A federal judge has blocked the use of certain BP restoration funds stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill from being used to rebuild a beachfront lodge and conference center on the Alabama coast.
U.S. District Judge Charles Butler wrote in his decision that the Trustees who were in charge of allocating the funds “acted arbitrarily and capriciously by failing to conduct a proper alternatives analysis,” as required by the Oil Pollution Act.
“The Court can, and will, enjoin the use of those funds pending further review by the Trustees,” Butler wrote. “However, based on the administrative record before it, and the narrow issue presented by the pleadings, the Court cannot enjoin the Commissioner or the State from building the lodge/conference center with funds other than early restoration funds.”
The decision came in a law suit filed by New Orleans-based environmental group Gulf Restoration Network, which challenged the process by which the project was approved.
“If you’re going to fix natural resources, the law says you have to look at different ways of doing it,” said Robert Wiygul, a lawyer who represented GRN in the case. “They didn’t do that here.
“The law doesn’t prevent the state of Alabama from making a bad decision, but it does prevent them from making an uninformed decision, and that’s what they did.”
The $85.5 million Gulf State Park Enhancement Project was among the first restoration projects approved under Alabama’s portion of early restoration funds made available by BP as part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process.
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