Lewis C. Green, Founding President

Lewis C. Green graduated in 1947 from Harvard University and in 1950 from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.  He was Law Clerk to Judge William E. Orr, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1950-51, Justice Stanley F. Reed, Supreme Court of the United States, 1951-52, and US District Judge George H. Moore, 1955-56.  Before joining Green, Hennings & Henry, he served two years (1952-54) with the Appellate Division of the Office of General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C.

He served on the faculty of St. Louis University Law School, teaching Legislation, and Washington University School of Law, teaching Constitutional Law.

He was the first Chairman of the Air Conservation Commission of Missouri, from 1965-69.

He was a member of the Missouri Bar, the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the DC Circuit, and the Seventh Circuit, and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

He was a member of the American Bar Association, the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, the Missouri Bar Association, the American Law Institute, and the American Judicature Society.  He was a life member of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.  He was a member of the American Bar Association Sections of Litigation and Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Law, and the Missouri Bar Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis Environmental and Conservation Law Committee.  In 1972-73 he chaired the Missouri Bar Antitrust Committee.

Publications include "State Control of Interstate Air Pollution," 33 L&C Probs 315 (1968); "The New York Times Rule:  Judicial Overkill," 12 Villanova L.Rev. 730 (1970).

He received the Environmental Quality Award from US EPA in 1978, the Page One Civic Award from the St. Louis Newspaper Guild in 1972, and the Air Conservationist of the Year Award from the Conservation Federation of Missouri in 1970. In 2003, he was posthumously honored by the Missouri Air Conservation Commission and the Sierra Club Ozark Chapter.

Environmental Litigation

Mr. Green prosecuted many suits to enforce the environmental laws, including the air pollution laws, and also to protect open space, flood plains, and other environmental values.

NEPA Litigation

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law by President Nixon on January 1, 1970.  As early as 1971 and 1972, Mr. Green sued the Corps of Engineers, the Missouri Highway Commission, and other federal agencies as well as state agencies, seeking to enforce compliance with NEPA in the Earth City litigation. See Coalition for the Environment v. Volpe, 504 F.2d 156 (8th Cir. 1974) (reversing Eastern District of Missouri's dismissal of suit to compel the United States Army Corps of Engineers to assume jurisdiction of and regulate floodplain development, and to comply with NEPA; Volpe was the Secretary of Transportation).  In the 1980's Mr. Green persuaded a District Court in Illinois to set aside, for violation of NEPA, the environmental assessment prepared by the Corps of Engineers for a barge fleeting facility on Alton Lake, but the Court of Appeals reversed.  See River Road Alliance, Inc. v. Corps of Engineers, etc., 764 F.2d 445 (7th Cir. 1985), cert. den., 475 US 1055. In the latter half of the 1980's Mr. Green again sued the Corps of Engineers, challenging under NEPA the adequacy of the documentation of a permit to develop flood plains in the Missouri Bottoms in St. Louis County, including a 70,000 seat domed stadium to be built in what is now Riverport.  The litigation was successful, as is shown by the presence of the domed stadium in downtown St. Louis, rather than in Riverport.  However, the Court of Appeals upheld the NEPA documentation of the permit in Missouri Coalition for the Environment v. Corps of Engineers , 866 F.2d 1025 (8th Cir. 1989), cert. den. , 493 US 820 (repudiated in Audubon Society of Central Arkansas v. Dailey , 977 F.2d 428,  433-34 (8th Cir. 1992).  In the 1990's Mr. Green litigated at length the adequacy of the NEPA review conducted by the Department of Energy, reviewing a national DOE program to develop new technology to separate plutonium and transuranics from spent fuel, and to "transmute" them by using them as fuel in breeder reactors.  Energy and Resource Advocates v. Quitoriano , No. C 902479 CW, N.D. Cal.  The case was settled with termination of an experimental program at the University of Missouri.

