Gulfport, Miss – Real estate developer sentenced for filling protected Mississippi wetlands.
A real estate developer from Fairhope, Alabama, has been sentenced to a fifteen-month sentence for the unpermitted filling of wetlands near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, in violation of the Clean Water Act.
U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola, Jr. sentenced William R. ‘Rusty’ Miller to nine months of incarceration and six months home confinement. Miller was also ordered to pay a $15,000 fine, $19,246 in victim restitution, and to serve a one-year term of supervised release upon completion of his sentence.
In December 2013, Miller pled guilty to having caused the excavation and filling of wetlands on a 1,710 acre parcel of undeveloped property in Hancock County, west of the intersection of Route 603 and Interstate 10. The charging document to which Miller pled guilty identified him as a part-owner of corporations that purchased and intended to develop the land.
According to the felony information, in 2001, when Miller and his companies acquired the property, he was informed by a wetland expert that as much as 80 percent of the land was federally protected wetland connected by streams and bayous to the Gulf of Mexico and as such could not be developed without a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Despite additional notice he received of the prohibition against filling and draining wetland without authorization, Miller hired excavation contractors to trench, drain, and fill large portions of the property to lower the water table and thus to destroy the wetland that would otherwise be an impediment to commercial development.
Miller acknowledged that he knowingly ditched, drained, and filled wetlands at 10 locations on the Hancock County property without having obtained a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
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Key Facts
- State: Mississippi
- Category: Environmental Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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