Anna Aurilio, the legislative director of U.S. PIRG, got her start in environmental work with NELC as a staff scientist. Anna works in Washington, D.C., guiding a staff of advocates and lobbying on critical environmental issues at the federal level for the national lobbying office of the state PIRGs.

Why did you choose to work in the environmental movement?

My mom is a huge nature lover and always took us hiking, skiing and swimming. When I was eight, some local teens destroyed our playground and I organized my buddies to clean it up. Later, I moved to Woburn, Mass., home of A Civil Action. I naively assumed that after such a high-profile case, our government was protecting us from pollution. When I realized that wasn’t the case, I knew I needed to work to protect the environment.

What was it like working for NELC as your first job?

Well, it wasn’t what I expected. I had started graduate school working on a physics Ph.D. because I wanted to use my science background to make the world a better place. I gave up on that because it was taking too long to save the world with physics. My first task with NELC was to read the Clean Water Act—the entire document. Going from physics equations to dense legal statutes was a big transition, but working with NELC was really exciting. I was challenged and given a lot of responsibility. We had just three staff members back then, and we were taking on major corporate polluters. As I worked, I found more and more reasons why NELC’s work is so critical. One of my roles with NELC was to file requests for information at regional EPA offices, and sometimes EPA blocked access to the records. I learned to fight for my rights, and to be persistent.

What was the most memorable case you worked on with NELC?

I sometimes got anonymous tips, late at night, from people who knew about companies that were polluting but who couldn’t do anything about it. Sometimes these were frustrated government employees who had been trying to clean up polluted places, but their higher-ups were failing to come through with results—usually for political reasons.

One tip came from a scuba diver. He’d been in the Taunton River in southeastern Massachusetts, and he told me that chemicals discharged from a factory were turning the river different colors. It turned out that the factory was owned by ICI Americas, a huge multinational chemical manufacturer, and they were dumping into a brook that led into the Taunton River.

I checked the file, and found out that the company’s wastewater discharge permit had not been updated since the 1970s. That meant they only measured things like pH, temperature, and rate of discharge. In other words, their permit was so archaic they didn’t have to test their waste for toxic chemicals. Every time EPA had tried to issue them a new permit, the lawyers for the company stopped them. When EPA finally required ICI to test its wastewater, the stuff—even diluted 100 times—was so toxic it immediately killed fish. NELC went on to reach a settlement with ICI Americas that included payment of a $700,000 penalty.

How is NELC able to take on such huge corporations?

Take water pollution, for example. Under the Clean Water Act, companies have to obtain a permit before they can discharge pollutants, and then they have to report monthly on the amount of waste they discharge. EPA and state environmental agencies are supposed to oversee this system.

Working with NELC, I found numerous cases of complete inaction by EPA. In other words, the polluters had reported to EPA that they were polluting, but EPA and the state governments had done nothing in response. But thanks to a provision in the Clean Water Act that allows private citizens to enforce the law when government agencies don’t, NELC is able to take that kind of information and make something happen.

We sued a paper company in Massachusetts that was dumping illegal amounts of toxic waste into the Connecticut River, where Atlantic salmon recovery efforts were happening. I found five years’ worth of letters that the state and EPA had written to the paper company, but no real action had been taken.

Writing letters back and forth was the most that the state and EPA were going to do to address the problem. But when NELC got involved, the company knew they would have to do more than answer letters. We took them head-on in court and forced them to clean up. That’s what made the difference for that waterway.

What is the role of litigation in the environmental movement today?

Litigation is a critical tool for the environmental movement. With a Congress and an administration that want to move backward, not forward—who not only don’t want to strengthen current laws, but also slash funding for enforcement—citizen litigation is sometimes our last defense against rampant pollution.

One thing I learned at NELC is that polluters have enormous power in the law-making process. Their lobbyists are frequently able to carve out exemptions and loopholes in new legislation through backroom deals like the “ear-marks” we hear so much about today. Using litigation to enforce the good laws that are still on the books is frequently the only way environmentalists can face the country’s biggest polluters on an even playing field.

Anna Aurilio, Legislative Director of U.S. PIRG, stands up for the environment at the national level. She got her start at NELC. Photo: C-SPAN.

When I worked at NELC, I sat down with the lawyers for polluting companies who had an entire routine worked out to deal with environmentalists. First, they would claim the violations were just lab errors. Then they’d claim that their clients were being unfairly targeted. As a last resort they would argue that their toxic wastes weren’t really dangerous.

They’d put us off as long as they could, but NELC has an amazing success rate for a good reason. Their litigators and researchers are dogged, they do their homework, they don’t listen to excuses, and they use the courts to force polluters to clean up when government agencies are unable or unwilling.

What is your proudest accomplishment so far?

Having my daughter, Renata. But on the environmental side, I’m really proud of the success I saw on the cases I worked on with NELC. Those cases got me hooked on taking on big challenges and winning. After I moved on to working with U.S. PIRG in the 1990s, I was part of a lobbying coalition that helped cut half a billion dollars in federal subsidies for the nuclear and oil industries, and shift funding to clean, renewable energy programs instead.

I’m also proud of what we’ve kept Congress and the Bush Administration from doing. We’ve stopped Congress from allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, year after year after year. And we stopped new drilling off the coasts, too.

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