Air Pollution and Related Litigation

After drafting Missouri's Air Conservation Law in 1964, lobbying for its enactment in 1965, and serving as first Chairman of the Commission from 1965 to 1969, Mr. Green remained active in air pollution in the subsequent years.  As General Counsel for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment from 1969 to his death in 2003 he guided the Coalition's activities concerning air pollution as well as other matters.  In the leading case of Union Electric v. EPA, 427 US 246 (1976), upholding the technology-forcing air pollution regulations of the state, Mr. Green supported the state and federal governments, filing a brief amicus curiae and participating in the oral argument in the Eighth Circuit, and filing a brief amicus curiae in the Supreme Court.  He successfully litigated the leading Missouri appellate decision on the merits of an air pollution permit.  Citizens for Rural Preservation, Inc. v. Robinett, 648 S.W.2d 117 (Mo. App. 1982) (invalidating Missouri Air Conservation Commission permit for rock crushing in Franklin County).  Mr. Green litigated another case in the Missouri court of appeals, reviewing a St. Louis County air pollution permit for a landfill, but was deprived of appellate review on the merits, after the issues were fully briefed, when the developer abandoned the project, and persuaded the court that the appeal was moot.  Citizens for Safe Waste v. St. Louis County Air Pollution Control Board, 896 S.W.2d 643 (Mo. App. 1995).  Mr. Green also litigated a Missouri appellate decision on the merits of an air pollution variance.  Missouri Coalition for the Environment v. Beard, 977 S.W.2d 32 (Mo. App. 1998) (invalidating Missouri Air Conservation Commission variance issued to the United States Army at Ft. Leonard Wood to exceed opacity regulations).

From 1998 through 2003 Mr. Green conducted litigation to enforce the Clean Air Act in St. Louis, a "moderate" ozone nonattainment area.  St. Louis was required by the CAA to attain the ozone national ambient air quality standard by 1996, but had not done so.  By May 15, 1997, EPA was required to publish notice that St. Louis was reclassified "by operation of law" from "moderate" to "serious," imposing additional obligations to control air pollution on Missouri and Illinois, but EPA did nothing.  In November, 1998, Mr. Green sued EPA to require the agency to publish notice of the reclassification, and enforce it.  More than two years later, in January, 2001, the court ordered EPA to publish the notice, but denied nunc pro tunc relief.  The court of appeals affirmed.

In March, 2001, EPA reluctantly published the notice, simultaneously announcing its intention to withdraw the notice in June, 2001, after extending St. Louis' attainment date from 1996 to 2004.  In June, 2001, EPA did withdraw the court-ordered publication of notice.

Meanwhile, Mr. Green had unsuccessfully sought a writ of prohibition in the District of Columbia court of appeals to prohibit EPA from withdrawing the notice.  Following the suggestion of the court of appeals, Mr. Green then filed in the district court a motion to enforce the judgment, and set aside EPA's withdrawal of the notice.  When that motion was denied Mr. Green appealed the denial.  The appeal was affirmed.

EPA's withdrawing the notice, and extending the attainment date, could not be reviewed in that court, and consolidated with those appeals, because the CAA lodged exclusive jurisdiction over the petition for review in the Seventh and Eighth Circuits.  Mr. Green filed the petition in the Seventh Circuit (Chicago), challenging the validity of EPA's policy to extend an attainment date when a nonattainment area is adversely affected by ozone transported from another state upwind.  On November 25, 2002, the Seventh Circuit held EPA's policy unlawful, and ordered EPA to publish notice that St. Louis has been reclassified to a "serious" nonattainment area.

Filing of the 1998 lawsuit also motivated Missouri to submit various revisions to its "state implementation plan" ("SIP"), including one supposed to meet CAA requirements (six years late) to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds ("VOCs").  EPA approved that SIP revision in 2000, and Mr. Green challenged that ruling in the Eighth Circuit.  Sierra Club, et al. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, 252 F.3d 943 (8th Cir. 2001).  The court rejected the challenge, and rehearing en banc was denied, two judges dissenting.

