Rutgers Law School-Newark Student Tackles Urban Environmental Challenge
Stephanie Carney turned her love for the environment, forged growing up in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, into advocacy for New Jersey’s urban landscapes
'I became interested in environmental justice issues once I moved to New Jersey. Advocating for people and working in communities is something I'm interested in.'– Stephanie Carney
Stephanie Carney traces her love and concern for the environment to growing up in Black Mountain, North Carolina, a small farm town in the Appalachian Mountains. Even the nearest city, Asheville, 30 miles away, embraced sustainability early, guiding residents to take care of their beautiful surroundings.
“Even though people didn’t have money where I grew up, we had a clean environment,” Carney says. “They fostered stewardship in the culture. I appreciate those values, and it’s nice to bring them into a different community.”
Carney, who will graduate from the Rutgers School of Law-Newark, fell hard for New Jersey’s urban environments when she came to New Brunswick for the first time to see Rutgers with a family friend. “I remember going on the tour in New Brunswick and afterward feeling like this is my niche,” Carney recalls. “It was so diverse. In one day you experience so many types of people and ideas.”
She attended Rutgers University-New Brunswick as an undergrad, earning a bachelor’s degree from the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in environmental policy, institutions and behavior and a minor in environmental economics. “I became interested in environmental justice issues once I moved to New Jersey,” she says, explaining why she went on to pursue a law degree. “Advocating for people and working in communities is something I’m interested in.”
Carney already has logged many hours working in communities and advocating for people in need. She has assisted at-risk children living in poverty through her work at the law school’s Child Advocacy Clinic in Newark. At the Essex-Newark Legal Services, elder law unit & Social Security benefits unit, Carney helped represent older clients at administrative law judge hearings for Social Security benefits.
Seeking storm-water solutions
In addition to working as a legal intern this year at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark, Carney completed an independent research project that put her environmental advocacy to work. She conducted legal research for the Newark Sustainability Office around establishing a storm-water utility for the city.
“A lot of cities in New Jersey are facing storm-water issues,” Carney says. “The infrastructure of Newark and other cities is so old that anytime there is a precipitation event, sewage pipes break and leak, creating a serious health hazard as storm-water pours into the Passaic River.”
Carney researched how other cities approach setting up storm-water utilities to help pay for repairs, and how they handle legal opposition that often arises around them. She helped draft a hybrid plan that addresses the need for a storm-water utility fee in addition to turning vacant lots into green spaces with shrubs and other plants to help absorb the storm-water.
It’s the kind of initiative Rutgers Law School-Newark law professor Steve Gold encourages his third-year students to undertake but only highly motivated students do. “Stephanie didn’t want to just do an academic exercise. She didn’t want to write a report that would sit on a shelf,” says Gold, who sponsored Carney’s project. “Her hope was to provide something that would be genuinely useful to Newark. Her research provides information that can form the basis for action if Newark has the ability and the will to take action.”
Carney has her eye on a career in environmental law. After taking the New Jersey and New York state bar exams, she will clerk for Linda Mallozzi, a family division judge in Union County. Following her clerkship, she plans to pursue a fellowship program with the Environmental Protection Agency or an environmental law program.
At Rutgers, she’s learned she likes working for municipalities and for small, grassroots organizations. And she’s learned she loves city life as much as she loves the fresh mountain air, beautiful vistas, and hike-calling terrain of her home in the Appalachian Mountains.
“I go home and we have goats and it’s quiet and there’s no noise at night,” Carney says. “I’m here and there are sirens and it’s noisy and nobody ever goes to sleep. I do miss home. Maybe one day I’ll go back, but I love Rutgers and I consider it home now.”
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For media inquiries, contact Dory Devlin ddevlin@ucm.rutgers.edu