Tampa Bay Sierra Club won our federal suit vs. Cypress Creek Town Center developers/polluters
Tampa Bay Sierra Club won our case in federal court vs. Cypress Creek Town Center today! The judge declared the permit from the Army Corps of Engineers invalid, and scolded them thusly:
F. CONCLUSION
The Corps has failed to fulfill its statutory duties under NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] and the CWA [Clean water Act]. Unfortunately, this is a familiar course of action for the Corps when processing permit applications. As another member of this Court has stated, the Corps “resorted to arbitrary and capricious meaning – manipulating models and changing definitions where necessary – to make this project seem compliant with [CWA] and [NEPA] when it is not.”
Tampa Bay Sierra Club has been battling this developer over this project for several years. The developers of the huge mall project at I-75 and State Road 56 were slapped with a $300,000 fine for polluting Cypress Creek, and stalled with lawsuits again & again. Sierra Club never tried to deny the mall completely. We only requested that they design it in such a way as to protect our wetlands, wildlife & water resources. They could have built this project years ago, and saved themselves a ton of money & time in court, had they only worked with us, instead of against us, and implemented some of our simple suggestions like adding some retention ponds to filter runoff and reducing the footprint of their parking by building a multi-story garage instead of insisting on filling critical wetlands just to build vast parking lots.
Here’s the Court Order.
Here’s the Court’s Memorandum Opinion.
For more info contact these Tampa Bay Sierra Club leaders who have been tireless in their efforts to protect our wetlands & wildlife in this long fight:
- Bev Griffiths, Chair of Tampa Bay Sierra Club
- Denise Layne, Issue Chair, Cypress Creek Town Center Development
