How much land was destroyed?

Jefferson and Plaquemines Parishes have decided to sue oil and gas companies for damage done to coastal wetlands due to their negligence in defiance of the law.

The parishes each filed their own set of lawsuits covering 28 oilfields in their jurisdictions. The cases are rooted in a 1978 law that created stricter requirements for oil and gas companies over the objections of industry groups. Among the regulations in that law were the duty to maintain the sites being used and “cleared, revegetated, detoxified and otherwise restored as near as practicable to their original condition upon termination of the operations to the maximum extent practicable.”

None of the companies ever filed permits indicating they were restoring those fields.

Should the parishes succeed, the industry would have to pay to restore that damage or provide compensation for the land destroyed. The exact amount of the suit, and the total amount of land involved in the case, are not clear.

And so a fully funded coastal erosion denial campaign was born.