BROWN BAYOU IN 2011 – Just a decade earlier, this was an open steam used by commercial fishermen, sport fishermen, hunters and others to access navigable waters of the Atchafalaya Basin. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit required this obstruction to be removed, but it wasn’t. Now the Corps has issued a permit to extend this road permanently. (Atchafalaya Basinkeeper)
St. Martin fishermen file suit over road in the Atchafalaya Basin
Commercial fishermen from St. Martin Parish are among those trying to force oil and gas interests in the Atchafalaya Basin to operate without permanent roads.
According to a notice of intent filed in federal court here, those limestone roads and steel culverts disrupt the natural hydrology in the Basin and prevent the traditional exercise of commerce enjoyed by generations of Acadians and others who made their living fishing and trapping.
The Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association West, whose membership of about 500 includes many St. Martin commercial fishermen, and the 700-member Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, are suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over its issuance of permits for a limestone road serving a well location in Iberville Parish near Ramah.
The action also seeks to pit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency against the Corps over violations of the Clean Water Act allegedly papered over by the Corps’ permitting practices.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare illegal and invalid Corps authorization of the road, for Expert Oil & Gas LLC across property owned by A. Wilbert’s Sons, and to vacate and enjoin the use of a “general permit” for the project.
The plaintiffs allege that in 2000 – using a Corps’ general permit authorizing “a temporary east-west access road using wooden boards,” the oil and gas operators instead built a limestone road with 30-inch culverts restricting access to Bayou Brown and the east fork of Bayou des Glaises, which were navigable waters.
Despite a requirement by the permit to restore the project site “to as near pre-project conditions as practicable,” the permanent road and culverts remain, the plaintiffs allege.
In 2012 the Corps, without public notice or the participation of the EPA, authorized the operators to extend the existing road to a new well location, permanently impacting 2.32 acres of wetlands “with the placement of 267 cubic yards of native material and 178 cubic yards of limestone,” the suit alleges.
“The Atchafalaya Basin is suffering the proverbial death by a thousand cuts, as the Corps approves ‘smaller’ projects that add up, connect, and build on one another to extend destruction to natural wetlands,” the suit contends.
The Tulane Environmental Law Clinic is handing the matter for the LCPAW and Basinkeeper.
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