Legal, Environmental Perspective on AvalonBay To Be Addressed by Environmental Lawyer Oct. 7
To the Editor:
Princeton residents will want to know of the upcoming public talk about AvalonBay and its environmental impacts. Save the date: October 7, 2012, 3 p.m.
Aaron Kleinbaum, Esq., legal director of the Eastern Environmental Law Center, will discuss “Sustainable Redevelopment in Princeton: The Legal and Environmental Perspective on AvalonBay.” The talk will be given at Princeton Engine Co #1 (the firehouse), 13 Chestnut Street, Princeton (light refreshments will be served).
Mr. Kleinbaum will speak about AvalonBay’s lack of transparency about potential contamination at the old hospital site; resistance to LEED construction, and, refusal to consider public open space. He will situate these local issues in the regional and national contexts of sustainability, environmental protections, and climate change. He will also discuss the mission of the Eastern Environmental Law Center, with particular attention to environmental justice.
The talk is sponsored by Princeton Citizens for Sustainable Neighborhoods (PCSN), for whom the event is also a fundraiser, with donations to be shared with EELC.
Mr. Kleinbaum, who has been retained by PCSN along with land-use counsel and an urban planner to represent PCSN at Planning Board hearings on AvalonBay, authored the letter to the Planning Board and municipal engineers insisting that AvalonBay make public the EcolSciences report commissioned by AB through Maser Consulting LLC. That report had not been released until Mr. Kleinbaum’s letter exerted sufficient pressure to gain its availability for public scrutiny for this central matter of public health.
Mr. Kleinbaum has previously served as vice president for environmental affairs at Ingersoll Rand and as external environmental counsel to the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, among other environmentalist positions. A civil engineer, he received his J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law in 1990.
All are welcome. For further information, contact Daniel A. Harris, dah43@comcast.net, (609) 683-0198.
Jane Buttars
Dodds Lane