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louisiana bucket brigade
How Louisiana Advocates Are Continuing to Fight the Trump-Backed LNG Boom
"We always have had to take matters into our own hands, and we have protected ourselves against enormous companies," one local campaigner said.
Apr 30, 2025
Louisiana advocates and their allies are not giving up in their fight to stop the liquefied natural gas buildout that threatens the health and well-being of Gulf Coast communities—not to mention the stability of the global climate—even as the Trump administration doubles down on its commitment to expanding LNG infrastructure.
In a briefing on Tuesday, community members, local advocates, and international campaigners shared how they would continue to push back against Venture Global, an LNG company that has amassed a record of ecosystem destruction and air pollution violations at its currently operating Calcasieu Pass export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. Despite this, the Trump administration's Department of Energy granted conditional approval for the company’s nearby Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2), undoing the pause that the outgoing Biden administration had placed on it and other LNG approvals as it considered the public interest ramifications of LNG exports.
Yet Gulf Coast campaigners, who are used to dealing with a lax regulatory environment at the state level, were not defeated.
"Anybody who reports here in Louisiana regularly understands that we've never been protected by our regulatory environment. Never," Anne Rolfes, who directs the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told reporters. "And so we always have had to take matters into our own hands, and we have protected ourselves against enormous companies."
Misadventure Global
One key strategy that the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and others have used to get around the regulatory rubber stamping of bad actors is to raise public awareness of how the companies turning coastal Louisiana into a sacrifice zone really operate.
Case in point is Venture Global. Rolfe and John Allaire—a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who lives next door to the Calcasieu Pass terminal—laid out its short but extensive record of environmental violations and unethical business practices.
Even before the original Calcasieu Pass began exporting, in January 2022, it had to clear a space for tankers to access the facility.
"It's understood that this is a volatile fuel to lock into, that you don't want to rely on a fuel that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump control."
"They pumped hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of black viscous sludge from their marine berth out into the front of the Gulf of Mexico," Allaire said. "And that was the first indication of what was to come with Venture Global."
Since it began operating, the company has added air, noise, and light pollution to the water pollution that has devastated local fisheries.
Allaire has taken hundreds of videos and photos of flaring incidents.
"The light pollution is unbelievable," he said. "At night, I can literally read a book when the flares are going, and I'm over a mile away from their flare stacks."
Allaire's observations are backed up by the official record. In June 2023, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality sent Venture Global a compliance order detailing over 2,000 air permit violations from its first 10 months of operation, Allaire said. The company has yet to resolve the complaint, and the state sent them a warning letter in March covering their 2024 and 2025 rule-breaking.
The company also has a history of failing to report its flares and other excess emissions to the Department of Environmental Quality as required by the Clean Air Act.
If they reported and then investigated their violations, "that would enable them to really understand what's happening at their facility so that they could prevent future problems," Rolfe said. "They absolutely aren't doing that."
In March, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and the Habitat Recovery Project notified Venture Global of intent to sue the company over Clean Air Act violations at its Calcasieu Pass facility.
But the environmental groups aren't the only ones suing Venture Global. The company stretched its commissioning phase—during which it is considered still in the process of establishing itself and can sell its products to the highest bidder rather than honoring its contracts—for three years and three months, beginning normal operations just this April.
"This is absolutely off from the industry norm," Rolfe said.
Now, other major fossil fuel companies, including Shell and BP, are pursuing arbitration claims against Venture Global for breach of contract. Investors have joined a class-action lawsuit against it, saying it violated federal securities law by misrepresenting its prospects.
Yet Venture Global has huge ambitions for the region. In addition to Calcasieu Pass and CP2, it wants to build three other export terminals in coastal Louisiana and more than triple its capacity from 30 million tons per annum (MTPA) of liquid gas—already over a quarter of the 88 MTPA exported by the U.S. exports in 2024—to 104 MTPA.
"As a review, they're flouting the Clean Air Act. They've manipulated the commissioning phase. They're being sued by everybody they've done business with. Is this a company that our country and our state should put such faith in?" Rolfe asked.
She answered her own question: "Of course, our answer is no."
Stall Tactics
Another strategy the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and their allies seek to employ is to delay Venture Global's ambitions long enough for the economic reality of the LNG boom to catch up with it.
In addition to the approval of CP2, Australian company Woodside announced on Monday that it had approved a Louisiana LNG project worth $17.5 billion. Yet the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded in April that the massive growth in LNG capacity would exceed dwindling demand within two years.
"It's understood that this is a volatile fuel to lock into, that you don't want to rely on a fuel that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump control. So people are trying to get off of gas," Rolfe said.
"The economics are going to catch up with them. I just want it to be before they destroy the coast of Louisiana."
This means that LNG companies like Woodside and Venture Global are behaving "like a kid in a candy store," Rolfe continued. "That kid, unchecked, will eat so much, they'll throw up. I think the same is true with this industry. Unchecked, it will do itself harm."
