Dan Borné is not a Tulane fan.
The president of the Louisiana Chemical Association also is the public-address announcer for LSU football and men’s basketball. The football rivalry between the schools, which has been one-sided for decades, ended for the foreseeable future with the Tigers’ 42-0 victory on Oct. 31.
But this story isn’t about athletics. Borné is ginning up a new rivalry between his LCA and Tulane’s Environmental Law Clinic, which he accuses of trying to “kneecap” Louisiana industry.
“It’s really a tragic situation that Tulane is doing this, because we feel like we’re in total compliance with all of the rules and regulations,” he says.
At issue is a suit filed July 17 against the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality that says the “Baton Rouge area’s persistent violation of the ozone standard is a public health problem.”
Ozone is a pollutant formed when sunlight hits certain industrial or automobile emissions and is considered harmful to the lungs, especially for people with respiratory conditions such as asthma. In January, officials and industry leaders from the five-parish Baton Rouge area congratulated themselves for meeting federal ozone standards for the first time.
Borné says the region has reached what is known as the one-hour standard, and the 1997 eight-hour standard of 0.08 parts per million, although he says we don’t know yet whether the area will hit the EPA’s new, more stringent eight-hour standard of 0.075 parts per million.
“We’re in attainment, but apparently Tulane doesn’t think we are, so they’re suing us,” he says.
Actually, it’s the Louisiana Environmental Action Network that’s suing, with representation by Tulane’s law clinic. But when asked about the ozone controversy, Borné never mentions LEAN. If Tulane wins, he says, businesses in the five-parish area could have to pay tens of millions of dollars in fees, and consumers might have to pay higher prices for reformulated gasoline.
In response to what he feels are hardball tactics by the law clinic, Borné is calling for the Legislature to cut off every dollar it sends to Tulane, which its provost says is about $900,000 a year, not counting matching funds for endowed professorships and various contracts the school has with the state.
Perhaps more significantly, Borné is asking LCA members to stop recruiting at Tulane. He also wants the state Supreme Court to revisit Rule XX, which governs when and how law students are allowed to participate in trial work, to see if the law clinic is in compliance.
“Why should Tulane permit its law clinic to practice law? I say ‘practice law’ because they’re not lawyers, they’re in law school, they’re students who are practicing being lawyers. Why should they permit them to practice on us like a medical student practices on a cadaver in an anatomy course?” he asks, enunciating the word “practice” with disdain. “We are living, breathing human beings up here that are very concerned about our economy.”
Baton Rouge officially is a nonattainment area for ozone standards, says Adam Babich, who directs the Environmental Law Center. What LEAN wants to see is compliance with the new standard and more monitoring; the emissions statistics we now have are primarily based on estimates and not hard data, he says.
The legal fine points are debatable. But what is completely inappropriate, Tulane officials argue, is attacking the law clinic for simply taking the case.
“Everything the clinic does is on behalf of clients,” Babich says. The clinic has two missions: allowing students to learn by doing, and expanding access to the legal system, regardless of a client’s ability to pay.
Tulane Provost Michael Bernstein says there’s a common misperception the clinic makes all the decisions in a case to serve some anti-business agenda, while the clients are just puppets. Dispelling that notion was one goal of a recent meeting Bernstein organized that included himself, Babich, LEAN Director Marylee Orr, ExxonMobil chemical plant Manager Dan Schuessler and Gov. Bobby Jindal’s executive counsel Tim Barfield among others, according to people who were there. The sitdown was a bit awkward; LEAN is suing Exxon, too, claiming excess emissions from the Scenic Highway chemical plant, although everyone avoided discussing any lawsuits.
“It was unusual,” Orr says. “I never participated in anything like that.”
Like Bernstein, Orr wants to stress that Tulane does not dictate LEAN’s agenda like some Wizard of Oz sitting behind a curtain.
“We bring it to them, they don’t bring it to us at all,” she says. “If you say it that way to us, then what you’re saying is citizens are too stupid to understand if they have a problem with water or a landfill or their air. To say we’re being led is to say we can’t think for ourselves.”
Orr also tried to make clear that LEAN is not against economic development. Her organization believes a better environment supports a better quality of life, which leads to a stronger economy.
Schuessler says the meeting was an opportunity to de-mystify what his company does. Exxon obviously is in business to make as much money as possible, but he says most people don’t realize new investments in the plant actually help protect the environment while earning money for shareholders at the same time, because less energy usage means less emissions and lower costs.
“We’re all humans,” he says. “We all want clean air, we’re all part of this community. … We‘re all on the same team.”
Schuessler says he was surprised to hear LEAN acknowledge the progress Louisiana industry has made over the years, even if the sides disagree on how much more work there is to do.
“If industry hadn’t made progress,” Orr says, “I wouldn’t still be doing this.”
