Last week, the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council approved a plan to spend fines levied on BP for the 2010 spill. So far, however, there's little money in the fund. And even if BP ends up paying close to its maximum penalty of $17.1 billion, it's unclear how much will go to Louisiana.
Barry, a member of the levee authority that is suing oil and gas companies for damage to the coast, writes: "We have been criticized for trying to collect from an industry which was complying with the law at the time it conducted its operations. We believe that they were never in compliance with the law."
A local levee authority has offered to hold off on some of its lawsuit against oil and gas companies if the state can get the industry to discuss voluntarily paying for damage. But the comments by the Flood Protection Authority and the Jindal administration don't signal much movement on their key disagreement.
They questioned why the board acted alone and and suggested that it's acting outside of its legal authority.
Legislators have said they want to hear why the Flood Protection Authority filed its suit against oil and gas companies. The lawsuit partly blames companies for coastal loss and call upon them to fix the damage or help pay for increased costs of flood protection.
The environmental groups have long blamed oil and gas interests for coastal devastation — as does the lawsuit.
Will outraged state officials scuttle a major post-Katrina reform in their effort to please the oil industry?
Join us at 12:30 p.m. Friday to talk about the lawsuit, the science and the counterarguments.
The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East is expected to file suit Wednesday against more than 100 oil and gas companies for contributing to the disappearance of Louisiana’s wetlands. The lawsuit argues that decades of drilling, dredging and extracting has destroyed wetlands that once provided a cushion against hurricane storm surge, forcing the agency to spend more on flood protection.
The diversions of the past are not the diversions of the future.
