38th Environmental Permitting Summer School

It’s like déjà vu all over again. Florida started its 404 Program in a hole, receiving over 1,000 wetland permit applications from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in December 2020. The Corps may now be operating from a similarly sized hole, with over 1,000 wetland permit applications that were pending with FDEP when Florida’s Program was abruptly vacated by a D.C. federal judge in February. Florida is wrassling to get the program back through the appeals process, and if successful, could end up in another permit application hole for a “threepeat.” This panel of experts will discuss the status of the 404 litigation initiated by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Corps’ 404 permit implementation process and why the Herculean efforts of the state and federal wildlife agencies got blamed for it all.