Elena Mihaly is the Vice President for Vermont. Having joined CLF in 2013, Elena leads advocacy initiatives in Vermont related to climate, water quality, public health, and environmental justice. Her past successes include fighting for stronger water quality protections for Lake Champlain under EPA’s TMDL clean-up plan, working to protect children from lead poisoning in school and child care center drinking water, and helping secure Vermont’s first Environmental Justice Law.
Elena has been with CLF since 2013, first as a Legal Fellow and then as a Staff Attorney and a Senior Attorney before stepping into her current leadership role in 2021. She holds a J.D. and Masters in Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law and Graduate School, and a B.A. in Environmental Science from Colorado College. Elena is admitted to practice in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and several federal courts.
Elena lives in Vermont with her husband, two young kids, and their old cattle dog, where together they enjoy adventuring in the woods, growing food, and watching abundant local wildlife in the woods and fields around their home.
Recent Posts
Dec 18 2024
When you hear “extreme weather,” what do you think of? If you’re a Vermonter like me, maybe it’s increasingly frequent floods submerging basements. Or a favorite restaurant going out of business because rebuilding from the Great Flood of 2023 was just too expensive. Or heat waves that make your brain too hot to think straight. …
Aug 16 2024
Update 9/24/2024: CLF has formally filed its complaint which initiates a lawsuit against the State’s Agency of Natural Resources. This piece was originally published as an op-ed in the VTDigger. On the first anniversary of last July’s catastrophic flooding, Vermonters were caught yet again in another terrifying storm. It dumped more than six inches of…
Feb 9 2024
Things haven’t been easy for Vermont these past six months. Flood after flood has barraged our state, submerging our homes, disrupting our businesses, and inundating our roads with debris. And recent ice storms have downed trees, leaving Vermonters without electricity and sometimes trapped in our homes. But although these extreme storms have wreaked devastating losses,…
Feb 8 2024
You can’t see the White River in this photo, but the sign shows where this roaring river reached its high point during Tropical Storm Irene. The river completely inundated this farm field, submerging all its melons, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and sweet corn. A local newspaper captured the farmer’s account of the 2011 flood: “[The water]…
Nov 8 2023
I recently took my two young children to spend a weekend in coastal Maine, where we rented an Airbnb. The place looked great online. But as we drove closer to the neighborhood, a chemical smell struck us – something you couldn’t see in pictures. It turned out that the house sat right across the street…
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