Louisiana

Louisiana And Minnesota Introduce Anti-Protest Bills Amid Fights Over Bayou Bridge And Enbridge Pipelines

April 3, 2018 Alleen Brown and Will Parrish, Theintercept.com Resist! Legislation, Louisiana, Minnesota, Pipelines

THIS WEEK, THE Louisiana House of Representatives introduced new legislation aimed at criminalizing the activities of groups protesting the extraction, burning, and transport of oil and gas. The bill is similar to a model created by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council. Indeed, in the wake of the massive protest movement at Standing Rock, which attempted to prevent completion of the Dakota Access pipeline, at least seven states have introduced or passed “critical infrastructure” legislation. Louisiana’s version comes as opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline have ramped up protest activities in the state, staging occupations and blockades aimed at halting construction of the project. The legislation creates new crimes that would punish groups for “conspiring” to trespass on critical infrastructure sites and prescribes particularly harsh penalties for those whose ideas...

Resistance Born On The Bayou

March 30, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Artkillingapathy.com Resist! Louisiana, Pipelines

That morning, three of us woke up early – earlier than most people visiting New Orleans – and drove to a rural area not far from Rayne, LA. A local woman there had asked Cherri to come and monitor the pipeline work being done. We came to assist. The property is long – long enough that it is already home to five pipelines. Yellow marker poles run nearly the entire length, and now mud pits and excavators mark the placement for a sixth pipeline: the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. “I brought a book,” Cherri says, digging through her bag. She pulls out James Baldwin and flips through a few pages before getting pulled back into conversation. She jokes about a recent phone call where a man appeared shocked by her eloquence and depth of knowledge. “What was he expecting?” she says laughing, and adopting a caricatured Native accent.

Appeals Court Reverses Decision Stopping Bayou Bridge Pipeline Work Through Cypress Swamp

March 19, 2018 By Julie Dermansky, Desmogblog.com Resist! Courts, Louisiana, Pipelines

On February 24, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, an Obama appointee, granted Earthjustice an injunction in order to prevent irreparable harm to the basin, an environmentally sensitive National Heritage Area, until the group’s lawsuit challenging a U.S Army Corp of Engineers permit for the pipeline could be heard. Earthjustice had filed this lawsuit January 11 on behalf of the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association-West, Gulf Restoration Network, the Waterkeeper Alliance, and the Sierra Club. The suit alleges that the Corps is not enforcing existing permits for oil and gas pipeline companies already operating in the basin, where pipelines, canals, and dredge piles traverse the country’s largest river swamp. According to the suit, the Corps acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in issuing a permit for the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Bayou Bridge Pipeline Opponents Say Louisiana Governor’s Office Is Surveilling Them

March 16, 2018 By Julie Dermansky, Desmogblog.com Resist! Louisiana, Pipelines, Surveillance

Opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline accused Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards of meeting with representative of the oil and gas industry while refusing to meet with activists and communities affected by the pipeline’s construction. They further allege that the administration has instead placed them under surveillance, pointing to similar treatment of Dakota Access pipeline opponents in North Dakota in 2016. Their claims are based in part on emails and other public records released by the state. The activists brought their grievances to the Democratic governor’s home and office on March 1, holding a press conference in front of the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge and then occupying the foyer to his office in the State Capitol for over an hour. “The Bayou Bridge pipeline should be called the John Bel pipeline,” Louisiana Bucket Brigade founder and director Anne Rolfes declared at the press conference.

Federal Judge Halts Bayou Bridge Pipeline Installation

February 28, 2018 By Julie Dermansky, Desmogblog.com Educate! Courts, Louisiana, Pipelines

The Bayou Bridge pipeline will be the last leg of the Dakota Access, carrying oil fracked in North Dakota to Louisiana. The final stretch of the project, if built as proposed, will span 162.5 miles from Lake Charles to St. James, cutting through the Atchafalaya Basin, a national heritage area and the country’s largest swamp. The lawsuit Earthjustice filed in federal court on January 11 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on behalf of the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association-West, Gulf Restoration Network, the Waterkeeper Alliance, and the Sierra Club, alleges that the Corps acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it issued a permit for the pipeline. The plaintiffs were relieved by the judge’s ruling, and look forward to presenting their case in court, which they are confident will show cause to stop any new pipeline from being built until non-complaint companies fix existing problems.

