There has been a battle going on in the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana for over ten years now, and despite a whistleblower’s victory in court, real change seems like a distant hope. A few years ago, Dan Collins sued the state of Louisiana after he blew the whistle on a Bayou dredging project and subsequently got denied contract work. In 2015, he won his case, but his $750,000.00 victory has proven hollow, and not just because he hasn’t seen any of the money yet. The state has appealed the verdict, and the oil and gas drilling activities in Bayou Postillion continue despite his efforts to stop them and despite the fact that those actions have resulted in multiple violations of environmental laws. It is unclear what an appeal is likely to accomplish, given the fact that the state’s environmental whistleblower statute did not require Collins to prove that any environmental laws got broken. All he had to do is establish a reasonable belief that one or more laws got broken and that he had suffered retribution for exposing the possible violations.
Bayou Postillion is not a scenic waterway, by any means. It’s more of a canal that runs perpendicular to the Intracoastal Waterway. In the 1960s, the Bayou began filling in with sediment. By the early 2000s, so much sediment had gone into the bayou that the mouth of the bayou got cut off from the rest of the Intracoastal Waterway. The effect on the bayou ecosystem was dramatic and devastating. As the sediment level rose, the water level fell. The water became stagnant and less capable of sustaining life. To address the problem, in 2003, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources started in on what it called a model environmental enhancement project that would dredge the bayou to improve water circulation and sediment flow. The dredging work began in 2004 and got completed during 2005.
Collins was hired to do title searches for land that was to be involved in the aforementioned dredging project. As he went about his work, Collins discovered plenty of evidence that the dredging was being done to facilitate lucrative, yet environmentally destructive, oil and gas drilling on bottom areas owned by families who have political connections in the local area. A few years before the project started, there are records of discussions about dredging the bayou to accommodate barges for energy production. During the project, Collins noticed that the dredging was deeper than would be needed to improve the water quality and deep enough to accommodate commercial vessels. After the dredging project had got completed, seven natural gas wells were drilled in the bayou, right where the dredging had occurred. Collins has been asking state and federal government officials to investigate the claims that he made in his lawsuit, but to his knowledge, the claims have not yet been explored.
Barrett Law PLLC: Protecting the Rights of Mississippi Whistleblowers
Whistleblowers take great risks in exposing wrongdoing within their workplaces. If you got mistreated or fired after becoming a whistleblower, the Mississippi Whistleblower Attorney at Barrett Law PLLC might be able to help. Call us at 1 (800) 707-9577 to arrange an initial consultation.