Fontana, an attorney who heads the Metairie-based Save Our Wetlands Inc. environmental group, contends that the "leaky levee" design that the corps plans to use won't protect fisheries or the wetlands that would be cut off by the 15-foot-high earthen levees. The proposal calls for a jagged semicircle of levees around Houma and adjacent populated areas.
Opposition to the levee proposal is the latest in a 30-year history of controversial lawsuits by Fontana and Save Our Wetlands aimed at enforcing environmental rules on the corps.
To bolster his arguments, Fontana cites a letter sent by 16 state and national scientists, written to the corps and state this year, questioning the leaky levee design, which attempts to allow water to flow through the levees to nourish wetlands.
"I'm doing it to let the people of Louisiana know that the Morganza leaky levee proposal is, in our opinion, pure pork," Fontana said. "It's not designed to restore wetlands in the coastal zone, but to promote development in the wetlands that now act as buffers against hurricane storm surge."
Not all of the 16 scientists who signed the letter oppose the Morganza project.
"Clearly, we need storm protection and we need environmental enhancements in the area of the Morganza-to-the-Gulf project," said Woody Gagliano, a geologist with Coastal Environments Inc. "But there remain some unresolved problems, particularly in the levee alignment. . . . I think there's general agreement that before we actually turn dirt out there, that those problems will be addressed."
John Day, a retired Louisiana State University coastal science professor, is not so sure. Day said that while corps officials seem to be listening to his concerns about problems with the leaky levee theory, he's still concerned that future hurricanes could overtop the new levees with saltwater and kill the interior wetlands before the water can be pumped out.
That's exactly what happened in managed wetlands in western Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, he said.
Fontana said his suit would aim to enforce provisions of the federal Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and Administrative Procedures Act, and the state's constitutional Louisiana Public Trust Doctrine, which requires state officials to balance environmental concerns with economic benefits. The suit also would take advantage of a provision of federal law that would require Fontana to be paid for his costs in enforcing the federal laws.
Fontana and his organization have tussled legally with the corps for decades. In the 1970s, the group unsuccessfully challenged the development of the Eden Isles and Oak Harbor subdivisions in St. Tammany Parish, and more successfully challenged construction of the Orlandia development in eastern New Orleans, on land that eventually became the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge.
Most notably, Fontana and his 3,500-member group filed a 1976 lawsuit against the corps challenging its original plan to build gates at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to block storm surge from entering Lake Pontchartrain, which was part of the original Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project for the east bank of the New Orleans area.
In 1977, U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz Jr. halted construction of the gate system, saying the corps inadequately assessed the project's environmental impact and failed to measure the costs and benefits of an alternative plan that substituted higher levees around the rest of New Orleans for the gates.
The corps took a half-dozen years to reconsider the alternatives. The result was the construction of higher levee walls along the 17th Street, London Avenue and Industrial canals in the early 1990s -- sections of which failed during Hurricane Katrina because of inadequate designs.
Save Our Wetlands' challenge was criticized in Congress and elsewhere after Katrina hit, but two months after the storm, congressional Government Accountability Office Director Anu Mittal said none of the changes the group forced appeared to have had any role in the levee breaches.
State officials remain strong supporters of the project, which they say is environmentally sound.
"This is definitely a place in Louisiana that we are choosing to protect. It deserves protection," said Sidney Coffee, chairwoman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which oversees all levee construction in the state. "We're looking at more than 200,000 people in that area."
The Terrebonne Parish Levee and Conservation District, which will pay 35 percent of the cost of the project through a local tax, already has begun construction of the first 3-mile section of the levee. District Executive Director Jerome Zeringue defended the environmental aspects of the project.
"In some cases, our design is improving the hydrological system by opening up access to wetlands," he said.
Zeringue also discounted concerns raised by Fontana and some scientists that building the levees will make it difficult to protect areas behind them from development.
"The ability to build on most of those wetlands is so restrictive, so cost-prohibitive, that it's not likely," he said.
Officials also are using complicated computer modeling to determine how to assure the best flow of water behind and through the levee system, said Carl Anderson, corps project manager.
While the existing plans for the levee call for an average height of 15 feet above sea level, that could increase to 22 feet to comply with new computer modeling that will determine the expected danger of storm surge.
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Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3327.
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