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September 12, 2011 in City, Green People
Mike Chappell, environmental law expert, dead at 44
Michael Chappell, who founded Gonzaga University’s Environmental Law Clinic, died unexpectedly Sunday while he was golfing with friends.
An autopsy was performed Monday, but the cause of death wasn’t immediately known.
Chappell, 44, and his family moved to Spokane about three years ago from San Francisco. During a relatively short tenure in the Inland Northwest, colleagues said Chappell built up an impressive array of water quality achievements.
“Mike is one of the few people around who really had a passion and expertise for making sure that our water in our community was safe and clean,” said George Critchlow, a Gonzaga University law professor. “He had dedicated his life to making sure water was unpolluted.”
Chappell helped start the Spokane Riverkeeper program and then founded Gonzaga’s Environmental Law Clinic in 2009 and served as its director. The clinic provides free representation to nonprofit groups in the Northwest, with a priority on Spokane River issues.
In that role, Chappell helped negotiate a $300,000 settlement with the city of Spokane over cancer-causing PCBs flowing into the Spokane River through storm drains. He was also part of a new task force working to keep industrial toxins out of the river.
Chappell took a pragmatic approach to meeting water quality goals, said Rick Eichstaedt, staff attorney for the Spokane Riverkeeper program.
His standard pitch to polluters went something like this, Eichstaedt said: “Here’s what the law says. We can fight over it and if you do, you’ll lose. Or we can just come up with solutions.”
Chappell is survived by his wife, Cynthia, and the couple’s two young sons, Eichstaedt said.
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Wildflower on September 13 at 11:22 a.m.
So tragic. Mike will be greatly missed.
pablosharkman on September 13 at 5:17 p.m.
Mike worked with me on my radio show, Tipping Points: Voices from the Edge, and on the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, Takin’ it to the Streets, Spokane with Molly Callen. He was engaged, willing to meet halfway on some things, but he stuck to his guns. He was funny; he was smart, passionate, a great father and fine man and husband. And YOUNG. A Canadian at heart in my mind, but Montana got to his soul — big heart and open mind.
He was a blast at Earth Day 2010. His heart was with the Earth Scouts, working with kids to teach them how to discover why planet earth is absolutely remarkable, largely because of folk like Mike who worked to protect and understand wildlife, wild things, nature. He was right there, human, but bold enough to say he didn’t know it all, didn’t have all the answers as to why so many people destroy good things. Yet, he was positive he could make a difference.
Judging from people who I have talked with, Mike was their leader, or mentor, so his work and life go on in them.
Here’s a W.S Merwin poem that Mike I am sure would have appreciated —
For the Anniversary of My Death
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what