Natural Resources Defense Council - National Resources Defense Council

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a New York City-based, non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Bozeman, Montana, and Beijing, China. Founded in 1970, NRDC today has 2.4 million members and online activities nationwide and a staff of about 500 lawyers, scientists and other policy experts.

The charity monitoring group Charity Navigator gave the Natural Resources Defense Council four out of four stars in its three rating categories: overall, financial practices, and accountability & transparency.

About

The NRDC was co-founded in 1970 by John Adams, Richard Ayres, John Bryson, Edward Strohbehn, and Gus Speth. Together with a board of scientists and attorneys the NRDC is at the forefront of the environmental movement. The organization states that it seeks sustainable policies from federal, state and local government and industrial corporations. It seeks to influence federal and state environmental and other agencies, the Congress and state legislatures, and the courts to reduce global warming, limit pollution, and generally conserve energy and increase sustainability of commerce and manufacturing. NRDC participates in litigation in federal and state courts to influence implementation and enforcement of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal and state laws protecting the environment. The Council also supports an environmental science program that involves NRDC staff and associated scientists, including a program seeking transformation of manufacturing industries to m ore sustainable production. In addition, the organization states that it educates the public.

In 2001, NRDC launched the BioGems Initiative to mobilize concerned individuals in defense of exceptional and imperiled ecosystems. The initiative matches NRDC's legal and institutional assets with the work of citizen activists.

It has issued a report on the health effects arising from the September 11, 2001 attacks.

NRDC became involved with community activists in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

NRDC has published a number of studies on nuclear weapon stockpiles around the world, both as monographs and as individual studies in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

In December 2006, Green Day and NRDC jointly launched a website to raise awareness on the U.S.'s petroleum dependence.

Programs

NRDC runs a number of environmental programs:

• The Climate and Clean Air Program focuses on clean air, global warming, transportation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electric-industry restructuring. This includes the Renewable Energy and Defense Database project with the Pentagon.
• Save the Bees Initiative appealing to the President to take urgent action necessary to save the bee populations from further decline by banning bee-toxic neonics.
• The Health Program works on issues involving drinking water, chemical harm to the environment, and other environmental health threats with the goal of reducing the amount of toxins released into the environment.
• The International Program works worldwide on rainforests, biodiversity, habitat preservation, oceans, marine life, nuclear weapons and global warming, often in conjunction with other programs.
• The Land Program works on issues related to national forests, parks, other public lands, and private forest lands, and works to reduce consumption of wood products.
• The Nuclear Program opposes nuclear weapons. Blocks spent nuclear fuel (SNF) reprocessing, supports SNF disposal in safe geological repositories, works to strengthen standards in uranium mining and nuclear power plant safety
• The Urban Program focuses on environmental issues in urban centers and surrounding areas. Issues include air and water quality, garbage and recycling, transportation, sprawl, and environmental justice.
• The Water and Oceans Program works on issues related to the nation's water quality, fish populations, wetlands and oceans. It also operates regional initiatives such as the Everglades, San Francisco Bay, the San Joaquin River, the Channel Islands of California, and the New York/New Jersey Harbor-Bight.
• The Latino Outreach Program or La Onda Verde de NRDC works to inform and involve Spanish-speaking Latinos in the environmental issues on which NRDC works.
• In July 2008, the NRDC and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. launched a direct mail campaign to encourage citizens to voice opposition to Shell Oil's exploration for oil off the Alaska coast.

OnEarth

OnEarth magazine is a quarterly publication of the NRDC dealing with environmental challenges. The magazine was founded in 1979 as The Amicus Journal. As Amicus, the magazine won the George Polk Award in 1983 for special interest reporting. OnEarth magazine can be accessed online at http://www.onearth.org.

Directors

Rhea Suh is the current president. On June 14, 2010, former NRDC President Frances Beinecke was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Issues

NRDC's stated priorities include curbing global warming, "reviving the world's oceans," defending endangered wildlife and wild places, protecting the public health by preventing pollution, ensuring "safe and sufficient water," and fostering "sustainable communities"

Legislation

NRDC opposed the Water Rights Protection Act, a bill that would prevent federal agencies from requiring certain entities to relinquish their water rights to the United States in order to use public lands. According to opponents, the bill is too broad. They believe the bill "could also block federal fisheries agencies like the United States Fish and Wildlife Service from requiring flows that help salmon find fish ladders and safely pass over dams."

Proponents of the bill disagree with NRDC's stance on the bill, arguing that the current Federal policy defended by NRDC seeks to make users of public lands turn over water rights which in many cases they have paid state or local governments for. Operators of ski areas, ranchers, and farmers, and other users of public land say that the Federal policy defended by NRDC denies them rights to use water for which they have already paid, effectively denying them use of the land. The Water Rights Protection Act is supported by national ski area groups, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Conservation Districts, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the Family Farm Alliance, the National Water Resources Association, the Colorado River Conservation District, the Colorado Association of Conservation Districts, and other interests threatened by existing Federal water policy in the West which the NRDC is defending.

NRDC supported the EPS Service Parts Act of 2014 (H.R. 5057; 113th Congress), a bill that would exempt certain external power supplies from complying with standards set forth in a final rule published by the United States Department of Energy in February 2014. The United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce describes the bill as a bill that "provides regulatory relief by making a simple technical correction to the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act to exempt certain power supply (EPS) service and spare parts from federal efficiency standards."

Effect on administrative law

The NRDC has been involved in the following Supreme Court cases interpreting United States administrative law.

• Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U.S. 519 (1978), which held that courts could not impose additional procedural requirements on administrative agencies beyond that required by the agency's organic statute or the Administrative Procedure Act.
• Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), which gave administrative agencies broad discretion to interpret statute to make policy changes if Congressional intent was unclear. Chevron is now the most-cited case in American case law, even more so than all the citations to famous decisions such as Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade combined.
• Baltimore Gas & Elec. Co. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 462 U.S. 78 (1983) is a United States Supreme Court decision which held to be valid a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rule that the permanent storage of nuclear waste should be assumed to have no environmental impact during the licensing of nuclear power plants.