It is hard to imagine a New Jersey environmental movement without Ed Lloyd, who died 10 days ago and served as a longtime environmental attorney and leader. Ed, who grew up in Baltimore, graduated from Princeton University 53 years ago with a chemistry degree, and other than law school, he never left — and never stopped working for the environmental community.
Ed touched many lives, and as news spread of his passing, remembrances poured in from the Columbia Law School, the Eastern Environmental Law Clinic, New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, the Pinelands Commission and Pinelands Preservation Alliance, as well as New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette and Gov. Phil Murphy.
Ed’s career arc is intertwined with the history of the modern environmental movement in New Jersey. The passage of our national landmark environmental laws in the early 1970s and the creation of the DEP were still in their infancy when Ed arrived back from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1973. He described a burning urgency to get to work on environmental protection in an era of unregulated pollution.
The laws were on the books, but they needed to be enforced and there needed to be a mass movement to ensure that political leaders followed suit. Ed was that blunt instrument.
Through his work as staff attorney for NJPIRG, he crafted successful litigation in 1977 to force the Department of Environmental Protection’s hand to enforce the Clean Water Act through pollution discharge permits. At the same time, he pioneered NJPIRG’s Streamwalkers Project, where college student volunteers would paddle canoes and don hip waders to report illegal discharge flowing from pipes into New Jersey waterways. In this same era, he worked with a young Ray Lesniak and other legislators on the passage of the Spill Act, which served as precursor to the federal Superfund law of 1980 to clean up toxic waste sites.
Groundbreaking legal cases
In 1983 alone, Ed and his team filed 15 groundbreaking cases under the citizen enforcement provision of the Clean Water Act. The suits alleged that companies, including Monsanto, had illegally exceeded their permits for waste discharge into the Delaware River and other waterways. Over the next decade, the number of successful citizen suits filed to enforce the Clean Water Act would rise to 53 and total $32 million in penalties — the most successful track record in the nation. The suits led to the creation of the Environmental Endowment of New Jersey in 1994, funded by the pollution settlement dollars; fittingly, Ed served as board chair for the Endowment for the last five years of his life.
As important, the suits led to political momentum for the passage of the Clean Water Enforcement Act to require mandatory minimum penalties for polluters who violated their discharge permits. The legislation, first championed by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th), was signed into law by newly elected Gov. Jim Florio in the spring of 1990.
Much of Ed’s landmark environmental victories and cases flowed out of the Clean Water Act and Spill Act — his successful 1991 litigation against Ciba-Geigy for their discharge of pollutants into the Atlantic Ocean from their infamous Toms River plant; litigation against the ill-fated PennEast pipeline through Hunterdon and Mercer counties, with successful legal arguments rooted in the Clean Water Act; and his representation of the environmental community in 2015 opposing the ExxonMobil pollution settlement for its toxic legacy at its Linden and Bayonne refineries.
To think of Ed’s legacy as simply successful court victories would be to miss the mark though. He wasn’t just a legal eagle; he was an institution builder, from his early days with NJPIRG to his creation of the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic in 1985 and then later the Eastern Environmental Law Clinic, his creation of the National Environmental Law Center, and his work with the Columbia University Environmental Law Clinic for more than two decades. He taught hundreds of law students, worked closely with hundreds more through his law clinics and served on boards for these organizations throughout his life.
His legal briefs and oral arguments were meticulously crafted, but Ed had cut his teeth in the legislative arena and had worked with the Byrne administration to pass the Pinelands Protection Act. His leadership style could be seen most clearly on the Pinelands Commission, where he was appointed in 2002 and served for more than 20 years, despite being kept on hold-over status. He could be mistaken as quiet on the commission, but he spoke with the gravitas of a legal expert and with a fiery fidelity to the intent of the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan.
An ill-conceived attempt was made to remove him by the Christie administration from the deliberations over the South Jersey Gas pipeline traveling through the Pinelands over a supposed ethical conflict in late 2013. Ed laid out the groundwork for the commission, in public and private, on why the project violated the intent of the Pinelands master plan. He didn’t vote on the final proposal in January 2014, but his arguments carried the days as several commissioners who had been appointed by former Gov. Chris Christie were swayed by his arguments. The proposal failed by a single vote, and the B.L. England power plant in Cape May County was retired and is now being proposed as an interconnection site for offshore wind.
Failed attempts to sideline him
When there were attempts made to remove him by the Christie administration from the commission, a political groundswell from across the state convinced the Legislature to not move forward. And when the Murphy administration made a similar attempt, a similar show of support turned the tide in his favor.
There was no better person to have in your corner when fighting an environmental fight in New Jersey — especially if you didn’t have the means to pay for a high-priced lawyer. He worked his entire career for public interest organizations and law clinics that allowed him to represent a community of clients — organizations that he stayed relentlessly involved in. If you were a David in a court of law and were facing a Goliath, Ed and his team of young attorneys and students were who you needed to call.
The legacy of Ed won’t be found in any one particular decision or brief. It will be in the countless students of law and students of the environment who have graduated to fulfill that fierce fidelity to our country and state’s environmental laws.
All are welcome at his memorial service, which will be held on Wednesday, Aug. 16 at 11 a.m. at the Nassau Presbyterian Church at 61 Nassau Street in Princeton, with a reception to follow at the Nassau Inn. Please RSVP to Ed’s daughter, Abby Lloyd, at abbylloyd2015@gmail.com by 5 p.m. Tuesday.