Breaking News: Court Rejects Corps of Engineers Arguments in Sacramento Levee Trees Case

Late today, we were forwarded a copy of issued by a U.S. District Court in California denying the Army Corps of Engineers motion to dismiss a case over levee vegetation in Sacramento. The Court rejected each of the Corps of Engineers arguments to dismiss the case outright. Indeed, the order constitutes a complete rejection of the very same arguments which we were expecting in our lawsuit regarding the dike road trees.

The court’s order can be found here: Friends of the River v Corps – order denying motion to dismiss

We’ve only skimmed the document, and our lawyers are certainly reviewing it very carefully. However, the Court appears to be quite adamant that conservation groups have standing to bring a lawsuit, and that the Corps will need to provide the conservation organizations with a more complete set of documents on which it purports to base its levee policy. Without the full administrative record, the Court was skeptical of the Corps claims that the levee policy was not subject to judicial review.  This was an issue simmering in our case.

With actual flood waters actually quite high, but with no sign whatsoever of the parade of terribles caused by trees on the Coeur d’Alene levee, all of this is very good news for a Friday afternoon.