By Amy Armstrong, special to Charleston Currents | Almost 30 years ago, Jimmy Chandler set off for what he imagined to be a temporary phase of his legal career: the South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP). A proposed oil refinery in Georgetown and impoundment of tidal marshes spurred him to focus his legal effort on protecting our natural environment.

He was joined and supported by the leadership at the Energy Research Foundation in Columbia, which “hosted” the organization for about nine years and until the Project became a public charity on its own. By then, the idea of moving back to private practice had already faded into the background as new challenges and emergencies kept cropping up after each new victory inside and outside the courts.