Nearly a decade after land man Dan Collins alleged that a dredging project billed as a way to improve water quality in the Atchafalaya Basin was actually done to facilitate oil and gas drilling, a new Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s report suggests there is some merit to the claims.
The audit stops short of being able to “substantiate or disprove” Collins’ allegations that environmental laws were violated in connection with the state Atchafalaya Basin Program’s 2004 dredging of Bayou Postillion. But the report identifies several problems with the way the project was done, and calls on the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, which administers the Atchafalaya Basin Program, to implement better controls in the future.
Specifically, the audit found that the Atchafalaya Basin Program changed its engineering designs at the request of adjacent landowners to make it easier to drill for oil and gas on their water bottoms.
It also found that at least two people involved in the project had potential conflicts of interest. One, the chairman of a committee that helped decide which Atchafalaya Basin Program projects were chosen, also had a contract as the Bayou Postillion project manager and engineer.
The other—an attorney who represented the landowners and was a landowner himself—also represented the Atchafalaya Basin Program during the negotiation process.
Those findings were key allegations Collins made in an environmental whistleblower lawsuit that claimed his contracts to do work as a land man for the state dried up after he began raising questions about the project.
Collins won that suit in late 2015, along with a $750,000 judgment against the state. Earlier this year, however, the First Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision, saying he did not have standing to sue as a whistleblower because he was a contactor for, not an employee of, the state.
Collins attorney, Crystal Bounds, has appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court and is awaiting word on whether it will take up the case. In the meantime, she says the audit is vindication that her client is onto something.
“At the very list it corroborates what my client has been saying,” she says. “It doesn’t say there was anything illegal but it corroborates what Dan has been complaining about and trying to get people to listen to him.”
In its response, the Department of Natural Resource does not dispute the findings of the audit.
—Stephanie Riegel
