Last Year’s List: Protection Progress

Protection highlights from last year’s list of the Top 10 Most Endangered Places in the Southeast

Double Victory for South Carolina’s Wetlands
Call it CSI Environment: In an investigation drawing on aerial photos, historic maps, and even a site visit by kayak, SELC’s legal team presented proof that 500 acres of wetlands near Charleston are indeed linked to the Ashley River (and therefore subject to oversight under the Clean Water Act). Our evidence caused the Corps of Engineers to reverse its own previous determination that the tract fell outside federal safeguards.

Months later, SELC scored a second victory when the Corps again reversed its finding that a wetland near Murrells Inlet was not federally protected and could be developed. The Corps reconsidered its decision and announced in November its determination that the wetland is federally protected after all. We are continuing to watchdog the agency’s permitting decisions and to undertake legal action to ensure that South Carolina’s wetlands are not sacrificed. Learn more.

 

Other developments this past year:

  • Black Warrior River, AL: ONGOING: SELC is now in court to compel the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to do its duty to protect clean water in the Black Warrior River and all of Alabama’s waterways. The agency persists in giving rubber-stamp approval to proposed strip mines without legally required plans for keeping pollution out of the rivers and streams that supply drinking water to Birmingham and other communities. The permits also fail to ensure protection of water quality in the Black Warrior River. . SELC is working closely with the Black Warrior Riverkeeper on the 3,255-acre Rosa coal mine in Blount County that would release pollution from more than 60 outfalls into the Locust Fork watershed—one of dozens of examples of SELC/Riverkeeper partnerships throughout our six states.
     
  • Catawba-Wateree Basin, NC & SC: ONGOING: Duke Energy proposed giving South Carolina a donation of land and cash to compensate for maintaining harmfully low flows from a series of hydroelectric stations on the Catawba-Wateree River. After the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) recommended approving this scheme, we challenged the agency’s decision and secured a unanimous vote from the DHEC board to deny Duke’s request for approval. We are now appealing a judge’s ruling that overturned the board’s decision due to a procedural error by the agency.
     
  • Right Whale Calving Waters, GA: ONGOING: SELC filed suit in January 2010 to challenge the U.S. Navy’s decision to build an undersea warfare training range off the coasts of northern Florida and southern Georgia, an area directly adjacent to the only known calving grounds for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. Without appropriate precautions, such as ceasing range operations during the winter calving season, the right whale will face a triple threat of increased ship strikes, entanglement in submerged cables and other debris, and the disorienting effects of various forms of sonar.


  • Roanoke & Dan River Basins, VA: ONGOING: Amid pressure to extract uranium from a deposit north of Danville, Virginia, SELC supports maintaining a state ban on uranium mining and milling that has been in place since the early 1980s. We are actively educating key decision-makers on the dangers of uranium mining and milling; ensuring that various studies now underway (including a study by the National Academy of Sciences) are conducted fairly, thoroughly, and independently.

 

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