Our Vision
We imagine a Kentucky where the air is clean, the water safe,
and nature and natural resources are safeguarded and not abused.
DEFENDING KENTUCKY
Kentucky Resources Council (KRC) combines smart policy and legal advocacy to protect the Commonwealth's natural resources and ensure environmental justice for Kentucky's most vulnerable people and communities. Since 1984, KRC has worked to ensure that individuals impacted by environmental decisions have a voice in the policy-making process.
Across the Commonwealth, KRC provides consistent, aggressive advocacy on environmental and public health issues by monitoring and educating the public on permits, regulations, and legislation; facilitating networking among environmental and citizen groups; and providing direct and indirect legal representation without charge to individuals, community groups and local governments.
KRC is always on call - ready to provide assistance to those who live downhill, downwind, and downstream - whose homes, health, lands, and quality of life are damaged or threatened by irresponsible development of our natural resources and pollution. From reforming mining laws to protecting Black Mountain, the Pine Mountain Settlement School, Cumberland Gap's Fern Lake, and UK's Robinson Forest from mining, from winning a Kentucky Supreme Court decision that confirmed the Bluegrass Pipeline could not take property through eminent domain, to legislative advocacy in Frankfort and case-by-case assistance on land, water, and resource extraction issues, KRC has stood in the gap.
WE BELIEVE
- Every Kentuckian has a right to clean air, clean water, and land free of pollution
- Nature and natural resources should be protected from abuse
- A healthy environment is essential for a sound economy
- We are all stewards of our world, accountable to each other and to our children’s children, and all future generations, for the choices we make
- Environmental and energy decisions and policies should be informed by humility, justice, and prudence
- Public resources should not be taken for private gain or wasted
Kentucky Resources Council is a 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1984.
OUR MISSION
We work to protect our built and natural communities from pollution and environmental damage.
THE IMPORTANCE OF DIVERSITY
Fundamental to our mission is our commitment to promoting the principles of diversity and inclusion for every citizen of the Commonwealth. In taking legal action and seeking remedies for improved health and quality of life, we recognize and acknowledge individual uniqueness, constraints, understanding, income stability, and health. We seek to promote our core values through honest, open dialogue, an inclusive workforce, and a diverse board committed to honoring the diversity principles with all of our clients.
Through our work to protect Kentucky’s natural and built environments, we are dedicated to providing legal representation to a diverse population to remove any economic, racial, and other barriers to achieving justice so that justice will indeed be for all.
VOICE
by Trina Peiffer, written for the Kentucky Resources Council
November 3, 2017
Who would you want in the middle
of your controversy—
your town, forest, mountain,
your water supply,
mineral rights,
wild river,
your cave, neighborhood, farmland,
who would you want
when you can’t take the trees
to the courtroom with you
to state their case
and you can’t make the river talk
any more than it does, tippling the rocks,
when you can’t determine in dollars exactlythe value of clean air,
and it never will blow back
in its own defense.
Who would you want
in defense of the voiceless, the unseen,
underrepresented, overlooked,
marginalized, undermined
and in defense of the beautiful
those delicate connectionsbetween waterways, & in soil
fortifying plants, & in the power
of trees growing and re-growing
under our single sun.
This council
is the legal face of the voiceless.
Wild nature
stands behind its every brief, legal opinion, policy,
and protest.
This council
is fearless in the middle of controversy
where it stakes its place in the heart of Kentucky.
The Kentucky Resources Council has been at the center of the most important environmental issues facing our Commonwealth for the last 35 years. Join with us today as we continue to work together to protect our Kentucky.
The Kentucky Resources Council is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the conservation and prudent use of Kentucky’s natural resources. Since 1984, we have dedicated ourselves to protecting Kentucky’s land, air, water, and communities.