This week Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association-West, Healthy Gulf, Sierra Club and its Delta Chapter, and Waterkeeper Alliance filed a lawsuit to challenge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s East Grand Lake (EGL) project in the Atchafalaya Basin. The Plaintiffs represented by the Environmental Law Clinic at Tulane University Law School, contests the Corps’ granting of a Clean Water Act section 404 permit allowing the dredging and filling of impacted wetlands. This permit was granted to a Louisiana agency for the implementation of the EGL project.

While the EGL project has been coined a “swamp enhancement project,” experience and sound science demonstrate that the project will lead to increased sedimentation in the East Grand Lake area. This will ultimately convert productive and vital swamp habitat into bottomland hardwood forest by introducing sediment-laden river water and physically dispersing dredged sediment in the area. Sedimentation severely harms the Basin because it decreases flood storage capacity, and the Basin is a vital part of Mississippi River flood control management.

The U.S. Corps of Engineers, acting at the request of the state’s coastal authority, has approved at least three other projects against local opposition and without scientific backing in the Atchafalaya Basin, including “Buffalo Cove," “Coon Trap,” and “Beau Bayou.”  

This has led to the loss or severe degradation of approximately 75% of the Basin’s cypress swamps, lakes, and bayous. Without intervention the groups contend that these projects will irreparably change the environment and the lives of impacted communities.

The basin is a network of swamps that together are some of the most productive in the world. Grand Lake specifically is considered the most important estuary for fish in the eastern portion of the basin. Deep water habitat within the basin is being lost at an alarming rate, due in large part to excessive sediment and contorted distribution of sediment. Without deep water, fish cannot survive low water seasons.  

Please continue to support our work to protect the most important estuary for fish in the eastern portion of the basin by donating today.  

We appreciate your support and dedication to clean, healthy, and abundant water for all people and the planet.