Posted on Fri, Jan. 14, 2011
U.S. judge rebuffs N.J. on deeper Del. River
The ruling removed the last pending barrier to dredging the channel from Phila. and Camden to the ocean.
By Linda Loyd
Inquirer Staff Writer
A lawsuit by New Jersey and environmental groups seeking to stop the 102-mile deepening of the Delaware River navigation channel was tossed out Thursday by a federal judge in Trenton.
U.S. District Judge Joel A. Pisano’s ruling removed the last pending legal obstacle to deepening the channel from 40 to 45 feet between Philadelphia’s and Camden’s ports and the Atlantic Ocean.
In November, U.S. District Judge Sue L. Robinson dismissed a parallel lawsuit in Delaware. She allowed the $300 million project, two decades in the making, to start in an 11-mile stretch south of Wilmington.
The first phase of dredging work began March 1 and was completed in September.
Work on the next area - a five-mile stretch off northern Delaware - is scheduled for summer. The project, which depends on federal funding and is led by the Army Corps of Engineers, is supposed to be completed in five years to allow bigger ships and commerce in the Delaware.
“It all depends on funding,” corps spokesman Ed Voigt said. “The Army Corps does not have a budget yet for fiscal 2011. We don’t have the full funding picture. Congress has not passed an appropriation yet.”
Pisano’s 28-page opinion was a victory for the corps and the local sponsors, Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which sued in 2009 to stop the deepening, said Thursday it was “extremely disappointed with this ruling.”
Another plaintiff was the New Jersey Environmental Federation. “We’re not surprised. The judge got it wrong,” federation campaign director David Pringle said. “It seemed pretty clear that he was predisposed to favoring the corps, and we will be appealing.”
In 2002, New Jersey revoked an approval and demanded additional environmental assessments. The state contended that the project had changed and that new circumstances in the river had arisen since 1997, when then-Gov. Christie Whitman’s administration found that digging five feet deeper would comply with New Jersey’s coastal-zone management program.
Environmental concerns included the 2004 oil spill from the tanker Athos, which leaked more than 263,000 gallons into the Delaware near Philadelphia, and distribution of shortnose sturgeon in the project area.
Pisano said a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report and the corps’ sampling concluded that the Athos spill had not significantly affected sediment. He noted that the corps planned to take the shortnose sturgeon into consideration by establishing “dredging windows and prohibitions.”
Pisano, in the ruling, said the corps’ decision on whether to supplement existing tests was not “arbitrary or capricious” and had not violated any regulations.
“In addition, there is an extensive history of public involvement in the project,” the judge said. “Therefore, the court finds that the corps’ dissemination of information comported with National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements.”
Pisano concluded “that none of the corps’ decisions in this case were arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with the law.”
Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20110114_U_S__judge_rebuffs_N_J__on_deeper_Del__River.html#ixzz1B3LsQyLT
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