Outcome of Oyster Suit an Opportunity to Save Louisiana’s Coast, Activist Says
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(PRWEB) December 8, 2004 -- By Andy Crawford - Mark Davis had mixed emotions
when the state Supreme Court threw out the $1.3-billion award in the Caernarvon
oyster lawsuit. (Victory, J.:2003- C-3521 Albert J. Avenal, Jr., et al. v. The
State of Louisiana and The Department of Natural Resources (Parish of
Plaquemines))
“We were not surprised — but we were pleased,” the head of
the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana said.
The court’s decision,
handed down in October, effectively put an end to the oystermen’s attempts to
make the state pay exorbitantly for its efforts to save the marshes southeast of
New Orleans. “It clearly settled once and for all that the state has the right
to protect itself, but it went on to state that the state has a duty to protect
the coastal areas … vital to the survival of our way of life,” Davis said. “In
that way, I think the case is truly tone-setting.”
Davis said his only
regret is that it took years for a court to take action to end the case. “The
amount of confusion the lower courts sowed in this case is unfortunate,” he
said. “The lower courts did not do (the plaintiffs) any favors by creating in
their minds the hope that the law was anything other than what the Supreme Court
said it was.”
And that was, to Davis, the whole point of the
case.
“This was not about putting anybody in their place,” he said. “If
the state was correct in the law, we thought that as a matter of law, (oyster
fishermen) were not due anything. “It’s not to say that people should not be
treated fairly, it’s a matter of what you ought to do compared to what you are
legally obligated to do.”
The Supreme Court decision sets up the state
for aggressive action. “It basically gave the state as much rope as you want to
give it,” Davis said. “We can’t be paralyzed by doubt and undue liability if
we’re going to save this place.”
But Davis said the judgment shouldn’t be
viewed as a panacea. “If we want this to work, we can’t sit back and wait for
the Congress or the U.S. Corps of Engineers or anybody else to act,” he said.
“We’re going to have to go out and work, and make this happen.”
Davis
expressed concern about the will to effect real change in the November issue of
Coast Wise, the coalition’s newsletter. “Without persistent prodding, educating
and out-and-out insisting on action, it is virtually certain that most of the
milestones that have been achieved would still be years away,” he wrote. “But at
best, we have created an opportunity that we have to take advantage
of.”
Leveraging the opportunity presented by the latest Supreme Court
ruling probably will mean a change in the way the coastal restoration fight has
been waged. “At no time can we ever become so complacent that just because
action has been promised by some elected official or governmental agency that we
wash our hands of it,” Davis said. “If we want anything other than that, we, the
people of the state, are going to have to act.”
The entire goal of public
action, Davis said, should be to change the way public policy is enacted. “The
way budgets are developed, the manner in which projects are authorized and
funded, and the ways they can and can’t or won’t engage the public and pools of
outside expertise, we cannot expect to see a truly meaningful comprehensive and
effective coastal restoration plan prepared, much less authorized and
implemented,” he wrote in Coast Wise.
To illustrate the difference
between development and actual enactment of policy, Davis pointed to restoration
work in the Everglades. “Everglades is a national park. You and I own it,” he
said. “But even with that, it took a lawsuit to make the federal government use
the money that was authorized. “What you basically had was a turf war between
the state and the federal governments, and it took a lawsuit to get them to take
action.”
But comparing the effort to save the Everglades with that of
stopping the monumental loss of Louisiana’s wetlands is sort of like comparing
the fishing in Florida to the fishing in Louisiana — it’s not a perfect match.
“The state of Louisiana doesn’t have the same bag of rights and options as
Florida,” Davis said.
That’s because the Louisiana coast isn’t etched
into the nation’s collective imagination like the Everglades National Park.
“Coastal Louisiana: That is intuitively impossible for people to get their minds
around,” he said.
In other words, Louisiana marshes mean something to
those who live, work and find recreation in them, but those who have never seen
the coastal zone can’t get a grip on why they should care about its plight.
"That", Davis said, "is largely our fault."
“We have to get smarter
about how we do what we do,” Davis said. “We have to not only look for sympathy,
but make sure we look for every right and angle we can take advantage of.” That
means insisting that our governmental agencies — now bound by onerous
environmental impact studies, drawn-out management-plan processes and endless
scientific research — shorten the time between the time a plan is formulated and
enacted.
“The one resource we cannot gain is time,” Davis said. “We’ve
been dodging bullets for years, and at some point, we will run out of silver
bullets. Every year that goes by and we’re still here is an act of grace, and I
don’t think we should take that for granted. That’s not to mean we should
haphazardly enact projects, but steps have to be taken quickly or there won’t be
a coast to save".
“If we are to wait until we have perfect understanding
and perfect support, the opportunity to save this place will be significantly
reduced,” he said. “It’s a get-honest, get-fast approach.”
But Davis also
thinks we have to market the coast not as Louisiana’s problem, but as the
nation’s. He said the reduction by the White House and Congress of the Louisiana
Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Study from a $14 billion initiative to a $1
billion plan is an example of the nation’s lack of comprehension of the
importance of the Louisiana coast.
“We have our own opportunities, like
how we handle the importance of oil and gas exploration and border security to
the country,” Davis said. “The Louisiana coast is beneficial to the
country.”
But he came back to the importance of local activism. “There’s
no question: At the end of the day, the restoration effort will be crafted by
the people who live here,” Davis said. “Don’t trust the crafting of the solution
to others.”
Victory, J.:2003- C-3521 Albert J. Avenal, Jr., et al. v. The
State of Louisiana and The Department of Natural Resources (Parish of
Plaquemines)
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/12/prweb186680.htm