JASON A. WEINER  -  BIO 

Jason A. Weiner is the Ventura Coastkeeper’s (VCK’s) Associate Director and Staff Attorney, responsible for protecting, conserving, and restoring the ecological integrity of Ventura County ’s waterbodies. A licensed attorney in California , Jason received his J.D. from Vermont Law School and his Master of Environmental Management focusing on water science, management, and policy from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He has served as legal clerk with Trout Unlimited and the California Attorney General’s Natural Resource Section, where he gained invaluable legal and policy experience protecting the water quality and the natural flow regimes of rivers and streams.  From his work as a watershed research assistant and from conducting an extensive biotic assessment for the Trout Unlimited Hammonasset Chapter, Jason also brings to VCK the scientific and practical foundation necessary to monitor, assess, and restore the water quality, habitat structure, flow regime, biotic community health, and energy source of rivers and streams, and to pinpoint anthropogenic impacts affecting Ventura’s inland and coastal waterbodies. 

While pursuing his J.D. and M.E.M., Jason worked tirelessly to help over 700 ex-Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited (NSEL) sugarcane employees and communities surrounding NSEL sugarcane fields file a complaint with the International Financial Corporation (IFC). The complaint seeks to achieve redress for the environmental contamination and the epidemic of chronic renal failure amongst ex-NSEL employees caused by NSEL’s sugarcane cultivation and associated inadequate occupational health and safety practices. Still involved, Jason is contributing to CIEL’s ongoing representation of the complainants in the IFC complaint process, and is hopeful they will receive definitive answers as to the cause of their chronic renal failure, improved medical care, safe and healthy working conditions, and an environment free of contaminants polluting their water supply and environment. Prior to graduate school, Jason also worked on a ferrocement rainwater harvesting project while serving as a volunteer with Volunteer Peten in rural Guatemala.  

Jason’s law review article, “The Insufficiency of New Hampshire's Instream Flow Regulation to Ensure the Viability of its Rivers as Economic, Environmental, and Social Assets”, critiquing New Hampshire's instream flow legislation and offering suggestions for its improvement, is forthcoming in the June 2009 edition, Volume 12, Issue 2 of The University of Denver Water Law Review.  Click here to Contact Jason.

Pictured above: Jason Weiner observing Calleguas Creek, Ventura County