The story of the fight against shell dredging in Lake Pontchartrain, one of the great environmental battles in Louisiana.
Protecting Wetlands and Wildlife Habitat While Reducing Flood Losses
Protecting Wetlands and Wildlife Habitat While Reducing Flood Losses: A Guidebook on Interagency Collaboration in the Mississippi River Basin
In May 2011, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and the University of North Carolina Institute for the Environment (UNC-IE), together with the Wisconsin Wetlands Association (WWA), held a workshop, funded by the McKnight Foundation, that brought together wetland and wildlife managers with emergency managers, hazard mitigation planners, and others from the Rock River Basin, Wisconsin – a frequently flooded basin in Southeastern Wisconsin. The purpose of the workshop was to bring these agencies and organizations together to identify where their interests, missions, and projects overlap and to explore how they might work more closely together to more effectively achieve their objectives.
Original link: http://www.eli.org/pdf/wetlandsguidebook.pdf
Friends of the Everglades 2009
- Petition for certiorari
- Brief for United States Sugar Corporation in opposition
- Brief for the United States in opposition
- Brief for the South Florida Water Management District and Carol Wehle in opposition
- Petitioners’ reply
- Amicus brief for the Sierra Club
- Amicus brief for the Town of Grant Lake, Colorado et al.
- Amicus brief for Colorado, et al.
- Amicus brief for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
- Amicus brief for the City and County of Denver, Acting by and through its Board of Water Commissioners, et al.
- Amicus brief for the City of New York
- Amicus brief for the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association and Florida Farm Bureau Federation
- Supplemental brief for the United States Sugar Corporation
- Supplemental brief for the South Florida Water Management District and Carol Wehle
The Tulloch Rule
The Tulloch Cases and rule deal with the redeposition of dredged material.
Tulloch II – The decision on remand of Tulloch I
Tulloch_Conforming_Q-As – EPA’s modification of the rule based on the cases. The EPA stepped back to the previous version of the rule, leaving the decision as to whether redeposition to case by case analysis.
Louisiana DEQ Wetland Assimilation Projects
Hammond Wetland Wastewater Assimilation Project – Sewage Diversion
This project dumps partially treated sewage into the wetlands. The rationale is that this sewage will build new wetlands. The reality is that it saves fixing the treatment plant and is destroying the wetlands.
Hammond-WW-Attainability-5-01-05 Consultant’s report justifying the project. 2005
wetland_DEQ Hammond – Louisiana DEQ letter discussing problems with the treatment plant. 2007
2008 Hammond Wetland Assimilation Annual Report
Hammond GRN comments – Comments on behalf of Gulf Restoration Network (GRN), the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), and O’Neil Couvillion on the draft LPDES permit proposed for the City of Hammond’s South Slough Wetland Wastewater Assimilation Project (hereinafter “South Slough”). The comments are critical of the performance of the project. 2009
Diversion Related Documents
Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2011
Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2011: The numbers and trends Debby Guha-Sapir Femke Vos Regina Below with Sylvain Ponserre (UNISDR) (WHO)
In 2011, 332 natural disasters were registered, less than the average annual disaster frequency observed from 2001 to 2010 (384). However, the human and economic impacts of the disasters in 2011 were massive. Natural disasters killed a total of 30 773 people and caused 244.7 million victims worldwide (see Figure 1). Economic damages from natural disasters were the highest ever registered, with an estimated US$ 366.1 billion.
Green Scissors 2011
Green Scissors 2011 tackles environmentally harmful spending in four major areas: energy, agriculture, transportation, and land and water. In each section, we provide an overview of the topic, a summary chart of the spending cuts, and more detailed information on selected cuts. While billions of additional savings that could be achieved by cutting environmentally harmful spending have not been included in this report, Green Scissors 2011 offers important steps toward reforming our nation’s budgetary ills while also protecting our environment.
City of Hammond Discharge Permit
Emergency Powers and Hurricane Isaac
For the past several decades there has been a push by both conservatives and liberals to restrict agency discretion. Conservatives want to keep agencies from acting, and liberals want to force agencies to act in certain ways. This makes it very difficult for agencies to function in emergencies. To remedy this, legislatures pass laws that allow the governor or president to waive agency regulations and even ignore statutory limits during emergencies.
National Emergency Powers – these are the President’s powers.
Florida Governor’s Executive Order triggering emergency powers.
Florida DOH implementation of the order
Florida Emergency Powers Laws doc
Evacuation Roulette
The Isaac track continues to veer toward the mouth of the Mississippi and through New Orleans. The US model puts it right on that track. The average of the other models pulls it east, but those are changing. The gulf water is very hot, which could allow quick intensification to a Cat 3 and put Isaac into NO on the most dangerous course by Tuesday night. An orderly evacuation (no one stuck on the freeway going 5 miles an hour for 12 hours) should start more than 48 hours before the storm puts significant rain and wind into the area, which would be Tuesday AM. Just as with every previous storm, including Katrina, Louisiana will wait until it is absolutely certain where the storm is going, then declare a panic evacuation which will either not work, or be nightmarish, or both. This happened with Gustav, and while there was the usual claim that everyone was out of NO, that is always the claim. You do not know until you fill the city with water and count the bodies.
As long as the storm does not come into NO, no one in LA will even question the risk being run. If someone did start the evacuation this morning, and the storm went east of NO, there would be hell to pay over the cost and inconvenience, and, worst, reminding people that NO is at risk.