Elena Mihaly
Vice President for Vermont | Vermont | She/Her
Elena Mihaly serves as Vice President for Vermont. Having joined CLF in 2013, Elena has led a number of advocacy initiatives in Vermont over the years, including successfully 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, helping secure Vermont’s first Environmental Justice Law, and helping enact the nation’s first Climate Superfund Law, a landmark law that imposes financial liability on fossil fuel companies to help pay for the costs of adapting to climate change in Vermont.
She earned her J.D. and an M.S. in Environmental Law and Policy, both summa cum laude, from Vermont Law and Graduate School, and her B.A. from Colorado College. Elena lives in Vermont with her husband and two young kids, where together they enjoy hiking, growing food, and watching abundant local wildlife in the forest 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…
See all posts by Elena Mihaly