Mr. Green challenged air and water pollution permits issued by Missouri's Department of Natural Resources to enable the United States Army to conduct major polluting exercises in the pristine Ozark recreational areas.

In earlier years, Mr. Green tried the Union Electric variance case, before the Air Conservation Commission, in a futile effort to persuade the Commission to provide some leadership in restricting the sulfur dioxide emissions of the large midwestern coal-fired power plants with tall stacks.  No. 115V (1978).

Other Environmental Litigation

Mr. Green aggressively prosecuted many other environmental lawsuits.   Reported decisions in complex environmental litigation Mr. Green has handled in the public interest include Harbor Venture, Inc., v. Nichols , No. 97-2332EM (unpublished) (8th Cir. 1998) (preventing development of gambling facility on open space preserved by final decree in Coalition for the Environment v. Volpe, supra); State ex rel. Missouri Coalition for the Environment v. Missouri Conservation Comm'n, 940 S.W.2d 527 (Mo. App. 1996) (upholding sale of flood plain dedicated for preservation of open space); Ours v. City of Rolla, 965 S.W.2d 343 (Mo. App. 1998) (challenging authority of City to sell property dedicated for use as a park); Drey v. McNary, 529 S.W.2d 403 (Mo. banc 1975) (invalidating proposed county bond issue to finance usurpation of prime county park for golf course); State ex rel. Rosenfeld v. St. Charles County, 871 S.W.2d 614 (Mo. App. 1995) (landfill rezoning invalid because City (developer) had not lawfully acquired landfill site); Citizens for Safe Waste Management v. St. Louis County, 810 S.W.2d 635 (Mo. App. 1991) (approval of final development plan for landfill valid, notwithstanding inconsistencies with conditional use permit); and City of Bridgeton v. Norfolk & Western Ry., 535 S.W.2d 99 (Mo. banc 1976) (intervention after judgment to preserve open space too late).  Mr. Green has represented the Coalition for the Environment in State of Ohio v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, 997 F.2d 1520 (DC Cir. 1993) (upholding EPA Superfund regulations); Coalition for the Environment, St. Louis Region v. Nuclear Regulatory Comm'n , 795 F.2d 168 (DC Cir. 1986); and protracted FOIA litigation and FWPCA litigation as intervenor in United States v. MSD, 874 F.2d 588 (8th Cir. 1989), 883 F.2d 54 (8th Cir. 1989), and 952 F.2d 1040 (8th Cir. 1992).  For the Coalition for the Environment in 1980 Mr. Green tried the Union Electric case before the Missouri Public Service Commission, resulting in cancellation of a second nuclear power unit at the Callaway plant.   In re Union Electric Company capitalization hearings, No. E0-80-57.  In the 1990's Mr. Green represented other environmental organizations in In the matter of the Curators of the University of Missouri, No. CLI-95-11, 42 NRC 47 (refusing to set aside license amendment but requiring additional safety measures at University's "hot lab" using unsealed transuranics).

Mr. Green also successfully litigated Missouri Coalition for the Environment v. Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, 948 S.W.2d 125 (Mo. banc 1997) (holding unconstitutional the "legislative veto" provisions of the Missouri statutes).

In March 2002, Mr. Green transferred operations from the law firm of Green, Hennings & Henry to the nonprofit organization Great Rivers Environmental Law Center. The Center was the fulfillment of a long-held vision to enable and encourage legal professionals to fight for the environment, and receive some compensation while doing so. Through his own long experience Mr. Green recognized the tremendous need for legal challenges to help protect the environment, but the total lack of financial incentives or reward for doing so. Mr. Green was fond of saying, "The environment can't protect itself; somebody's got to do it"; Great Rivers was his vision to ensure that somebody would.

Mr. Green passed away in May, 2003.