Sam Fletcher
Senior Writer
HOUSTON, Sept. 16 -- Five Louisiana residents filed a class-action lawsuit against 10 major producer and pipeline companies, claiming damage inflicted by those firms on the coastal marshes of south Louisiana was a cause of "all, or almost all, of the loss of life and destruction of property that resulted from Hurricane Katrina."
The suit does not specify any amount of damage. However, other sources have estimated that federal government costs related to the hurricane could exceed $200 billion.
Named in the lawsuit filed Sept. 13 in the US Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana are ExxonMobil Corp., BP Corp. North America Inc., Chevron Corp., Shell Oil Co., Colombia Gulf Transmission Co., Koch Pipeline Co. LP, Gulf South Pipeline Co. LP, Shell Pipeline Co. LP, Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co., and Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Co.
Plaintiffs in the suit were identified as George Barasich of St. Bernard Parish.; Benny J. Borden, Jefferson Parish; and Courtney Foxworth, Darin Tircuit, and Ralph H. Long Jr., all of Orleans Parish. OGJ could not reach the plaintiffs or their attorneys Sept. 16 for additional identification or comment. However, a George Barasich of St. Bernard Parish was listed in 2004 as a member of the board of directors for the Louisiana Shrimp Association.
The suit said the companies dredged canals in the coastal marshlands of Louisiana that they are still using and that "have eroded over the course of time and continue to erode." It claims the "continuing failure" of the defendants to maintain those canals caused "damage to the stability and ecological function of the marsh property, which provided protection to inland communities from hurricanes."
It further charges, "Over 1 million acres of marsh property has already been destroyed and millions more essentially destroyed as a result of defendants' negligence in oil, gas, and pipeline operations throughout southeast Louisiana, thus depriving metropolitan areas such as the City of New Orleans from its natural protection against hurricane winds and storm surges."
The suit acknowledges that "other causes may have contributed to the loss of marsh property." But it claims that the energy companies' canals "are a, if not the, substantial cause of marshland loss" and resulting storm damage.
"But for the negligent actions of defendants in failing to properly mange their canals, marsh property would have existed at the time Hurricane Katrina arrived at the Louisiana coast," it said. If undamaged marshlands had existed, the plaintiffs claim, "Hurricane Katrina's winds and storm surge would have been greatly diminished by the marsh property, thus averting all, or almost all, of the loss of life and destruction of property that resulted."
A representative of Shell Oil told OGJ that company attorneys had received a copy of the suit and are in the process of reviewing it. Phone calls to some of the other companies were unsuccessful.
Contact Sam Fletcher at [email protected].
