Outspoken coastal expert and levee reform advocate Ivor van Heerden will be forced to step down as director of Louisiana State University’s Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes in May 2010. He will also relinquish his title as deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center.

The firing—a year in advance—is latest in a series of thorny interactions between the untenured van Heerden and the university. According to multiple media reports, the enmity stretches back to 2005, when LSU officials reportedly told van Heerden to curb his vocal criticism of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers floodwall and levee construction.

While van Heerden said LSU was concerned that his comments would hamper the willingness of federal funders to contribute to the university’s research coffers, a LSU spokesman said that the university silenced van Heerden because his comments on civil engineering were beyond his field of expertise, according to an article on the firing in the Times-Picayune.

Van Heerden has a doctorate in marine sciences and has overseen research on the potential of levees to be overtopped during storm surge, according to the article. Hurricane Center Director Mark Levitan, who has since resigned in protest of the van Heerden situation, also noted van Heerden’s comments were made from the strength of his position as the head of a team of scientists and civil engineers investigating the levee breaks.

In the time since the conflict began, van Heerden has become a well-known critic of the political and engineering decisions that led up to the Hurricane Katrina levee failures, as well as those that followed. In 2006, he released “The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina—The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist.” LSU has continued to question van Heerden’s authority to speak on levee and engineering matters and, according to the Times-Picayune article, barred distribution of his once-widely distributed storm surge models. According to The Nation, LSU has formally prohibited him from testifying as an expert witness in a lawsuit leveled against the Army Corps, although he will stand as a “fact” witness.

Van Heerden believes that suit, in which homeowners claim their property was destroyed by Army Corps negligence in building the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, could be impetus for the firing, according to a piece in the New York Times Lede Blog. Mathematics professor Charles Delzell, who attended van Heerden’s contract discussion as a representative of the American Association of University Professors, agreed.

“It’s a clear case of retaliation for his criticism of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” he told the New York Times.

Van Heerden said he wasn’t given a reason his contract won’t be renewed, although he was told it wasn’t because of his performance. A LSU spokesperson has told multiple media outlets that the university will not comment on the situation because it is a personnel matter.

The situation has drawn protest from the research community, local organizations such as Levees.org, and community members. Van Heerden, however, was able to see some silver linings to the clouds. Although he plans to appeal the decision and might take legal action, he also told the New York Times that in some ways, a disassociation would be freeing.

“I can really start to speak out and tell my side of the story—and in the process, maybe some good will come of it.”