Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2019
Abstract
This Article critiques the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ continued authorization of hard coastal armoring under Nationwide Permit 13 (NWP 13) in light of mounting scientific evidence demonstrating the ecological, physical, and economic harms associated with seawalls and bulkheads. Despite documented reductions in biodiversity, accelerated shoreline erosion, and the impairment of wetland migration under conditions of sea level rise, the Corps reissued NWP 13 in 2017, allowing significant shoreline stabilization projects without individualized review. At the same time, the Corps adopted Nationwide Permit 54 to streamline approval of “living shorelines,” a more ecologically adaptive alternative, yet imposed comparatively stricter conditions on these environmentally beneficial projects. The Article argues that NWP 13 is arbitrary and capricious under the Clean Water Act because it authorizes activities that cannot reasonably be characterized as having only minimal adverse environmental effects. More broadly, the Article uses NWP 13 as a case study to examine the structural features of general permits that render them resistant to revision or judicial challenge, and it proposes regulatory reforms to prevent the entrenchment of environmentally harmful permitting regimes in an era of accelerating climate change.
Recommended Citation
Travis O. Brandon, A Wall Impervious to Facts: Seawalls, Living Shorelines, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Continuing Authorization of Hard Coastal Armoring in the Face of Sea Level Rise, 93 Tulane L. Rev. 557 (February 2019)
