By Tony Davis | Arizona Daily Star
Six environmental groups filed a lawsuit Friday charging that a big Benson development threatens to dry up a section of the San Pedro River and that a federal permit clearing the way for its construction was approved due to political pressure on a top government biologist.
The lawsuit is the latest in a string of suits challenging the Clean Water Act permit for the 28,000-home Villages at Vigneto project. On July 26, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reinstated the permit for the project that it had approved in 2006 but later suspended.
The suit accuses the Army Corps and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of violating four federal laws in approving Vigneto. They are the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedures Act.
