Chevron Ordered to Pay $744.6 Million for Destroying Louisiana’s Coastal Wetlands

Oil giant Chevron has been ordered by a Louisiana civil court jury to pay $744.6 million to a parish government to help restore coastal wetlands destroyed by the company over a period of decades.

The lawsuit was the first of 42 filed against the company since 2013, reported The Guardian.

The jury found that energy major Texaco — bought by Chevron in 2001 — had been violating state coastal resources regulations by not restoring wetlands that were impacted by drilling oil wells, dredging canals and the billions of gallons of toxic wastewater dumped into the environment, The Associated Press reported.

“No company is big enough to ignore the law, no company is big enough to walk away scot-free,” lead attorney for the plaintiffs John Carmouche told the jury during closing arguments, as reported by The Associated Press.

A 1980 Louisiana coastal management regulation requires that “Mineral exploration and production sites shall be cleared, revegetated, detoxified, and otherwise restored as near as practicable to their original condition upon termination of operations to the maximum extent practicable.”

The verdict is likely to affect similar lawsuits against big oil in the state, The New York Times reported.

Plaquemines Parish, which filed the lawsuit, sought damages of $2.6 billion, arguing Chevron was directly responsible for the pollution and loss of wetlands.

Chevron said its activities were not the cause of the damage and that the state regulations did not apply, since its oil and gas activities began before 1980.

Following a four-week trial, the jury awarded the parish $575 million for land loss, $161 for contamination of the area and $8.6 million for equipment abandoned by the company.

Chevron said it plans to appeal.

Expert witnesses testified that the company had failed to follow best practices since starting its operations in the region in the 1940s, reported The Associated Press.

Carmouche said Chevron “chose profits over the marsh,” allowing the environmental degradation from its operations to spread and fester.

The United States Geological Survey has said that the Louisiana coastal region experiences more wetlands loss than all continental U.S. states combined, The Guardian reported. Between 1932 and 2016, roughly 25 percent of its land area has been lost.

Marshlands of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana on June 16, 2010. kris krüg / Flickr

Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has said that the state could lose as much as 3,000 additional square miles over the coming 50 years.

Attorney for the state Jimmy Faircloth Jr. told the jurors that Chevron was saying their community wasn’t worth preserving, reported The Associated Press.

“Our communities are built on coast, our families raised on coast, our children go to school on coast,” Faircloth said. “The state of Louisiana will not surrender the coast, it’s for the good of the state that the coast be maintained.”