Citizens In Cancer Alley Vow To Ramp Up Battle Against Industrial Pollution In 2018

January 31, 2018 By Julie Dermansky, Desmogblog.com Resist! Cancer, Industrialization, Louisiana, pollution

This past year in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish, a small group of residents began organizing their community to compel the state to protect them against an invisible menace: the air they breathe. Their parish, the Louisiana equivalent of a county, is situated in what’s known as Cancer Alley, an industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that hosts more than 100 petrochemical factories. At the helm of the battle is the Concerned Citizens of St. John, a diverse group of parish residents pushing back against the area’s historically bad — and worsening — industrial pollution. “One thing we all have in common is a desire for clean air,” the group’s founder, Robert Taylor, told me. Next year, the burgeoning group plans to get political and broaden its reach by banding together with similar groups in the region.

Citizens In Cancer Alley Ramp Up Battle Against Industrial Pollution

January 11, 2018 By Julie Dermansky, Desmogblog.com Resist! Air Pollution, Cancer, Louisiana, pollution

Teacher Handcuffed For Questioning Superintendent’s Raise

January 11, 2018 Nina Golgowski, Huffingtonpost.com Resist! Education, Louisiana, Teachers

Disturbing video taken at a Louisiana school board meeting on Monday shows a teacher being forcefully removed in handcuffs after she questioned a superintendent’s pay raise during a public comment portion. The teacher, who was identified as Deyshia Hargrave in a YouTube video and by a colleague to HuffPost, was called on to speak by a member of the Vermilion Parish School Board on Monday as it voted on the superintendent’s contract — one that would reportedly give him a five-digit pay bump. Hargrave, who is an English language arts teacher at Rene Rost Middle School, according to the school’s website, voiced her concern about superintendent Jerome Puyau’s pay increase, calling it a “slap in the face” to teachers who “work very hard with very little” as their class sizes grow.

US Army Corps Of Engineers Approves Bayou Bridge Pipeline

December 16, 2017 Staff, ienearth.org Resist! Climate Change, Environment, Louisiana, Pipelines

LOUISIANA — Yesterday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted permits to Bayou Bridge, LLC, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, to construct a 162.5-mile crude oil pipeline from Lake Charles to St. James, Louisiana. The Army Corps of Engineers refused to conduct a full Environmental Impact Statement for the project, despite pleas for such a study from communities directly impacted by the pipeline. In response to the Bayou Bridge permit approvals, leaders of organizations in the Stop Energy Transfer Partners Coalition released the following statements: Cherri Foytlin, Bold Louisiana: “To be honest, my hopes were never with the state and federal agencies who have consistently proven their lack of vision and scarcity of protection for the people and waters of this great state.

L’eau Est La Vie: The Ways & Means To Fight A Black Snake In The Bayou

September 4, 2017 Eleanor Goldfield, www.occupy.com Resistance Report Louisiana, Pipelines, Protests

By Eleanor Goldfield for Occupy - Resisting the Black Snake in the Bayous: L'eau est la vie – water is life. From the deep bayous and what's left of the Louisiana wetlands, we take a look at the indigenous led camp standing in the way of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline – the benignly named crude oil project threatening huge swaths of waterways and some of the state's last line of defense against climate change. We trace the money that makes the pipelines flow, not only in Louisiana but in Pennsylvania and Florida as well. We sit down and talk with Bold Louisiana state director Cherri Foytlin about her continued fight to protect her land, her family and her community against the destructive practices of both big oil and their paid off politicians. Unfortunately for them, she has no plans to step aside - and we can and should all be inspired by her fight.

