USA: could a new $444 million Kentucky prison get held up by inmates worried about bats, wetlands?

Lawyers from Pittsburgh and New Orleans, along with 21 federal convicts spread out in prisons across the United States, have filed suit against the government to stop the construction of a federal prison in Letcher County.

The suit claims the U.S. Bureau of Prisons violated the law by failing to place documents concerning the prison construction in the libraries of federal prisons around the county so prisoners could read them and comment on them. It also claims the prison site is “toxic” and would endanger prisoners, while at the same time saying construction “would permanently degrade the already vulnerable environment. It requires clear-cutting over 120 acres of forest habitat for endangered bat species, excavating and grading an additional 59 acres, destroying three acres of wetlands, building an entirely new wastewater utility in the region, and emitting thousands of pounds of additional greenhouse gas emissions.

If the organizations prevail in court, it could significantly delay or permanently block construction of the $444 million prison.

The suit was filed by the Abolitionist Law Center and the “Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons.” The Abolitionist Law Center is one of the plaintiffs in the case, and its executive director, Dustin McDaniel, is one of the attorneys. The second lawyer, Emily Posner, is a civil rights lawyer in New Orleans.

Also listed as plaintiffs are 21 federal prisoners. Only one of those, Robert Barroca, is currently in Kentucky. Barroca, 54, is serving a 30-year sentence in the Federal Medical Center in Lexington after pleading guilty in 2004 to multiple drug charges in California. The remaining plaintiffs are scattered in prisons from Georgia to California. None are from this immediate area.

The suit says the prisoners should have access to the environmental impact study documents because they are the ones who will suffer adverse health effects by living in the prison.

It calls the prison “pork barrel politics,” and says its only purpose is to provide construction and development contracts to constituents of U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, who has pushed for construction of the prison.

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