Nearly 100 oil and gas companies, from giants like Chevron to large independents like Anadarko, have ravaged Louisiana’s coastal wetlands, and further drilling will lead to the wetlands’ complete demise if no action is taken, according to a July 24 lawsuit filed in New Orleans.

The lawsuit, brought by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority–East (SLFPA-E), accuses the companies of negligence and creating a public and private nuisance by scarring the coast. The suit contends that drilling has caused extensive weakening of coastal lands that would help mitigate the strength of hurricanes, and that the companies have breached contracts by failing to address wetland damage.

The SLFPA-E asks for abatement and restoration of the coastal lands, including backfilling and revegetating of canals dredged and used by the companies, wetlands creation, reef creation, land bridge construction, shoreline protection and other measures.

The suit does not name a specific dollar amount for restoration but asks for “just and reasonable” damages. The New Orleans Times-Picayune noted that compensation could include picking up part of the tab for $14.6 billion in levee improvements.

John M. Barry, vice president of the SLFPA-E, said the suit is an attempt to protect southern Louisiana by strengthening “our first line of defense against catastrophic flooding”—the buffer of land and marsh that cuts down hurricane storm surge before it reaches the levees.

Barry said the industry has taken about $470 billion of the state’s natural resources during the past 20 years and should pick up its share of the increased costs of flood protections required to offset the loss of protective coastal wetlands.

“The industry recognizes that it is responsible for a significant part of the problem. We want energy companies to fix the part of the problem they caused—and which they promised to address. We want them to do what they said they’d do,” Barry said.

The U.S. Geological Survey cites oil and gas activities among the primary causes of coastal land loss. According to conservative estimates, since 1932 the state has lost more than 1,900 square miles of coastal lands, enough to cover the state of Delaware. Another 700 square miles are expected to be lost in the coming decades.

The suit says oil and gas activities continue to transform a once-stable ecosystem of naturally occurring bayous, small canals and ditches into an extensive—and expanding—network of thousands of miles of oil and gas access and pipeline canals.

The canals continue to “widen due to ongoing failure to maintain this network or restore the ecosystem to its natural state,” the suit says, adding that the canal network continues to push larger and larger volumes of damaging saltwater at increasing velocity deeper into Louisiana’s coastal landscape and interior wetlands.

The result is that saltwater stresses the vegetation that holds wetlands together, weakening and ultimately killing it. “Thus weakened, the remaining soil is washed away even by minor storms. The canal network thus comprises a highly effective system of coastal landscape degradation,” the suit says.

The SLFPA-E was created by the Louisiana legislature in 2006 following Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana’s coastal zone has been explored and developed since the early 1900s.

America’s Wetland Foundation, sponsored by Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and other such companies, says that since Jan. 1, 2012, Louisiana has lost 62.9 million square yards of land at a rate of a football field worth of coast every hour. The foundation argued in 2010 that restoration efforts needed because of the BP spill should be financed through federal penalties.

In November 2012, the Department of Justice settled criminal charges with BP for $4 billion. About $2.4 billion of the criminal recovery was set aside for acquiring, restoring, preserving and conserving marine and coastal environments ecosystems and bird and wildlife habitat in the Gulf of Mexico and bordering states harmed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Since 1933, offshore oil and gas production has generated more than $165 billion in revenue for the federal treasury—the second-largest source of federal revenue after income taxes, according to the foundation. “However, states that host onshore energy production on federal lands receive 50% of the revenues as compensation for the impacts, and have since 1920,” it notes.

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