Water And Oil, Death And Life In Louisiana

July 19, 2017 Nora Belblidia, www.unevenearth.org Resist! Land, Louisiana, Oil, Water

By Nora Belblidia for Uneven Earth - Six months ago, a routine public hearing was scheduled in a nondescript gray government building in downtown Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “Normally these hearings go over really quietly,” said Scott Eustis, the Wetlands Specialist for Gulf Restoration Network (GRN). “Usually it’s me, my associates, and like ten people.” Instead, over 400 people showed up to the Baton Rouge hearing, and stayed for nearly six hours. The debate centered on the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, a proposed route that would run 163 miles from Lake Charles to St. James, forming the “tail” of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), and effectively connecting oil fracked in North Dakota to Louisiana refineries. If built, Bayou Bridge would cross 11 parishes, 600 acres of wetlands, 700 bodies of water, and the state-designated Coastal Zone Boundary. Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) is behind both the Bayou Bridge project and the more infamous DAPL, but the parallels run deeper than a mutual stakeholder. Just like in DAPL, those who resist the project are drawing connections between past wrongdoings, conditions today, and a future climate. Residents cite safety concerns, environmental racism, pollution, and threats to the region’s wetlands and seafood industries as reasons to oppose its construction.

Fighting Climate Change Can Be A Lonely In Oil Country, Especially For A Kid

June 14, 2017 Neela Banerjee and Zahra Hirji, www.insideclimatenews.org Resist! Children, Climate Change, Lawsuit, Louisiana, Youth, Youth Activism

By Neela Banerjee and Zahra Hirji for Inside Climate News - RAYNE, Louisiana—As far back as Jayden Foytlin can remember, her cousin Madison came over to celebrate her birthday. The girls had been best friends since they were toddlers and spent nearly every weekend together, playing video games and basketball in their driveways. This year, things were different. In the weeks before Jayden's 14th birthday, Madison's mother stopped arranging get-togethers. She didn't answer texts inviting Madison to Jayden's birthday party. "We thought that maybe she was out of town with her family," Jayden said. "Or I thought that maybe Madison had a sleepover the same day as my birthday." The text that cleared matters up came on the afternoon of Jayden's birthday, as she and her family piled into their hybrid SUV to go roller skating. Madison's mother wrote that her daughter wasn't allowed to see Jayden anymore. She was keeping Madison away because Jayden is one of 21 young plaintiffs suing the federal government over its alleged failure to curtail fossil fuel development and address climate change.

Louisiana (Finally) Seeking To Reduce Prison Population

May 14, 2017 Matt Higgins, www.occupy.com Create! Louisiana, Mass Incarceration, Prison, Racism

By Matt Higgins for Occupy.com. In a recent op-ed on nola.com, Lafourche (pronounced La-Foosh) Parish Sheriff Craig Webre wrote, “We shouldn't incarcerate people just because they're poor. Or just because they're addicted. Or just because they don't have a home. But we've done that for way too long.” Lafourche Parish, about an hour’s drive southwest of New Orleans, is a reliably conservative parish where more than three-quarters of voters voted for Donald Trump. Webre has served as sheriff of the parish for almost 25 years and was president of the National Sheriffs Association. Most of Webre’s op-ed focused on the report from the Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Task Force, formed in 2015 by the state legislature to study ways to reduce incarceration. Louisiana incarcerates more people per capita than any other state in the union. According to the Task Force report, 8 percent of the state's population is incarcerated, yet this “tough on crime” approach has failed to reduce it. One-third of inmates released return to prison within three years.

One Community’s Fight For Clean Air In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley

April 22, 2017 Julie Dermansky, www.nationofchange.org Resist! Air, Cancer, Louisiana

By Julie Dermansky for Nation of Change - It doesn’t take carefully calibrated measurements to realize there is something wrong with the air around the Denka Performance Elastomer plant in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. From a small plane, I photographed the petrochemical manufacturing facility, until recently owned by DuPont, noting its proximity to the community around its fence line. The emissions were horrible. Breathing them while circling the plant twice left me with a headache that lingered for hours. The surrounding communities and I were inhaling emissions of chloroprene and 28 other chemicals, which the plant uses to make the synthetic rubber commonly known as Neoprene. Chloroprene is nasty stuff. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2010 toxicological review of the chemical resulted in the agency reclassifying chloroprene as a likely human carcinogen. Also according to the EPA, short term exposure to high concentrations of chloroprene can affect the nervous system, weaken immune systems, and cause rapid heartbeat, stomach problems, impaired kidney function, and rashes, among other health issues.

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