The key is therefore to stall the buildout long enough that many projects become infeasible. This tactic has worked for frontline communities during the first Trump administration, Rolfe said. Through a combination of public pressure, records requests, and legal action, community advocates were able to delay the construction of a plastic plant proposed by the Chinese company Wanhua Chemical U.S. Operation, LLC, which would have released the World War 1-era nerve gas phosgene into the already pollution-burdened St. James Parish.
The economic outlook for the plant had always been "dubious" Rolfe said, and eventually the company gave up on trying to build it.
"They could have gotten approval and gotten on their way within a month. But our suit and then our constant presence and making them table things and so forth, drew it out and let the economics catch up with them," Rolfe said.
Rolfe added that the gas industry has similarly gotten ahead of itself.
"They're greedy, right? They want to grab all the candy they can, and the economics are going to catch up with them. I just want it to be before they destroy the coast of Louisiana."
Very Risk Business
Another strategy to slow down the building of new LNG facilities like CP2 is to target the one thing, in addition to permits and funds, that they can't move forward without: insurance.
Insurance is one sector in which the economic impact of the climate crisis is already being felt, as Ethan Nuss, senior energy finance campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, explained.
For example, major insurer Chubb earns $1.5 billion a year in premiums from the fossil fuel industry, which was already canceled out early this year with the $1.5 billion in pre-tax losses they took from the Los Angeles wildfires. On a local level, some insurers have pulled out of Louisiana all together to avoid insuring against climate-fueled extreme weather events.
"Once they are really educated about the permit violations and the legal risks and the true risk landscape that they're facing by taking on this client, many of them are very concerned."
"This is not a time to build something like CP2 that would deepen the climate crisis," Nuss said.
Because insurers are on the books for both fossil fuel projects and the damage for climate disasters, and because many of them have climate and human rights policies, they are vulnerable to growing pressure from the climate movement to drop the oil and gas clients costing them so much money.
RAN in February published the names of the major insurers for Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass, which it obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. These included Chubb subsidiary ACE American Insurance Company, AIG subsidiary National Union Fire Insurance Co., Allianz, Swiss Re, AXA, and Tokio Marine subsidiary Houston Casualty Company.
"That has kicked off a global effort to reach out to those insurers and begin to educate them about what is happening in Southwest Louisiana, the impacts from Calcasieu Pass, and what associated risks they're facing," Nuss said.
As a result of these efforts, Swiss Re has agreed to meet with the fishing community of Southwest Louisiana, to talk about the "devastating impacts on their livelihoods" from Calcasieu Pass' operations.
"Often with these global financial institutions, they aren't fully aware of what's really happening on the ground. That client is maybe just another line on the spreadsheet. But once they really start hearing the stories, once they are really educated about the permit violations and the legal risks and the true risk landscape that they're facing by taking on this client, many of them are very concerned," Nuss said.
Nuss hopes that, once fully informed, insurers would decide any project of Venture Global's is a "very risky business that they don't want to be involved in."
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'Death Sentence': Reports Call for End to Big Oil's US Sacrifice Zones
"People's lives and the environment are being devastated at the hands of big business," one human rights researcher said.
Jan 25, 2024
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both published reports on Thursday detailing how the fossil fuel industry has harmed the health and environment of communities in Texas and Louisiana, and how state and federal regulators have failed to protect them.
The Amnesty report, The Cost of Doing Business? The Petrochemical Industry's Toxic Pollution in the USA, focused on the Houston Ship Channel, which has some of the worst air pollution measurements in the U.S. The HRW report, "We're Dying Here": The Fight for Life in a Louisiana Fossil Fuel Sacrifice Zone, looked at the state's Cancer Alley, an 85-mile zone along the Mississippi that reportedly has the highest concentration of fossil fuel and petrochemical plants in the Western Hemisphere.
"We're dying from inhaling the industries' pollution," 71-year-old Sharon Lavigne, who lives in the town of Welcome in Louisiana's St. James Parish and started the environmental justice group RISE St. James, told HRW. "I feel like it's a death sentence. Like we are getting cremated, but not getting burnt."
'Death Row'
In its report, HRW noted that Lavigne and other Cancer Alley residents put up yard signs reading, "We live on death row."
Cancer Alley—which extends from Baton Rouge to New Orleans—has around 200 petrochemical and fossil fuel plants. HRW observed many near to homes, schools, senior centers, playgrounds, and workplaces that would regularly release flares, smoke, or foul smells.
HRW interviewed 70 people between September 2022 and January 2024, including 37 residents as well as regulatory officials, health experts, and nonprofit workers. It spoke to people who had been diagnosed with cancers and various respiratory ailments. One census tract, in St. John Parish, has a cancer risk from air pollution that is more than seven times the national average, the highest in the nation.
