“In 2001, the Board signed a settlement agreement promising to create a conservation easement on their land. More than 20 years have passed, and they still haven’t fulfilled their promise,” said Sarah Stokes, senior attorney for the selc_org.
For the past year the Birmingham Water Works Board has been engaged in a legal battle with local environmental groups who say the utility has not fulfilled its promise to protect the city’s watershed.that granted the Alabama attorney general third-party right of enforcement over BWWB to protect ratepayers, the utility agreed to place a conservation easement on a parcel of land so that no development could occur that would affect the city’s water systems.
“In 2001, the Board signed a settlement agreement promising to create a conservation easement on their land. More than 20 years have passed, and they still haven’t fulfilled their promise,” said Sarah Stokes, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Ratepayers deserve the assurance that land bought to protect their drinking water won’t be sold and developed for profit.
“At the end of the day people don’t trust the water works board and over a long period of time they’ve proved that they shouldn’t be trusted,” said Butler. “So I think it’s really important for us to get to a point where we don’t have to continue to have this same discussion year after year after year which is why we want that legal protection.
Stokes said after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled the BWWB case went back to Jefferson County Circuit Court where it is set for trial on April 10, 2023 under Judge Javan Patton. “We all assumed that everybody did what they were supposed to do and filed the paperwork and permanently protected all the water board property, much of which was donated to them on the premise that it be protected,” said LeCroy. “A private owner had a property directly across from the gas station and he donated it to the water board so that it would not be developed because he loved the area.”
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