St. Martin Parish has won an initial skirmish in its legal battle against Lafayette Consolidated Government (LCG) over the legality of LCG’s removal of an earthen levee on the St. Martin side of the Vermilion Bayou in a bid to improve storm water flow.
Federal Judge James D. Cain of the Western District of Louisiana on July 5 granted a motion by St. Martin Parish to dismiss LCG’s allegation that it has no liability to St. Martin as a result of the spoil bank removal and its position that a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was not needed to complete the project.
In other words, LCG was seeking a legal seal of approval for the levee changes it made in February. Cain, however, rejected the request, calling it a broad, preemptive effort to affirm there was no liability. In addition, the LCG motion was based on a fear of a lawsuit by St. Martin that alleged elevated flooding dangers in the parish as a result of the project, the judge said.
“A ruling of no liability on the part of LCG, therefore, depends on an injury that has not yet occurred and whose likelihood (or lack thereof) cannot be sufficiently proven to justify judicial intervention,” Cain said. “... Accordingly, the court agrees that the expansive nature of the ruling sought by LCG renders the matter unripe and that the claims against the parish should be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.”
St. Martin Parish expressed satisfaction with the ruling, and Parish President Chester Cedars told the Louisiana Record in an email that last week the parish filed a suit in the state’s 16th Judicial District Court challenging the LCG’s spoil bank removal.
“St. Martin Parish Government will continue to methodically evaluate and accumulate all of the data necessary to address what we believe was an unprecedented and illegal act,” Cedars said in his statement. “Indeed, the surreptitious nature of Lafayette Consolidated Government’s furtive removal of the spoil bank speaks volumes.”
St. Martin approved an ordinance last year to prevent LCG’s spoil bank project by requiring a permit from the parish council to alter or construct any kind of levee system. In its legal complaints, LCG has maintained that the ordinance is unconstitutional.