Everglades Law Center (ELC)

The ELC has pursued litigation against sugar-industry interests, private developers, and government agencies to constrain economic activity it has deemed harmful to South Florida wetlands and waterways. In March 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir and Stormwater Treatment Area Project, rejecting a challenge brought by three sugar companies — Okeelanta Corporation, United States Sugar Corporation, and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida — that ELC and its partners had opposed through amicus briefing. ^{1 2}

Background

In 1990, a group of law professors and practicing lawyers joined together to create the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center, a nonprofit law firm that would pursue environmental litigation in Florida. In 1994, it hired Richard Grosso, a former legal director of 1000 Friends of Florida, to work as its executive director and to found a legal representation program at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The Everglades Law Center was incorporated in Florida in 1995 under the name “Environmental and Land Use Law Center, Inc.” The organization changed its name to the “Everglades Law Center” in 2006 to reflect its new determination to focus environmental litigation to protect the Everglades region of Florida. ^{3 4}

The ELC’s early victories won before 2015, included convincing the government to institute “carrying capacity” development caps and habitat-based zoning in the Florida Keys, preventing the development of a commercial airport at Homestead Air Reserve Base, stopping a development citing Florida’s growth laws, forcing the relocation of a bio-tech campus from the Everglades to an urban state university, and relocating a proposed distribution center from the Everglades Agricultural Area to the “economically disadvantaged” cities of South Bay and Belle Glade. ⁴

As of 2026, the ELC maintained an office in Miami, Florida. ⁵

Activities

The Everglades Law Center organizes its work into four program areas: land use and sustainability, water and wetlands protection, endangered species and wildlife, and public lands protection. The organization has appeared in federal and state courts, administrative law proceedings, and before governmental bodies, including state water management districts and county commissions. From 2020 to 2022 alone, it represented partner organizations such as the Everglades Foundation, the Sierra Club Florida, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and Friends of the Everglades, among many others. ⁶

In addition to its pre-2015 litigation victories, in 2026, the ELC boasted of its role in blocking the expansion of approximately 20,000 acres of lime rock mines in the Everglades Agricultural Area and its role in negotiating with a major public utility to exclude electrical transmission lines from Everglades National Park. The ELC also claimed to have blocked a proposal to deepen and widen the Lake Worth Inlet, which it argued would have destroyed coral and seagrass beds, and to have opposed the use of deep injection wells that it contended would divert water needed for Everglades restoration. ^{7 6}

The ELC filed or participated in several high-profile legal actions related to the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), the federal-state framework enacted through the Water Resources Development Act of 2000 to restore South Florida hydrology. In November 2024, ELC attorneys appeared in federal court opposing a sugar-industry challenge to the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Reservoir Project, a key CERP component designed to filter agricultural runoff and restore natural water flows. In March 2025, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Army Corps of Engineers, affirming the project’s approval and rejecting the sugar companies’ reading of CERP’s savings clause. The ELC also represented a coalition of environmental groups and municipalities as amici curiae; partners in that filing included the Everglades Foundation, Captains for Clean Water, Florida Bay Forever, and four Florida municipalities. ^{8 9 10}

From 2020 through 2022 alone, the ELC provided pro bono representation or partnership to more than thirty nonprofit organizations working on South Florida environmental issues, including Miami Waterkeeper, the Everglades Foundation, Sierra Club Florida, the Friends of the Everglades, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Audubon Florida, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Earthjustice. ⁶

Funding

In 2024, the Everglades Law Center reported receiving no government grants. The organization’s revenue of $483,835 derived principally from private contributions ($374,510, or approximately 77 percent of total revenue) and other revenue ($98,653). ¹¹

Leadership

As of 2026, Elizabeth Fata Carpenter was the executive director of the Everglades Law Center. A native Floridian who grew up along the Indian River Lagoon, Carpenter earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and a law degree from the University of Miami School of Law, where she worked as a William M. Hoeveler Fellow in its Environmental Justice Clinic. Before joining the ELC, Carpenter worked in environmental education at Oregon Caves National Monument; in salmon aquaculture in Kodiak, Alaska; in “environmental justice efforts” in Miami-Dade County; and as an associate attorney at Cozen O’Connor handling commercial litigation. ¹²

Ansley Samson was general counsel as of 2026. Samson previously worked at Earthjustice, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She graduated with honors from Yale College and received a J.D. from Harvard Law School and received the 2023 Everglades Coalition Conservationist of the Year Award. ¹²

Lisa Interlandi was policy director as of 2026. She previously worked as a senior staff attorney of ELC and, before joining the organization, as assistant general counsel at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, where she worked on state lands protection and natural resource litigation. ¹²