NEW ORLEANS (CN) - The flood protection authority that maintains levees in greater New Orleans sued 99 oil and gas companies Wednesday, claiming that "hundreds of thousands of acres of the coastal lands that once protected south Louisiana are now gone as a result of oil and gas industry activities."
The Board of Commissioners of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority sued BP, Koch Industries, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell Oil, among dozens of others, in Orleans Parish Court.
The board claims "what remains of coastal Louisiana is slipping into the Gulf of Mexico through a combination of direct removal, erosion, and submergence, sinking at the fastest rate of any coastal landscape on the planet."
The lawsuit states: "Charged with operating the flood protection system that guards millions of people and billions of dollars worth of property in south Louisiana from destructive floodwaters, the Authority has one of the most important and challenging jobs in the state. The Authority is entrusted, per La. Const. Art. IX §1, with monitoring the integrity of Louisiana's coastal lands, which are an essential complement to the Authority's flood protection system and which assist the Authority in protecting the people and properties behind the flood walls and levees. The Authority's job has become exponentially more challenging because of the deterioration and disappearance of Louisiana's coastal lands."
The Authority says the loss of coastal lands has had and will continue to have dire consequences.
"Coastal lands have for centuries provided a crucial buffer zone between south Louisiana's communities and the violent wave action and storm surge that tropical storms and hurricanes transmit from the Gulf of Mexico. Coastal lands are a natural protective buffer, without which the levees that protect the cities and towns of south Louisiana are left exposed to unabated destructive forces.
"This natural protective buffer took 6,000 years to form. Yet, as described below, it has been brought to the brink of destruction over the course of a single human lifetime. Hundreds of thousands of acres of the coastal lands that once protected south Louisiana are now gone as a result of oil and gas industry activities - all as specifically noted by the United States Geological Survey. Unless immediate action is taken to reverse these losses and restore the region's natural defense, many of Louisiana's coastal communities will vanish into the sea. Meanwhile, inland cities and towns that once were well insulated from the sea will be left to face the ever-rising tide at their doorsteps.
"For nearly a century, the oil and gas industry has continuously and relentlessly traversed, dredged, drilled, and extracted in coastal Louisiana. It reaps enormous financial gain by exploiting Louisiana's abundant natural resources, sharing some of that bounty with the many residents whom it employs. Yet it also has ravaged Louisiana's coastal landscape. Racing to extract the region's resources, it has created an extensive network of oil and gas access and pipeline canals that slashes the coastline at every angle. This canal network is a mercilessly efficient, continuously expanding system of ecological destruction that injects seawater, which contains corrosively high levels of salt, into interior coastal lands, killing vegetation and carrying away mountains of soil. What remains of these coastal lands is so seriously diseased that if nothing is done, it will slip into the Gulf of Mexico by the end of this century, if not sooner."
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