In Memoriam: Professor Emeritus Edward Lloyd

“Edward Lloyd, a leading environmental activist and crusading community interest lawyer who started the Environmental Regulation Clinic at Columbia Legislation School, the place he taught for 21 many years, died on August 5. He was 74.

Lloyd, Evan M. Frankel Medical Professor Emeritus in Environmental Regulation, was a pioneering figure in the environmental legislation local community, notably in New Jersey, exactly where he lived. Lloyd was regarded as that state’s most notable environmental attorney for his job in avoiding sewage from remaining dumped into waterways, which secured delicate lands and safeguarded communities from harmful squander. 

“Despite his mild demeanor, any person who knew Ed effectively understood that he was each a intense advocate and formidable legal foe,” reported Gillian Lester, Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Legislation. “Generations of his students have gone on to combat the battle as terribly nicely-educated environmental legal professionals, motivated by Ed’s indefatigable sense of purpose and justice.”

As director of Columbia Law’s Environmental Legislation Clinic, Lloyd furnished palms-on lawful training to scores of potential attorneys as they represented organizations functioning to address vital environmental troubles. Under his aegis, the clinic took on a broad assortment of actions, these as inspecting the environmental impacts of pipeline development about, underneath, or by the Delaware River. The clinic’s notable victories included drafting an amicus quick that led a federal court docket in 2018 to get the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos, a harmful pesticide connected to brain hurt in small children functioning on the case that led the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court docket to overturn crucial components of the state’s 2012 all-natural fuel enhancement law that would have stripped municipalities of zoning legal rights and specified point out companies sole authority to figure out exactly where hydraulic fracturing could acquire area and symbolizing Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Community Board 1, and the Greenpoint/Williamsburg Waterfront Process Pressure in a 2008 obstacle to a proposed ability plant on the East River waterfront in Brooklyn.

“I want my students to consider absent a variety of expertise from this clinic: listening diligently to their shoppers and examining strategies—including litigation, plan improve, achievable regulatory reform,” Lloyd once claimed. 

Alumni of the Environmental Regulation Clinic have absent on to do the job at the Division of Justice, Environmental Defense Company, Earthjustice, Pure Assets Protection Council, and other general public desire businesses and govt agencies. “Even if students select not to follow environmental legislation,” Lloyd claimed, “I hope they consider with them a sense of the breadth and depth of the environmental challenges struggling with this state and the planet.” 

Susan Kraham ’92, a previous team legal professional for the Environmental Regulation Clinic who is now an attorney at Earthjustice, characterized Lloyd as “a scarce mixture of successful and assertive litigator, sensible negotiator, engaging teacher, and light mentor. The men and women and areas he touched are far better off for his treatment.”

Melding Law and Science

Lloyd graduated from Princeton College with a B.A. in chemistry in 1970 and gained a J.D. from the College of Wisconsin Regulation University in 1973. He commenced his profession at the New Jersey Public Curiosity Analysis Team, an organization that advocates on behalf of people, wherever he was government director and personnel lawyer. In 1985, he launched the Environmental Regulation Clinic at Rutgers College Legislation School, which he directed for 15 a long time in advance of becoming a member of the Columbia Law school in 2000. He also served on the tutorial committee of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and on the board of directors of the Columbia Journal of Environmental Legislation.

Over and above the academy, Lloyd taken care of a comprehensive docket of environmental operate. He was a longtime member of the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, which oversees preservation and enhancement in the 1.1 million–acre Pinelands Nationwide Reserve in South Jersey, and he fought threats to its sovereignty. He was co-founder and co-chair of the Jap Environmental Legislation Centre, the sole general public curiosity environmental law business in New Jersey, and he was a member of the Litigation Evaluation Committee of the Environmental Protection Fund and of the New Jersey Supreme Courtroom Committee on Environmental Litigation. Lloyd also testified just before the U.S. congressional and legislative committees on issues which include power conservation, solar electricity, clean h2o expectations and restrictions, freedom of info, drinking water source arranging and conservation, and sound squander.

For the duration of his life span, Lloyd gained several honors and awards, such as the NY/NJ Baykeeper Award (2000), the Sierra Club Superb Environmental Achievement Award (2005), and the Environmental Stewardship Award from EarthShare New Jersey (2014). He was hailed by the New Jersey Do the job Environment Council in 2013 for his “tireless efforts and dedication to defending the setting and well being and safety of workers and communities.” When he was honored by the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters at its Eco-friendly Tie Gala in 2018, the Point out of New Jersey Senate and Typical Assembly handed a resolution commending him as “a gentleman of exceptional character and remarkable willpower.”

Lloyd is survived by his wife, Janine Bauer their son, Alexander E. Lloyd ’19 and their daughter, Abigail Lloyd.