Posted on January 26, 2017
By Eric Heisig, Cleveland.com
The state of Ohio said in a court filing Monday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers always intended to dump dredged material from the Cleveland Harbor into Lake Erie, and used curse words and pictures of middle fingers to make its point in internal emails.
The emails, obtained by the state and the Port of Cleveland during discovery, are a reason for a federal judge to rule against the Army Corps in a long-simmering dispute over the dumping of dredging sediment into a disposal facility and not the lake, the state’s motion says.
In one example, when port officials gave recommendations and technical comments about dredging, the Army Corps’ dismissed them and referred to port officials as “these clowns,” the motion says.
“Later, in May of 2013, when the Port observed that the Corps was not sharing information, Buffalo District Management said that the Port’s CEO, ‘Will [Freidman] (sic) was a jacka$$’ for complaining about communication problems,” the filing continues.
The state, the port and the Army Corps have asked Senior U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent to rule in their favor. The state filed the lawsuit in 2015, and Nugent that year forced the Army Corps to dredge.
At issue is the dredging of a six-mile shipping channel, the last mile of which serves the ArcelorMittal Steel mill. The Army Corps delayed dredging in 2016, and a second lawsuit was filed over that dispute as well.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has said dumping dredged sediment would be harmful to the lake’s ecosystem. The Army Corps contends the shipping channel’s sediment is not toxic. It has also said it made attempts to study and receive public feedback before deciding on dumping in Lake Erie.
But in a motion filed Monday, the state says the Army Corps never intended to find an alternative to dumping the sediment into the lake.
It says the Army Corps also concocted a plan in 2014 to pressure local officials into acquiescing to open-lake dumping by using ArcelorMittal “as a poker chip,” as the steel mill’s business would be affected if ships could not pass through the harbor.
The motion continues by quoting an Army Corps email that said “We would keep this plan to ourselves if possible to keep the heat on others for full open lake placement.”
The Army Corps went further, the state says. Josh Feldman, the chief of operations for the Army Corps’ Buffalo office, sent a recommendation to Army Assistant Secretary Jo-Ellen Darcy to say the Corps should defer dredging in 2014. Feldman recognized in an email that delaying dredging would cause “immediate and severe impacts” to ArcelorMittal and other businesses, according to the motion.
“Despite the serious nature of the recommendation, Feldman took a picture sticking up his middle finger, added it to the memo, and then recirculated the memo for the Buffalo District management,” the motion says.
An Army Corps spokesman referred a reporter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland, which represents it in the lawsuit. Spokesman Mike Tobin declined to comment.
The Army Corps previously wrote in court filings there is no federal mandate that says it must dredge. It also denied allegations that it intentionally delayed dredging to pressure Cleveland officials.
Source: Cleveland.com
