What is the ELC?
The ELC is a not-for -profit law firm dedicated to representing the public interest in environmental and land use matters. For over 15 years, under our previous name – the Environmental and Land Use Law Center, and, since April 2006 as the Everglades Law Center, our work as lawyers and advocates has focused on restoring the Everglades and the Keys and to helping special places like Martin County prevent growth from ruining what makes them special. The ELC's mission is to use advocacy, negotiation and litigation to protect and restore the South Florida ecosystem. We pursue an aggressive agenda based on adherence to the scientific requirements and economic and social realities of development impacts on the people and ecosystems of south Florida. From the Everglades headwaters in Osceola County to the Florida Keys, development, mining and other pressures threaten to overwhelm the South Florida ecosystem. We use our expertise in land use and development permitting, property rights and related fields before local, regional state agencies and local, state and federal courts and administrative bodies to protect and sustain this region’s unique and irreplaceable ecosystems and communities.
We have won some of the most important land use legal victories in Florida including the Florida Keys “Environmental Carrying Capacity”, Ambrose vested rights, and Tier Overlay (Habitat Protection) System cases, the Homestead Air Reserve Base Reuse, Scripps Biotechnology Campus, and the Palm Beach and Miami -Dade County urban boundary cases, and the Pinecrest Lakes case in Martin County, among others. Our hard work in the Keys has significantly improved habitat protection but we are still working to improve the rules to ensure that the “carrying capacity” of the Keys ecosystem is clearly protected. A common theme of our work is ensuring that the essential land area and qualitative needs of the ecosystem and the wildlife that depend upon it, are protected in perpetuity from development and other impacts.
The ELC also manages a public interest legal clinic along with its partner, the Shepard Broad Law Center at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, where General Counsel Richard Grosso is also an Associate Professor, and Litigation Counsel Robert Hartsell is an adjunct professor. Through that clinic, law student interns learn how to practice both the basics and the cutting edge of environmental and land use law, while providing invaluable legal support to the ELC’s four attorneys and our clients.