A coalition of environmental groups issued a formal notice on Monday, 8 February, regarding its intention to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for failing to ensure that endangered species and critical habitat across the country were not jeopardized by nationwide permits reissued during the final days of Donald Trump's presidency.
Nationwide permits (NWPs) are generally approved every five years and allow for more streamlined industrial development in some areas including oil pipelines, coal mines, and marine aquaculture facilities. The Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Waterkeeper Alliance, and other organizations filed a notice with the Biden administration over 16 NWPs pushed through by the outgoing Trump administration on 13 January, 2021.
President Biden, who was inaugurated on 20 January, has already called for a review of the NWPs published by the Trump administration, but the coalition wanted to add pressure with a potential lawsuit.
“The Trump administration flagrantly violated bedrock environmental laws when it reissued the nationwide permits, without regard for the people, places or wildlife that are affected by this deeply flawed program,” Center for Biological Diversity Senior Attorney Jared Margolis said. “I’m hoping President Biden will prevent the Corps from continuing to use the permits to rubber-stamp major projects like oil pipelines that leak and spill, degrading the clean water that people and wildlife need.”
According to the notice, the NWP program “allows for an unquantified and virtually limitless number of ‘discharges’ of dredged or fill material to the nation’s waters and wetlands in connection with various environmentally destructive activities.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service have previously found that these activities – which are approved with little or no environmental review – threaten iconic species including whooping cranes, Florida manatees, and the hundreds of migratory birds that need wetlands to survive, according to the coalition.
“Rather than comply with a court order to ensure that endangered species are protected from further death and destruction, the Trump administration doubled down on its original violation by issuing even weaker Nationwide Permits with fewer protections for these species,” Waterkeeper Alliance General Counsel Daniel E. Estrin said. “It’s long past time for the Corps to rethink its approach to dredge-and-fill permitting and to ensure that these activities will not put endangered species or their habitat in jeopardy.”
The coalition mentions offshore aquaculture development as dangerous result of the quickly passed NWPs – with special attention focused on the 2017 net-pen collapse at Cooke Aquaculture in Cypress Island, Washington, which released hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon into the Puget Sound.
There was no immediate note of specific proposed projects the coalition was concerned with.
Photo courtesy of Danita Delimont/Shutterstock
