Dredging is the removal of sediment, plant species, and debris from an aquatic area. Industry, travel, and recreation throughout wetlands often requires the dredging of canals, especially by oil industry to get out to their offshore drills through coastal wetlands. Canals widen after being dredged because of the increased water flow and loss of plant life, both attributing to increased erosion. It is estimated that there are 4,572 miles of canals south of the Intracoastal Waterway, not including Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas, and that canals alone attribute to 6.53 square miles of land loss per year in the United States. The permits required to dredge these canals include stipulations of refilling, but these are not often enforced. John M. Barry, along with a group of private lawyers and coastal experts, filed a lawsuit in 2013 against 97 corporations who had violated their permits in Louisiana’s coastal wetlands in response to this. It is referred to as “the most ambitious environmental lawsuit ever” by the New York Times and has been met with political resistance.