Bayou Bridge pipeline moves ahead despite judges ruling

11th June 2018   ·   0 Comments

By Meghan Holmes
Contributing Writer

Construction continues on the Bayou Bridge pipeline across south Louisiana following a May 7, ruling in the St. James Parish district court invaliding the pipeline’s permit.

Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources, who issued the coastal zone permit allowing construction of the pipeline through St. James Parish, has appealed Judge Alvin Turner, Jr.’s decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“There was no stay or injunction in the judge’s order,” said DNR Communications Director Patrick Courreges. “So, construction will continue as the appeal process runs its course.”

A group of citizens delivered a copy of the judge’s order to pipeline workers in St. James on May 24, bringing construction to a halt as they entered the site. After being asked to leave, two decided to stay and police arrested them for criminal trespassing.

“We had Judge Turner’s ruling with us, declaring that DNR had issued this permit without following state guidelines and without considering the people of St. James,” said Alicia Cooke, an activist with 350 New Orleanians arrested at the site. “If your permit is illegal, then you don’t have a permit. We didn’t think they should be working there and we wanted construction to stop. The police told us we should work it out in the courts, but no one is listening to the court’s decision.”

The May 24 action forms part of a larger, long-running effort at stopping the pipeline going back more than a year, and before the state issued permits. The resistance comes from several different groups. The first is L’eau Est La Vie, a floating pipeline camp where opponents who call themselves water protectors gather to organize, fanning out along the pipeline route and monitoring construction activities for potential permit violations. The second is HELP (Humanitarian Enterprise of Loving People), a group of St. James residents who, with the help of local environmental groups and the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, filed suit against the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, to stop its construction.

“We should have the right to say no,” said Pastor Harry Joseph, who leads the HELP organization and is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “They don’t want to hear what people are saying: that this community has been thrown under the bus too many times. We opposed the last plant and it still came. We filed this suit to try to get some relief… to try to get someone to listen to us.”

Judge Turner’s ruling took issue with how DNR classified the pipeline — subject to guidelines as a “linear facility” as opposed to an “oil, gas or mineral activity.” Less stringent environmental regulations applied to the project as a result. The judge found the department’s failure to follow regulations associated with oil and gas activities “troubling,” writing, “It cannot be reasonably disputed that the transportation of crude oil is directly involved in the refining of oil,” in his judgment.

The other major issue with the permit found within the ruling was the lack of an evacuation route. HELP brought hundreds of signatures to the St. James Parish council asking for a route’s construction prior to pipeline approval in early 2017, but plans never materialized.

“Isn’t it funny how quickly they can build a plant or a pipeline, but how long it takes to get an escape route?” said Anne Rolfes, founder of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, who works with HELP and other environmental groups (among other things) protesting pipeline construction.

“Energy Transfer Partners has no plan for how to get people out of there in case of an explosion or spill and no plan for when there is a spill, and their company averages one every eleven days so it’s likely that one will occur sooner rather than later. The fact that DNR is failing to enforce the judge’s order is unusual, alarming, and illustrates a clear case of the state protecting a pipeline company,” she said.

Water protectors and local environmental groups allege that Energy Transfer Partners has sped up construction in the wake of the judge’s order, something the company denies.

“They’re going as fast as they can, and they want to finish this thing before the appeal is heard July 3,” Rolfes said. “If they do, all this will be moot. That’s what has led to civil disobedience and arrests. When laws fail, and when reasonable requests — like an evacuation route — aren’t met… what else can we do?”

Water protector Alicia Cooke agrees.

“I feel like the last thing I have left is putting my body on the line. The people of St. James have been through so much, and we are running out of ways to scream about the injustice of this. There’s another pipeline coming after this one, set to terminate in St. James Parish. We all need to think about the consequences of our comfort and use of fossil fuels to low-income people, often people of color, like those in St. James,” she said.

This article originally published in the June 11, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.