Art. 1552.Environmental Management Orders

Environmental damage lawsuits, especially the oilfield-contamination cases Louisiana litigates under R.S. 30:29, often turn on soil and groundwater testing that every side needs to conduct on the same property. Article 1552 addresses that problem directly: on the request of any party in one of these actions, or on the request of the Department of Energy and Natural Resources' office of conservation, the court must direct the attorneys to appear and develop an environmental management order.

That order authorizes every party to access the allegedly impacted property to inspect it and run environmental testing. It has to set reasonable terms covering access to the property, the investigation and testing itself, sampling and testing protocols, and specific timeframes for conducting the work -- so competing experts aren't tripping over each other or working from inconsistent procedures.

The order also has a built-in transparency rule: test results must go to every party and to the Department of Energy and Natural Resources within thirty days of receipt. A party that sits on unfavorable results instead of sharing them loses the ability to use those results as evidence later in the case. This article doesn't have a close counterpart in federal practice; it's a Louisiana-specific response to the coordination problems that come up when many parties need to test the same contaminated ground.