Thanks and so long

Environmental lawyer seeks greener pastures

BARBARA YOST
Special to Jewish News

David Baron

As a boy growing up in Ohio, a young David Baron watched as his beloved Lake Erie slowly turned to poison.

The blue lake where he once fished and swam became brown and foamy. Fish went belly up. Swimmers were warned to stay away from the polluted shores.

"I remember being outraged even a young kid," says Baron. "That sparked my interest."

Specifically, it sparked his interest in protecting the environment, eventually inspiring him to become one of the leading champions of clean air and water in Arizona. As assistant director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, Baron has fought passionately to enforce environmental protection laws. He has sued the Environmental Protection Agency and the state more than a dozen times - and he has never lost a case.

Credit Baron with enforcement of carbon monoxide, ozone and particulate standards, which triggered auto emissions testing, oxygenated fuels and the vapor recovery system.

He sued the state Legislature to prevent it from relinquishing its claims on riverbeds. His arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 forced mining companies to pay market value for minerals harvested from state-owned land.

"It is not an overstatement to say that David has done more for the environment in Arizona than an other single individual," ACLPI Executive Director Tim Hogan said in the center's recent newsletter.

But those words of praise came with the announcement that Arizona is losing Baron to Washington, D.C. After 17 years working in the center's Tucson office, Baron has accepted the post of senior attorney with the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund in the nation's capital.

With nine regional offices across the country, Earthjustice assists environmental groups on national and local issues. While Baron may from time to time still have contact with Arizona activists, and may encounter former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, who is now the U.S. secretary of the interior, Arizona is saying good-bye to a man regarded as the best friend of citizens who want to drink clean water and breathe clean air.

"Every breath we take we should thank David Baron for," says Rob Smith, southwest staff director for the Sierra Club. "We're losing a major environmental champion."

Some predict Baron's foes will try to take advantage of his departure. "If I were a polluting organization, I'd be doing a dance," says state Sen. Chris Cummisky (D-Phoenix), who met Baron after entering the Legislature eight years ago with his own agenda of environmental issues.

Cummisky calls Baron's departure "a dramatic change for environmental advocates in the Legislature," saying Baron deftly used the court system to bring accountability to state and federal officials charged with protecting the environment.

"Mr. Baron was a master of the process," Cummisky says.

Now the search is on to find a replacement for Baron, who leaves at the end of January and begins his new job Feb. 8.

ACLPI's Hogan warns would-be polluters that Baron's shoes will indeed be filled. Jennifer Anderson, a lawyer hired to work in the Phoenix office last March, is already working on many of Baron's pet projects. And Hogan says he's finding worthy candidates to fill the position in Tucson.

"We're not going to miss a beat here," he says. "We're not going to drop the ball."

Baron, who earned his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins and his law degree from Cornell, looks back on his accomplishments in the state with pride. He says that after calling Arizona home for 20 years, he feels "ambivalent about leaving."

"I've had a wonderful experience and enjoyed working with Arizonans," he says.

It was when his wife, immigration lawyer Nadine Wettstein, took a job with a national immigration law practice in Washington, that Baron, too, began looking for a new challenge there. At the prestigious Earthjustice, his expertise will serve the Middle Atlantic states.

Earthjustice headquarters are in San Francisco.

Though his agenda will be wide-ranging, fighting air pollution will continue to be at the forefront of Baron's agenda. It remains one of the most serious environmental problems facing America, Baron says. "It's certainly up near the top, if not at the top," he says. "People are exposed to it every day."

In a job being created for him, Baron will forge his own schedule, addressing not only air pollution, but water pollution and issues of public land use.

He expects to encounter some of the same challenges he faced in Arizona, including the resistance of business and industrial concerns to complying with new laws and regulations. "It's uncertainty and a natural fear of change," Baron says. "Business people like certainty. Environmental elements add uncertainty."

But most business people eventually come around, he has discovered, to such innovations as emission standards. In the early 1970s, he notes, auto manufacturers fought attempts to make vehicles run cleaner. Now they boast of their compliance.

Working in the nation's capital doesn't mean Baron will be jumping into the national political fray. He doesn't know if he'll rub shoulders with the likes of Babbitt or Vice President Al Gore, touted as a major supporter of environmental issues.

He does believe that Gore, a likely candidate for president in 2000, "has a much better understanding of the issues than any other national leader in recent years," he says. "And he clearly cares about the environment." He applauds Gore's support for efforts to deal with global warming.

But Baron remains skeptical, believing too few politicians are willing to take on the business community. He questions whether Gore's passion "will translate into environmental action."

Given Baron's track record, he's not likely to go any easier on polluters and land-grabbers in the East than he was in the West.

As he looks back on 17 years of work in Arizona, Baron says he is most proud of helping to launder the air over Phoenix, a greater challenge than cleaning up the smaller environs of his own Tucson.

He agrees that more work needs to be done. Recent weeks have seen numerous "no-burn" days in the Valley, an indication that air pollution still threatens the health of residents. But ozone and carbon dioxide levels are down, thanks in part to Baron. Still ahead-reducing particulates.

Baron says the Legislature must pass tougher laws. Arizona, he says, still ranks in the bottom half of states marking progress on environmental issues, and officials are not serving the people they represent. These are people who revel in such wonders as the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert.

"There's a huge disconnect between what the public wants and what they're getting from public officials," Baron says. "People come to Arizona for its natural beauty. But business and industrial interests come here and want to make money."

The state's number-one environmental problem is growth, he says. That seeds every other issue. Maricopa County, he notes, is the fastest-growing county in the U.S. But keeping people out is the not the solution, he says; managing growth is. Sometimes saying no to developers also helps stem the tide of sprawl.

Measures to manage growth that Baron began formulating three years ago will be on the ballot in 2000. Polls show 70 percent of the public favors such programs, he says.

Besides growing up along the banks of a lake that nearly died but has been restored to life, Baron's commitment to a healthy world has been shaped by his faith. "A lot of the values, the moral values, of Judaism made an impression on me," he says.

He recalls vividly a rabbi at the temple he and his parents attended in Toledo, Ohio, the nearest synagogue to their hometown of Bowling Green. The liberal rabbi preached civil rights, though not all of the members of his congregation at the time supported his stand.

"I can still hear the guy," Baron says. "He would rail against discrimination, (poor) housing."

Baron's father was a sort of pioneer in the recycling industry, known at that time as the scrap metal business.

Jews, Baron says, seem to have a particular interest in protecting the environment, interpreting the Torah as admonishing human beings to be stewards of the land.

"It's what much of what environmental protection is all about," he says, "preserving the environment for everyone and for future generations."

That next generation, he notes, includes his 10-year-old son, Jacob.

"It (environmentalism) is a very popular movement among Jews," Baron says, though he adds with a laugh, "It could be guilt."

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