They spit on it

All of this land is pretty much BP's now regardless of who owns it or who wants it

Much of the land on which the project will be built is owned by the Edward Wisner Donation Trust, which was donated in 1914 to the City of New Orleans under a 100-year trust agreement.

Much of Port Fourchon, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port’s onshore operations; facilities owned by Chevron Oil, and a number of other oil and gas production facilities all sit on Wisner land.

Under the trust, the city receives 34.8 percent of the revenue, Charity Hospital and the state of Louisiana receive 12 percent, and the rest goes to Tulane University, the Salvation Army, and heirs of Edward Wisner. The city’s revenue is distributed through its Wisner Fund as grants for health, beautification, education and capital projects.

Lachney said senior corps officials have recommended that the property for construction of the dune and wetlands be bought, with mineral rights remaining with the original owner. But she said the corps’ New Orleans District officials are recommending instead that Wisner and the other owners grant easements that would assure the project would be protected.

Cathy Norman, executive director of the trust, said she also is in favor of an easement, rather than sale of the land.

The BP oil could be more of a problem, Lachney said.

“We cannot acquire any property if it is contaminated,” she said. “Any property, before we acquire it for a project, would have to be cleaned.”

Wisner officials have been trying to get BP to clean its property since the first oil washed ashore weeks after the April 20 accident, Norman said. At the moment, cleanup operations by contractors working for the joint BP-Coast Guard oil spill cleanup program are on hold because of nesting birds, she said.

But Joel Waltzer, an attorney representing the trust, said BP officials seem to be waffling on how clean they plan to make the Wisner property.

“We’ve been told now that the removal is stagnant and that the Unified Command seems content to leave oil on the beach, against our will,” he said. “To the extent any of this jeopardizes critical restoration projects, that needs to be changed.

Graves agreed. Last week, he complained to a congressional committee about the slow pace of cleanup efforts and their potential to delay a raft of restoration projects.

“The reality is that there’s oil in the Gulf today, and we likely will see oil washing up from these submerged oil mats and other sources for several years,” he said. “To say we can’t do restoration anywhere where there’s oil would mean we wouldn’t build restoration projects for years in coastal Louisiana and that’s obviously not an option.”

In other words, a (mostly)funded and greenlighted project is on hold because BP won't get its oil off the beach reminding us once again that the "It's BP's oil, it's BP's land" principle is still very much in play.