THE WILDLAW LETTER

A Bi-monthly Report for Members & Friends March 1998

On behalf of Wild Alabama, WildLaw filed two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on the Army to get to the bottom of what happened at Cooter's Pond. One was sent to the Mobile District Engineer Col. William Vogel; the other was sent to the Secretary of the Army Togo West. Neither request was responded to in the legal time allowed, and WildLaw sued the Army Corps under FOIA to get all their documents. That lawsuit was successful, and the Corps turned over its documents.

What these documents show conclusively is that the Corps of Engineers violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it approved the lease of Cooter's Pond to the Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA). NEPA requires the agency proposing to do something to identify and consider the environmental impacts of the proposal. But here, the Corps never prepared the Environmental Assessment (EA), it was prepared by Alabama Power Co. attorney Bill Satterfield of Balch & Bingham.

The documents show that the Corps considered the leasing of Cooter's Pond to the RSA to be a done deal from the very beginning. There are reams of documents saying how the lease language had to be approved by Washington prior to the end of the NEPA process so that it could be signed and ready to go immediately thereafter. Many documents talk about "bullet proofing" the EA so that it would stand up to legal challenge. Noticeably absent from the Corps' record were documents on the environmental impacts from this project. Instead, they spent vast amounts of time making sure that the lease language met the RSA's requirements and that the paperwork meet the RSA's schedule.

Political pressure came directly from U.S. Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions and several Congressmen who called the Corps to know why the approval of the lease to the RSA "was taking so long" and who met with a top general to demand the lease be signed. An October 3 Corps memo states, "This issue is getting hot and the Col. has given it a top priority. Do we have everything complete or underway that we need before we can present the lease to the State for signature? Please check to be sure that there are no surprises.... Once the EA decision is reached we must be prepared to act."

Regional personnel of the Corps finally got wind of this proposal and raised serious questions about it. They wrote: "We have been out of the loop on this one at the division level, so please keep us informed.... I am not attempting to roadblock the current proposal at Cooters Pond...this decision is too political .... Again, it appears to be too late for this particular lease, but we also need to address the philosophical issue of making public lands available for non-traditional recreational purposes, such as golf courses, when development is not included in the project master plans.... I also feel we are losing out long-term vision for our stewardship responsibilities to future generations. This is occurring because we keep hearing that the more divestiture the better - and, because politics always wins out on these proposals."

WildLaw's lawsuit on behalf of Wild Alabama against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was successful. Wild Alabama sought documents on the EPA's investigation of allegations of illegal dumping of medical wastes at the South Alabama landfill owned by the family of Alabama Governor Fob James. After Wild Alabama sent a FOIA request to the EPA, the EPA failed to respond and did not send any documents. WildLaw sued the EPA, and the EPA readily acquiesced and sent us all the documents they had on the landfill and their investigation.

These documents show that the EPA conducted a shockingly inadequate investigation of the allegations. After conducting cursory interviews with a handful of people, EPA investigators went to the landfill operators, gave a cursory review of their documents and then essentially asked the operators if they had violated the law. The operators responded negatively, of course. With that, the EPA declared the case closed. There were no stake outs, no surveillance, no testing and no behind the scenes investigation of any kind. Indeed, the investigators sent by the EPA were admittedly not familiar with landfills, but they stated that the landfill looked fine to them.

Imagine if the police or the DEA treated investigations of alleged drug dealers the same way.

"Sir, have you been dealing cocaine?"

"Why no, officer."

"What about those bags of white powder people saw you bringing into the country?"

"That was sugar, and I have some paperwork to prove it."

"Okay, sounds good to us. Case closed."

Along with many other grassroots groups throughout the Appalachians, WildLaw has helped form Appalachian Voices, the only organization dedicated to protecting the forests of the Appalachians from Alabama to Maine. With Executive Director Ray Vaughan on Appalachian Voices' board of trustees, WildLaw is situated to become the lead legal advocate for forests throughout this entire area. Already WildLaw is working with groups in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania to stop bad Forest Service timber sales and to protect rare species and their forest habitats. As part of this effort to expand WildLaw's scope to the Appalachians, we are planning on hiring another attorney to coordinate this massive campaign to protect all these national forests and their biodiversity. If we are able to raise adequate funding, we hope to have the new attorney working by the middle of this summer.

WildLaw is working with Appalachian Voices' activists from North Carolina to stop 178 acres of salvage clearcuts in a proposed wild and scenic river basin in the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina. This sale is slated to destroy forests above and next to Snowbird Creek, a major recreational area and one of the last know habitats of the Juanluska Salamander. As part of the campaign to protect this area and others around the Nantahala, WildLaw will be filing a petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the Juanluska Salamander as an endangered species. Known from only five populations in the area, the salamander is on the verge of extinction, and Forest Service practices are pushing it further toward the brink.

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