Town hall addresses terminal expansion concerns in Cameron Parish
5th September 2023 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
On August 22, Ret. Gen. Russell Honore, founder of the environmental alliance of civic and community groups GreenARMY, hosted a town hall at the Old Hackberry Community Center with fishermen, shrimpers, and residents of Cameron Parish voicing concerns about the expansion of Venture Global LNG’s Calcasieu Pass gas export terminal.
“I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was this bad,” said Lt. General Russel Honore in a press release. “The people hear [sic] suffer from the disruption of the estuary and the fishing grounds. They suffer when the storms come because they indiscriminately moved the dirt around that protects their homes and their fishing grounds. Indiscriminately, without any say so from the people who live here. All in the interest of these foreign owned or out of state-owned companies come here to exploit the natural gas, turn it into LNG and ship it overseas. That’s destroying this community and way of life.”
The Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting communities threatened by the petrochemical industry, said the expansion has pushed fishermen off their grounds, limited access to boat launches, and made the Cameron Parish area even more vulnerable to storms just three years after Hurricane Laura killed 81 people and caused approximately $23.3 billion in damage near the expansion site.
Nathan Berwick of Hackberry said he has seen erosion on the coast from LNG ships as well as dredge mud filling the marshes and estuaries. He also said the wastewater runoff from oil facilities runs into the river. He added that the LNG ships have caused wakes that led to greater erosion on the coastline.
“If you took a PVC pipe and drove it in the ground right on the edge of the bank, in six months time, I guarantee the bank will be 20 feet from where you put that pipe,” Berwick said. “They’re just destroying our coast, our wetlands, our estuaries. They’re making it really hard for us to make a living down here as commercial fishermen.”
Anthony Theriot, a lifelong Cameron resident and fisherman, voiced concerns about how safe it is to live so close to the facility.
“A lot of our concern is how close can you live to the plant? We go to a lot of meetings and we never get any answers for it,” said Theriot, who lives 1.1 miles away from Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass gas export terminal. “We deal with a lot of things. Like the current of a ship passing, stirring up the water. If you’re shrimping and a ship passes it messes up for hours. So it’s like you’re not making money for hours waiting on the water to settle. But it’s not just that. They’re building more. And what’s safe? What’s a safe working environment for us? What’s a safe living environment for us? We’re uncertain.”
As recently as the mid-1980s, Cameron Parish was the United States’ top volume fish producer according to U.S. Department of Commerce figures. But the Louisiana fishing and shrimping industry on the whole has taken hits from stronger and more frequent hurricane landfalls in the 21st century. Recently, Hurricanes Laura and Ida caused significant damage. An increase in imported shrimp has also hurt local shrimpers. The gas export terminals pose yet another threat to their livelihoods.
Lieutenant Gov. Billy Nungesser echoed some of these concerns when reached for comment.
“While I am not as familiar with the impact this (the gas export terminal) may have on the seafood industry, I am concerned about the Mississippi River diversion as well as the influx of imported seafood and what those issues are doing to destroy our seafood industry,” said Nungesser.
Leo Dyson, a longtime resident of Cameron, was a shrimper from age 13 to age 71. He said the conditions got so bad he had to move from his lifelong home at great financial expense. Dyson added if the LNG plant left, he would move back to Cameron.
“I’ve seen it change from year to year, but it never got as bad as it is now,” Dyson said. “Every year, they dredge the channel and it gets bigger and bigger because the ships get bigger and bigger.”
Honore said these changes are destroying not just a livelihood, but a longstanding part of the area’s culture.
“Many of the fishermen are multigenerations. It’s what they’ve [done] for multiple generations and this could end because of the indiscriminate destruction of the wetlands, where they fish and where they live,” said Honore, “And by the absence of government assistance in protecting them from this industry in terms of providing air monitoring and water monitoring. One of our objectives is to help them organize into a group where they can share information about what the heck is going on down here and how industry is running amuck and doing what they want without any control from the state or from the parish.”
The Department of Wildlife sent a document with observations, recommendations and questions about the new gas export terminal to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.
One such note read as follows: “It is anticipated that dredging activities associated with the proposed marine facilities will increase turbidity in adjacent waterways. Increased turbidity may negatively impact fish and invertebrate species by lowering dissolved oxygen levels, smothering ethic organisms, and reducing visibility for sight based aquatic predators. What measures will the applicant be taking to reduce the turbidity associated with dredging the proposed marine facilities?”
Another question posed in the document asked “Does the applicant anticipate the reduction of access to adjacent waterways during the dredging and construction of the proposed facilities? If so, the Department suggests that any reduction to access be limited to times of the year that would be least detrimental to commercial fishers.”
Requests for comment from Venture Global LNG, Cameron Parish Rep. Ryan Bourriaque, and the Louisiana Shrimpers Association were not returned as of press time.
This article originally published in the September 4, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
