The Environmental Integrity Project is a 501 (c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog organization that advocates for effective enforcement of environmental laws. Comprised of former EPA enforcement attorneys, public interest lawyers, analysts, investigators, and community organizers, EIP has three goals:
- To illustrate through objective facts and figures how the failure to enforce or implement environmental laws increases pollution and harms public health;
- To hold federal and state agencies, as well as individual corporations, accountable for failing to enforce or comply with environmental laws; and
- To help local communities obtain the protections of environmental laws.
We act as a watchdog because we have to. State and federal agencies charged with protecting the environment often are squeezed by limited resources and political interference from well-funded lobbyists hired by the industries they are required to regulate. We help level the playing field by giving communities the legal and technical resources they need to claim their rights under environmental laws.
Political influence should play no role when the government decides whether to enforce laws which keep cancer-causing benzene out of the lungs of children, for example, or deadly coal soot particles out of the bloodstreams of the elderly.
We do this by advocating for fair enforcement of environmental laws and regulations; writing and distributing reports and data; taking legal actions against big polluters and government agencies, when necessary; and by teaching communities how to participate in the public process regarding important state and federal environmental decisions.
