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Environment

Paula Cotter, Project Counsel

The Environment Project (“Project”) supports the activities of the NAAG Environment Committee, which is currently convened by Attorney General Roy Cooper of North Carolina. The Project focuses on three main areas: training/conferences, communications, and state/federal liaison activities.

Training/Conferences: The Project holds several conferences and training programs annually. To the extent possible, conference and training programs are planned to coincide with Environment Committee priorities. Principal among these is an annual Environment Bureau Chiefs Conference, which is held each spring in the Washington, D.C., area. This conference brings together the environment bureau/division chiefs (civil and criminal) of the State Attorneys General for two days of workshops and meetings among the chiefs and with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) and U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) senior environmental enforcement personnel. The Project has also held a regular meeting of the Department of Energy (“DOE”) Workgroup. This meeting is usually held in Washington, D.C., in the fall of each year, and like the Chiefs Conference, brings together attorneys general staff who are engaged in working with the DOE on its environmental cleanup activities, and DOE managers associated with environmental cleanup at DOE facilities.

Communications: The Project facilitates communication among attorneys general offices by acting as a conduit for information from and between states and federal environmental agencies and by providing attorneys general offices the opportunity to make information requests and/or share information with other offices through NAAG in the form of electronic mail “information requests” or requests for assistance. In addition, the Project publishes the National Environmental Enforcement Journal (“NEEJ”) 11 times/year (the last issue annually is a dual December/January edition). The NEEJ contains articles written by state and federal environmental enforcement officials as well as synopses and analyses of recent case law developments in federal and state courts that may affect environmental enforcement.

• Publications: The National Environmental Enforcement Journal

State/Federal Liaison: The Project in the recent years has devoted an increasingly larger percentage of time to developing and enhancing working relationships with federal counterparts at DOJ, DOE, EPA and other federal environmental departments and agencies, such as the Department of Defense (“DOD”) and Department of the Interior (“DOI”). These working relationships enable the Project to get answers quickly from federal agencies and also provide assistant attorneys general in the states with a name and phone number for a useful federal contact.