Files amicus brief challenging U.S. Army Corps’s unlawful environmental review and disregard of environmental justice concerns and harms to wildlife
Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Environmental Justice Clinic, on behalf of two community-based environmental organizations, has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia urging the court to invalidate federal approval of a major dredging project in Puerto Rico’s San Juan Bay.
“Puerto Rico communities will be profoundly affected by this ill-conceived project and illegally have been denied participation in the decision-making process,” said Christophe Courchesne, interim senior attorney in the Environmental Justice Clinic. “These communities deserve a full environmental review of the major impacts of this project, informed by meaningful community input and the island’s push to a cleaner, more resilient energy future.”
The local organizations—Toabajeños En Defensa del Ambiente and Amigxs Del M.A.R.—are focused on protecting the environmental resources of Puerto Rico and accelerating the transition to clean energy on the island. Their members live and work in the local area, including the marginalized environmental justice communities of Cataño and Guaynabo. Puerto Rico and these communities in particular were devastated by Hurricanes Maria, Irma, and Fiona, and they are especially vulnerable to the ongoing impacts of climate change.
The project—known as the San Juan Harbor Navigation Improvements Project—would dredge the ecologically-sensitive ocean floor to widen and deepen shipping channels and enable Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) tankers and other large ships greater access to San Juan Harbor. As proposed, the dredging project threatens to contribute to dangerous air pollution and other environmental hazards in these already-overburdened communities. The project also will lead to more fossil fuel use on the island, worsening climate change and impeding local efforts to build community and energy resilience.
As the brief points out, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a truncated environmental review of the project that failed to include full assessment of its impacts on environmental justice communities southwest of San Juan Bay and invited public comment on its review solely during the major disruptions and power outages following Hurricane Maria. In its review, the Corps also did not fully consider the project’s cumulative air pollution and other environmental and wildlife impacts, including on endangered corals, and the Corps also failed to reckon with the inconsistency of the project with Puerto Rico’s aggressive clean energy plans.
The brief supports a lawsuit filed last year to challenge the project’s compliance with environmental laws by the Center for Biological Diversity and Puerto Rico environmental organizations El Puente and CORALations. The case is El Puente et al. v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Civil Action No. 1:22-cv-02430-CJN, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Environmental Justice Clinic student attorneys Rajeev Venkat and Alexius Paul authored the brief with Assistant Professor and Interim Senior Attorney Christophe Courchesne and Associate Professor and Interim Director Michael Harris.
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