

  • Clear violation of fundamental rights.

  • Community has exhausted efforts through the democratic or regulatory process.

  • Administrative challenge or appeal.

Decision-Making Power: Community

    • Cost: can the attorney provide pro-bono or sliding fee scale?

    • Genuine concern or passion for the issue.

    • Long-term dedication.

    • Prior experience with the subject matter.

  • Community:

    • Experts on history and culture of community

    • Supports those most impacted in the community

    • Identifies grievances

    • Develops demands

    • Develops strategy to achieve demands

    Layers:

    • Expert on the law and procedure

    • Supports grassroots organizing

    • Provides community education

    • Organizational development

    • Leadership development

  • Fair Shake provides pro-bono and sliding-fee-scale legal representation, counseling and support. Here is what to expect:

    • Communities can call us at 412-664-5546 or fill out this form: https://www.fairshake-els.org/contact-us.

    • One of our attorneys will set up an intake call – during this call the attorney listens more about the situation, see if there is a legal angle to the problem, explain our pro-bono and sliding-fee-scale pricing structure, and give them a price estimate based on:

      • For individuals: annual income and family size

      • For nonprofit and grassroots: average of last three (or less) years of funding

      • For municipalities: sliding scale based off average annual budget of previous three years, plus additional discount if it is an Environmental Justice community as identified by Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool.

    • The attorney brings the potential case back to our full team, where the team discusses if we have the expertise and capacity to help, if there are legal levers in the situation, and that it fits to our strategic environmental justice mission. If we are able to move forward, we will sign a retainer agreement with the client and begin legal representation & counseling.

      • If we aren’t able to help, we try to provide a good referral, or encourage them to call back in a few months when our capacity is different.

  • This activity may be easier for someone or a team who has these strengths:

    • Relationship Building + Feeling

    • Influencing + Motivating

    • Strategy + Thinking

    • Executing + Doing

  • Fair Shake: www.fairshake-els.org

    West Virginia University Land Use Clinic: https://landuse.law.wvu.edu/

    Case Western Reserve Law Clinic: https://case.edu/law/clinic

    Appalachian Citizen Law Center: https://aclc.org/

work to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again.

No matter where you are, you can still walk back up the river to try and change things so that the same things don’t happen in the future!

Looking for Support?

Let us know how we can help.

Stay in touch!

 
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