October 25, 2022 by Clarissa Ayala
Lone Star Legal Aid Honors University of Texas Environmental Law Clinic for Pro Bono Week 2022
Since 2017, initially as part of a collaborative grant funded by the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, the Environmental Justice Team at Lone Star Legal Aid has worked closely with Professor Kelly Haragan and her law students at the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law to expand legal aid’s capacity to address the needs of its individual clients and community groups impacted by environmental hazards such as air, water, and land contamination. The UT law students have assisted Legal Aid in its representation of clients on various permitting matters before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, on addressing appropriate disaster response after Hurricane Harvey, on providing air monitors, on civil rights complaints, on concrete batch plant challenges and advocacy, and in pursuing drinking water, soil and groundwater testing in legacy contamination communities.
The Environmental Justice Team is tremendously grateful for the pro bono support received from the Environmental Law Clinic and our collaboration that has continued since the TAJF grant ended. Our attorneys have also enjoyed working with Professor Haragan and the opportunity to mentor young law students as they start their careers in environmental law with a strong foundation and appreciation for environmental justice.
Lone Star Legal Aid (LSLA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit law firm focused on advocacy for low-income and underserved populations by providing free legal education, advice, and representation. LSLA serves millions of people at 125% of federal poverty guidelines, who live in 72 counties in the eastern and Gulf Coast regions of Texas, and 4 counties in Southwest Arkansas. LSLA focuses its resources on maintaining, enhancing, and protecting income and economic stability; preserving housing; improving outcomes for children; establishing and sustaining family safety, stability, health, and wellbeing; and assisting populations with special vulnerabilities, like those with disabilities, the aging, survivors of crime and disasters, the unemployed and underemployed, the unhoused, those with limited English language skills, and the LGBTQIA+ community. To learn more about Lone Star Legal Aid, visit our website at www.LoneStarLegal.org.
Media contact: media@lonestarlegal.org
