Equitable Solutions,

This comes to us through Tom Wilcox:

There’s a new approach to preventing development projects from harming the environment that succeeds 90% of the time at a fraction of the cost of the conventional strategy.  This better way, known as Equitable Solutions, is described in the latest article posted to the CEDS news service: cedsnews.com

 With the conventional strategy citizens hire an attorney to kill a project.  Unfortunately this strategy is expensive, which greatly limits its use, and only succeeds 5% to 10% of the time vs. 90% for Equitable Solutions.  Through the Equitable Solutions approach citizens learn how to identify ways of modifying a project to resolve their concerns while allowing the applicant to achieve their goals.  Perhaps not so surprisingly, this is relatively easy to achieve since most projects are fundamentally sound.  Citizens then use the applicant’s desire to maintain a good public image as a way of convincing them to negotiate in good faith.  For those projects so poorly designed that impacts cannot be reduced to a reasonable level, Smart Legal Strategies gives citizens a much better chance of blocking a key permit or other approval.

I would deeply appreciate it if you would urge folks to check out the article and try Equitable Solutions first when they request your help with a development controversy or some other project posing a threat to the environment.  They could also contact me at 410-654-3021 or [email protected].  Finally, the article explains how we can hold an Equitable Solutions workshop in your area. 

 Richard D. Klein
Community & Environmental Defense Services
811 Crystal Palace Court
Owings Mills, Maryland  21117
410-654-3021
Main CEDS Website: ceds.org
CEDS News Service: cedsnews.com