Two environmental organizations, the Alabama Rivers Alliance and Southern Environmental Law Center, released a report on Wednesday detailing the changes needed in state policies to ensure that Alabama has clean and plentiful drinking water and healthy river systems for the long term.
The Alabama Water Agenda calls on state leaders to take prompt action to protect the state’s environment and to manage Alabama’s waters to ensure the resource is fully protected and allocated fairly among communities, farms and industry.
The groups recommend more funding for water quality programs, stronger enforcement of water laws and better coordination among the many state agencies with some level of responsibility for our water resources.
“Healthy water in Alabama starts with strong leadership from state decision-makers,” said Cindy Lowry, Alabama Rivers Alliance Executive Director. “We want people to be more aware of the importance of water in our lives and the need for sound water policy to protect this valuable resource.”
This week’s ruling by the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta in the decades-long tri-state water wars should be a wake-up call for Alabama to get serious about planning its own water future, Alabama conservation groups said in a press release.
The appeals court overruled a 2009 finding by a federal judge that the Corps of Engineers has been illegally using Lake Lanier to supply water to Atlanta. The ruling is a setback for Alabama, which has long sought to compel Georgia to release more water from the lake and into the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint basin to meet downstream water and energy needs of communities and farms in southeast Alabama.
The future sustainability of Alabama’s water resources depends on a healthy balance between the states’ competing water uses within the shared water systems, according to Cindy Lowry with the Alabama Rivers Alliance. Unplanned growth and over-allocation of water resources in each state has created a system that has been out of balance for decades. The ruling highlights the fact that Alabama must engage in meaningful planning for long-term sustainability by being as efficient as possible in our water use.
“The ruling should be a wake-up call for Alabama. As the only state in the tri-state water conflict that does not have a comprehensive water management plan, Alabama continues to be in the weakest position for negotiating the needs of people, businesses, communities, and ecosystems,” Lowry said. “It’s clear Alabama can no longer rely on litigation to try to keep the waters flowing in our state. The future of clean water in Alabama lies in strong leadership from our elected officials.”
In apparent violation of federal law, the Alabama Department of Transportation failed to fully account for the environmental impacts of the massive, high-priced Northern Beltline highway proposed to circle Birmingham, non-profit environmental groups said in a lawsuit filed Monday in federal district court.
The proposed cost of the 52-mile beltline was recently increased to $4.7 billion, a 38 percent hike from the original estimate. Much of the money would come from federal road dollars, but state taxpayers would be responsible for nearly $1 billion in matching funds. At about $90 million per mile, the beltline would be one of the most expensive interstate highways in U.S. history, according to the Black Warrior Riverkeeper.
The group is suing the agency for violating the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires a thorough evaluation of environmental impacts and alternatives in order to identify the most cost-effective and least damaging alternatives for projects funded with federal money.
“We have been waiting for years for ALDOT to do its homework before proceeding as required by federal law,” said Gil Rogers, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represents the river group in the lawsuit. “Unfortunately, this expensive and outdated highway project continues to move forward without a study of the most cost-effective way to bring economic growth to this part of the state.”
In an effort to help defend the state’s program to stop polluted stormwater runoff, a coalition of non-profit groups advocating for clean water have filed a motion to intervene in a permit appeal by a pro-business development organization filed against the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
Without adequate programs to control polluted runoff from development and urban uses, downstream communities and businesses will continue to shoulder the high costs to clean drinking water and repair flood damages, the groups say in a press release announcing the legal action.
“Rivers, streams, coastal waters and lakes are critical to Alabamians for drinking water, recreation, wildlife and the economy. Polluted runoff is harming those uses. Every delay in halting polluted runoff means more degradation of our water and higher long-term clean-up costs for the public,” said Gil Rogers, head of the Clean Water Program for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which filed the motion earlier this week in with the Alabama Environmental Management Commission. (Click here for a link to the motion).
A federal judge has dismissed a Clean Air Act lawsuit alleging that Alabama Power Company failed to install pollution controls when it refurbished three of its coal-fired units in Alabama, at Greene County No. 2, Barry No. 2 in Mobile and the Gorgas plant No. 10 in Birmingham.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency brought the enforcement action in 2001, contending that the overhaul projects increased sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution in Alabama by thousands of tons every year and triggered the Clean Air Act’s “New Source Review” program, which requires installation of advanced pollution controls for such projects.
Blan Holman, SELC senior attorney, said the law requires that dirty coal plants clean up if a renovation project enables them to run more and pollute more every year.
“The evidence showed that Alabama Power fully expected polluting operations to increase after these projects, but that evidence was disregarded,” Holman said in a statement. “We respectfully disagree with the court’s rulings and expect to appeal.”
Two Alabama environmental groups are appealing an administrative law judge’s approval of a permit for a massive strip, auger and underground coal mine in Blount County, Alabama.
The groups say the water pollution control permit for the Rosa Mine issued by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management in October 2009 violates federal and state laws on multiple counts, and would fail utterly to protect water quality.
“The permit that ADEM issued for this huge industrial operation is woefully deficient — there are virtually no meaningful protections for the Locust Fork,” said SELC senior attorney Gil Rogers. “We are committed to protecting these resources and the communities that depend on them, and are not giving up the fight.”
Several non-profit watchdog groups filed a lawsuit against oil giant BP under the Endangered Species Act today for the ongoing unlawful harm and death of endangered and threatened wildlife caused by the company’s massive Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
At least 27 endangered or threatened animal species are known to inhabit the Gulf region, including five species of endangered sea turtles, four species of endangered whales, threatened and endangered birds and Florida manatees.
Testimony during the President’s National Oil Spill Commission on September 27 revealed that more than 50 percent of the total discharge of oil from the Deepwater Horizon blowout remains in the Gulf ecosystem, much of it in coastal and marine sediments.
Defenders of Wildlife, the Southern Environmental Law Center and Save the Manatee Club are asking the federal court to order BP to mitigate the ongoing harm from the oil disaster to endangered and threatened wildlife that are part of the web of life in the Gulf of Mexico.
“The harmful effects of the BP oil well blowout on endangered and threatened wildlife will continue for many years,” said Gregory Buppert, attorney for Defenders of Wildlife. “Through this lawsuit, we ask the court to compel BP to provide the resources necessary to ensure imperiled species in the Gulf recover from this disaster.”
The Minerals Management Service continues to approve new deepwater oil drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico even after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and a change in policy on drilling by the Obama administration, giving British Petroleum and other companies the right to drill even more wells under the same inadequate oversight regime that led to the current oil spill, according to a new legal challenge filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Defenders of Wildlife.
The groups say current policies create an incentive to allow drilling even in the face of evident risks because once a lease is issued by MMS, the U.S. government is obligated to pay the lessee either the fair market value of the lease or the amount spent to obtain the bid plus costs and interest if the government cancels the lease or refuses to allow drilling. MMS approved new leases for deepwater tracts as recently as June 10 under the same lax oversight complicit in the current Gulf spill.
“MMS quietly granted oil companies the right to drill 198 more deepwater wells as if the spill wasn’t devastating the Gulf,” said Derb Carter, senior attorney and director, Carolinas Office, Southern Environmental Law Center. “If it’s too deep to stop a spill, it’s too deep to drill. BP is under criminal investigation for its explosion and dumping millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, yet MMS approved 13 new leases for BP to drill in deepwater without any better oversight.”
The groups’ lawsuit challenges MMS approval of leases, including 198 deepwater leases, in the Central Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 that led to the ongoing gusher that continues to wash up in Louisiana wetlands and on beaches in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
