COEUR d'ALENE - Kootenai Environmental Alliance filed a suit Wednesday challenging the Army Corps of Engineers order that the city of Coeur d'Alene remove hundreds of trees along Rosenberry Drive.

The civil suit, filed in federal court in the Western District of Washington state, claims the Corps breached the National Environmental Policy Act by not conducting an environmental analysis on the Coeur d'Alene levee before it required the vegetation be removed.

It also states the agency didn't properly change its national policy before issuing the mandate that could have allowed it to make such a federal order, also a breach.

"They did nothing," said Rick Eichstaedt, attorney with the Environmental Law Clinic at Gonzaga University, handling the case. "It's just this determination, 'Hey, we're going to get rid of trees, not just in Coeur d'Alene, nationwide.' You don't get to do that."

The Corps issued the order earlier in March to the surprise of the city's engineering department.

It called for the removal of around 500 trees along the Dike Road, citing safety concerns with the adjacent 100-year-flood plain in the Fort Ground neighborhood.

The Corps began studying levee safety issues following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The order said if the city didn't comply with its orders, the levee wouldn't be certified. If it's not certified, then insurance rates through Federal Emergency Management Agency would increase. Requirements for future building in the area would be all but impossible to meet, too.

To correct the deficiency, Coeur d'Alene was instructed to cut the trees, remove the roots, and re-construct the levee embankments, Harris said.

But the order came without the proper homework, said Terry Harris, KEA director.

"At some point, there had to have been an impact study and the Corps just didn't do it," he said.

The complaint states that even the Corps stated in July 2011 that the impacts of trees on levees are "unique and uncertain" and require "site-specific analysis." It also mirrors a suit against the Corps in northern California challenging similar orders.

If the Corps decided to change its national policy, it should have announced the proposed change properly, which would have allowed public comment under the Administrative and Procedures Act "instead of some informal guidance," Eichstaedt said.

It didn't, he said, so the order comes from a memorandum and not actual regulations.

The suit was filed in western Washington because that is where the regional office is.

A public relations spokesman there said nobody could comment on the complaint since no one had seen it on Wednesday.

After the March order came, many in the city rallied around saving the bigger, ponderosa pine trees that line the embankment, also known as Dike Road, along North Idaho College's waterfront.

The city formed an 11-member ad hoc committee that is exploring other options to save the trees.

Those options include getting congressional and state support, seeking a third party to certify the flood plain, building a sheet pile wall beneath the road for more stabilization and studying the science to show whether soil stabilization in the ponderosa pines is actually an enhancement to the levee, said Wendy Gabriel, city administrator.

The city considered joining the suit, KEA v. Army Corps, although discussion hasn't reached the City Council.

Gabriel said the city likely doesn't have the resources to support it financially, but would better serve the case with the committee's research.

"But we certainly support it," she said.

Meanwhile, the city has started complying with some of the less labor-intensive requirements within the mandate, including replenishing eroded banks, and the KEA has turned over more than 4,400 signatures to Rep. Raul Labrador's office in support of keeping the trees.