When losing turns into a win:

Transforming suffering into meaning.

It’s Friday night. I imagine that in San Juan, Puerto Rico, those I used to deem amigos go on their usual drinking, dining, and dancing while I sit in front of a monitor, tears running down my cheeks. I am drafting Motions to Withdraw as Counsel in the two remaining cases I have left in Puerto Rico. Clean Water Act citizen suit lawsuits that represented the culmination of decades of hard work and dedication in my specialization, environmental law.

After successfully arguing before the First Circuit Court of Appeals a citizen’s right to sue under the Clean Water Act despite agency “action” [inaction] in Cebollero Bertran v. PRASA, 4 F.4^th 63 (1st Cir. 2021), these two cases represent the first meaningful opportunity for improving Puerto Rico’s dire polluted waters. In a tropical island where the government dismantled the local environmental agency in violation of federal law, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chooses to look the other way, these cases represent what the citiz…