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Gulf Restoration Network Wins Federal Lawsuit vs. Cypress Creek Town Center developers/polluters
Gulf Restoration Network, The Tampa Bay Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, and several individuals have won a major victory in their challenge to a Clean Water Act (“CWA”) section 404 dredge and fill permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers for the construction of Cypress Creek Town Center, a 500-acre development slated for construction and threatening important wildlife habitat, wetlands, and Tampa’s drinking water supply. Cypress Creek Center was hit with a $300,00 fine shortly after the issuance of the first Corps permit for releasing “turbid, salt-laden water” into Cypress Creek.
In a scolding and strongly worded decision, the Court concluded that the Corps permit grossly violated the CWA and NEPA, finding that the Corps, “as part of a larger ongoing pattern of non-enforcement of its obligations under the CWA, had allowed data to be manipulated in an attempt to justify an unlawful permit.,” summarizes Mariella Smith of the Tampa Bay Sierra Club.
Calling the Corps actions under NEPA to be “arbitrary and capricious,” the Court further rebuked the Corps claim that it the project has no environmental impact, when in fact, Cypress Creek Town Center developers were already fined for polluting adjacent waters:
”…for the Corps to contend that it is unreasonable to assert that the Cypress Creek Town Center project may have a cumulative impact on the environment flies in the face of logic. It not only may have an impact, it already has.” (Emphasis ours.)
In a strongly worded conclusion, the Court further states:
“The Corps has failed to fulfill its statutory duties under NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] and the CWA [Clean water Act]. Unfortunately, this is a familiar course of action for the Corps when processing permit applications. As another member of this Court has stated, the Corps “resorted to arbitrary and capricious meaning – manipulating models and changing definitions where necessary – to make this project seem compliant with [CWA] and [NEPA] when it is not.”
Big kudos go to Bev Griffiths and Denise Layne, citizens on the ground who have fought this project for several years. (Contributing sources: Mariella Smith of the Tampa Bay Sierra Club and Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal law firm)
