LA - Louisiana Department of Wildlife says BP, Chevron and others are trespassing with their pipelines
A Louisiana wildlife preserve that is eroding due to oil pipelines is asking BP, Chevron and others to restore the land and get their pipelines off it.
GRETNA, La. (CN) — Chevron, BP and two other oil companies are being asked to restore wetlands on a national wildlife reserve in Louisiana to its original condition and remove their pipelines from the land in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife in Jefferson Parish state court in the outskirts of New Orleans said in the suit that oil companies who have been operating pipelines on Elmer’s Island —some since the 1950s — promised to maintain the pipelines from the start and knew that not doing so would result in habitat loss and coastal erosion.
The Elmer’s Island Wildlife Refuge contains almost 1,156 acres of beaches, dunes, and marsh off the Louisiana coast.
Situated roughly an hour and a half drive from New Orleans, the reserve provides critical habitat for several species of birds and other wildlife and acts as storm protection for southeast Louisiana, among many other ecological benefits.
“Within this bastion for natural resource conservation, however, stretch miles of pipeline canals, which facilitate the transition of oil and gas through the wetlands and marsh," the Louisiana Department of Wildlife said in the lawsuit.
BP Oil Pipeline Company, Chevron Pipeline Company, Arrowhead Gulf Coast Pipeline LLC and Plains Pipeline LP — all named defendants in the suit — have damaged Elmers Island by allowing their pipeline to cause erosion and in failing to maintain the canals, according to the lawsuit.
“As a result of Defendants’ actions large swaths of once healthy marsh within the Refuge has been destroyed and converted into water," the department said in the suit.
If the energy pipeline defendants do nothing, the canals will continue to widen and even more critical land next to them will be lost.
The plaintiff claims the pipeline companies have known since at least the 1950s that pipeline canals will widen and swallow surrounding lands without safeguards and maintenance and yet have failed to maintain their pipelines and canals.
“Instead of instituting regular maintenance programs and taking steps to redress these recognized impacts by the canals, pipeline companies undertook no significant measures to prevent or ameliorate the resulting damage to the land and the losses to the public of resources and protection,” the lawsuit states.
Half a century ago, in 1972, a report commissioned by the oil and gas industry showed how the pipeline companies’ actions and inactions were contributing to coastal erosion, according to the plaintiff.
The report, titled “Environmental Aspects of Gas Pipeline Operations in the Louisiana Coastal Marshes,” and issued by the Battelle Columbus Laboratories, said the pipeline companies had known about coastal erosion for decades and of the steps to take to prevent it.
The report recognized that “where care has been taken in construction and operation of the gas pipeline, the environmental effects are minimal.”
Noting that “land loss due to canaling is a matter of serious concern in Louisiana,” the report said that when canals are not taken care of, a number of risks are present, and it listed them: the possibility of permanent alteration of the landscape and greater land loss; drainage patterns may be changed; erosion of land if navigation traffic isn’t prevented.
The report also listed what these effects would have on the environment: changes in tidal flow patterns; changes in seasonal flow characteristics; worsened flooding and storm conditions; changes in salinity and erosion.
The report noted that when canals are dammed and traffic is prevented, there is almost no effect on erosion.
The defendant pipeline companies entered into agreements with Elmers Island in the 1950s and 60s for the construction of pipelines, according to the complaint.
The contracts required the defendants to agree that they would adequately maintain their pipelines to prevent erosion.
The lawsuit says that to this day the pipeline companies are continuing to not properly maintain their pipelines.
“Defendants’ negligent operation, inspection, and maintenance of the rights of ways, canals, and pipeline facilities are continuing,” the plaintiff says in the lawsuit.
“Defendants’ breaches have caused cumulative and collective impacts to the Wildlife Refuge," it added.
The defendant companies failed to maintain the canals and their banks to prevent erosion of the surrounding property, did not install and maintain protective structures to prevent canal widening and land loss, did not prevent traffic, did not prevent the canals from widening, did not maintain pipelines at the width and depths they promised in the contracts, and have not restored the land as promised, according to the suit.
