Responses to Claims that Environmental Lawsuits Caused Katrina Crisis

[JPZenger]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/20/142836/346
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Sierra Club Press Release: BLAMING ENVIRONMENTALISTS FOR KATRINA: WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW!

http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/releases/pr2005-09-13a.asp

"...At issue is the role that conservation groups played in two cases -- one almost 30 years ago -- involving levee projects proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers. Here's what you need to know about the specific cases that have been mentioned:

Save Our Wetlands v. Rush - 1977 -In 1977, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed project would have built a 25-mile long barrier and gate system from the Mississippi border to the Mississippi River. As designed the project would have choked off water exchange into Lake Pontchartrain, dooming an incredibly productive fishery. Communities around the Lake and local fisherman opposed the project because of the massive impact it would have had on the economy and environment in the region. Those groups had advocated building higher levees as a simpler and safer alternative to the Corps’ plan.

After the Army Corps of Engineers refused to evaluate the impacts of its proposed project and consider ways to reduce them, Save Our Wetlands filed suit and secured an injunction from U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz, Jr., who concluded that the region "would be irreparably harmed" if the barrier project was allowed to continue and chastised the Army Corps of Engineers for a shoddy job. The Judge required the Corps to properly study its proposed massive new levee construction project before moving forward. The Corps has never bothered to do the work despite having nearly 30 years to do so.

BOTTOM LINE: There was widespread local opposition. A Federal Judge demanded that the Army Corps provide more info, it never did, and it abandoned the project years later on its own.

Mississippi River Basin Alliance, et al. v. H. Martin Lancaster -- 1996 - In the mid-1990's, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed raising hundreds of miles of levees 100 miles north of New Orleans in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Conservation groups and others did not oppose the idea of raising the levees, but they did have strong concerns about the fact that Corps wanted to drain as much as 11,000 acres of bottomland hardwood wetlands ...

...the Sierra Club ...took the Corps to Court. The case was soon settled, with the Corps of Engineers agreeing in 1997 to look at ways of minimizing the damage to the wetlands...According to a 1997 Baton Rouge Advocate article, "Corps officials said it will take them 30 years to finish the levee work. That much time is required because funding is lacking for the projects -- not because of the new environmental study, called an environmental impact statement."

BOTTOM LINE: The project was 100 miles away from flood area and wouldn't have made any difference with Katrina. Conservation groups never opposed raising the levees; just the heavy handed way in which the Corps was going to do it. And it wasn't just conservation groups; even the LA Legislature had concerns. The case was settled one year later but the Corps never had the funding to move ahead on the project."

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Mississippi Clarion-Ledger
September 16, 2005
"E-mail suggests government seeking to blame groups.

"Federal officials appear to be seeking proof to blame the flood of New Orleans on environmental groups, documents show. The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: "Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation."

... a Sept. 8 issue of National Review Online that chastised the Sierra Club and other environmental groups for suing to halt the corps' 1996 plan to raise and fortify 303 miles of Mississippi River levees in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. The corps settled the litigation in 1997, agreeing to hold off on some work until an environmental impact could be completed. The National Review article concluded: "Whether this delay directly affected the levees that broke in New Orleans is difficult to ascertain."

The problem with that conclusion? The levees that broke causing New Orleans to flood weren't Mississippi River levees. They were levees that protected the city from Lake Pontchartrain levees on the other side of the city."

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050916/NEWS0110/509160369/1260