San Diego Coastkeeper


Law & Policy Clinic

Our Campaigns

While Coastkeeper's strategic use of the legal system has achieved numerous legal and regulatory victories, we are equally enthusiastic about our cooperative efforts working with local, state, and federal representatives as well as citizens and activist groups on improving environmental policies. Coastkeeper representatives actively participate in community problem-solving, planning efforts, and policymaking.

From its earliest efforts in the San Diego region in 1995, Coastkeeper has stressed communication and cooperative problem-solving as a tool to achieve its goals. Often working in good faith with so-called "adversaries" who seem to share no common ground, Coastkeeper is successful reaching consensus on solutions that protect precious environmental resources.

Coastkeeper works at every level with a wide variety of individuals and organizations. Successful working relationships have been established with shipyards along San Diego Bay, Otay Mesa auto dismantlers, city governments, Caltrans, Duke Energy, Chula Vista Bayfront Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC), and the State Water Quality Control Board.

Coastkeeper has taken a leadership role among local environmental and advocacy groups, forming powerful coalitions with the ability to achieve goals by working together. Among recent examples:

  • Coastkeeper started coordinating regional efforts known as the Organization of Regional Coastal Activists or "ORCA," aimed at increasing effectiveness of local activists at the California Coastal Commission;
  • Coastkeeper brought together over a dozen North County environmental organizations (known as the North County Open Space Coalition) to ensure that effective regional habitat plans are adopted and implemented in coastal North County;
  • Coastkeeper is working with a coalition of environmental and human rights groups seeking to stop a proposed triple fence along the U.S.-Mexico Border;
  • Coastkeeper started taking a leadership role among local environmental groups on issues related directly the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) and other fisheries issues;
  • Coastkeeper continues to work with co-plaintiffs Waterkeepers Northern California, the California Public Interest Research Group (Calpirg) and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper to challenge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's failure to adopt Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for pollutants in California's impaired water bodies.