In an order passed down by a Louisiana civil court jury, Chevron is responsible to pay $744.6 million to a parish government in an attempt to restore coastal wetlands that were said to be destroyed by the oil giant’s oil exploration activities. According to an AP report, the jury found Texaco, which was bought by Chevron in 2001, in violation of state coastal resource regulations because the company didn’t restore wetlands destroyed by drilling oil wells, dredging canals and dumped wastewater.
“Our communities are built on coast, our families raised on coast, our children go to school on coast,” Jimmy Faircloth Jr, attorney for the state, said. “The state of Louisiana will not surrender the coast, it’s for the good of the state that the coast be maintained.”
Plaquemines Parish, which filed the lawsuit against Chevron, was awarded $575 million for land loss, $161 for contamination of the area and $8.6 million for equipment abandoned by the company after the four-week trial came to an end, EcoWatch reported. While the jury found that Chevron was directly responsible for the pollution and loss of wetlands, Chevron said it plans to appeal the verdict because state regulations didn’t apply before 1980 when the company’s activities began.
But according to a 1980 Louisiana coastal management regulation, “Mineral exploration and production sites shall be cleared, revegetated, detoxified, and otherwise restored as near as practicable to their original condition upon termination of operations to the maximum extent practicable.”
The United States Geological Survey determined that Louisiana’s coastal region experienced a greater percentage of wetlands loss than anywhere else in the United States with a 25 percent loss between 1932 and 2016, The Guardian reported.
John Carmouche, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said Chevron “chose profits over the marsh.” This lawsuit is just the first of 42 others filed against Chevron from 2013.
“No company is big enough to ignore the law, no company is big enough to walk away scot-free,” Carmouche said.
COMMENTS