"What's happening in Louisiana's Cancer Alley is indeed like a sacrifice, a daily human sacrifice on the altar of our global fossil fuel cult."
"People are getting cancer diagnoses as a result of industry being so close to our homes," 31-year-old Kaitlyn Joshua, who lives in Ascension Parish, told HRW.
The report also reveals new research on reproductive health that is currently under review for publication in Environmental Research Health. Scientists from Tulane University found that there were rates of low birth weight and preterm birth as much as triple the national average, and that the highest rates were found in areas with the highest pollution levels.
The ongoing public health crisis disproportionately impacts Black and low-income communities. For example, nearly 90% of the residents in Welcome are Black as well as 60% of the residents of St. John, compared to 33% of the state population and 13.6% of the national population.
The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the environment listed Cancer Alley in 2022 as one of the most toxic places on Earth, termed "sacrifice zones."
"What's happening in Louisiana's Cancer Alley is indeed like a sacrifice," HRW European media and editorial director Andrew Stroehlein wrote in his daily brief Thursday, "a daily human sacrifice on the altar of our global fossil fuel cult."
'Environmental Racism'
The Houston Ship Channel in southeast Texas is another "sacrifice zone" where the fossil fuel industry disproportionately harms the health of low-income communities of color, according to Amnesty.
"People's lives and the environment are being devastated at the hands of big business," Alysha Khambay, Amnesty International's researcher on business and human rights, said in a statement. "Affected communities are predominantly Latinx/Hispanic and Black, low income, often lack access to healthcare they need, and face almost insurmountable barriers to justice. It is environmental racism."
"The doctor can't tell you, 'You got this cancer because you live next to this plant.' But there's no way living right next to them is good. It isn't."
The report focused on four plants owned by major oil and gas companies: ExxonMobil's Baytown Complex, LyondellBasell's Channelview Complex, Shell's Deer Park Chemicals, and Intercontinental Terminals Company's (ITC) Deer Park. Amnesty International interviewed dozens of people and looked at documents, data, and videos and images of the plants between January and December of 2023. It found that the four plants had often released more air pollution than their permits allowed over the past two decades, and three of them had experienced a fire or explosion in the last five years.
As in Louisiana, the plants harm residents' health. They release carcinogenic chemicals including the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) benzene, toluene, 1-3 butadiene, and ethylene oxide. One study found higher rates of childhood leukemia in parts of Houston with higher levels of benzene and 1,3-butadiene. Life expectancy is as much as 20 years lower in some polluted areas when compared to majority white communities 15 miles away.
"My mom, she recently had uterine cancer," one resident told Amnesty. "A lot of people have cancer, breathing difficulties… The doctor can't tell you, 'You got this cancer because you live next to this plant.' But there's no way living right next to them is good. It isn't."
Respiratory illnesses are another major health issue, with 15 of 29 interviewees saying either they or a close relative had been diagnosed with one or experienced chronic symptoms like a persistent cough.
"It pretty much affects me and my family every single day," Channelview-area resident Alondra Torres told Amnesty. "There's always smells in the air, every time you step outside for a little while."
'Reluctant Regulators'
Both reports detailed how government agencies had failed to protect people living near polluting plants.
"The failure of state and federal authorities to properly regulate the industry has dire consequences for residents of Cancer Alley," Antonia Juhasz, HRW senior researcher on fossil fuels, said in a statement.
Resident Brenda Bryant told HRW that making a complaint to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) was like "going up against a brick wall."
"The current system is stacked in favor of the companies and against the people they harm."
A 2021 state audit found that the department did not thoroughly examine facilities' emissions reports, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Inspector General found in 2011 that LDEQ had the lowest level of enforcement in its region for the Clean Air Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and Clean Water Act.
"DEQ has been actively hostile to communities in Cancer Alley for a long, long time," law professor and University for Human Rights co-founder Ruhan Nagra told HRW.
Louisiana state Sen. Cleo Fields (D-14) said LDEQ was "like partners" with the fossil fuel industry.
"My experience of the last 20 years is that state officials consistently cover for the petroleum industry and the polluters," Louisiana Bucket Brigade director Anne Rolfes told HRW.
Yet the U.S. EPA has not adequately fulfilled its mandate to make sure federal laws are enforced, though HRW noted the agency was hampered by underfunding and hostile court rulings. While the Biden administration has made more of an emphasis on environmental justice, its EPA dropped an investigation into whether or not LDEQ and the Louisiana Department of Health had violated Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act by disproportionately exposing Black residents to pollution.
In an example of the difficulties facing Cancer Alley residents, a Louisiana appeals court on Friday upheld air permits for a proposed Formosa Plastics plant in the area, which would be the largest of its kind in the U.S., as The Guardian reported. Then, on Tuesday, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the EPA from enforcing Title VI requirements going forward.
In Texas, meanwhile, Amnesty found that, in the past few years, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) penalized less than 3% of incidents in which a plant had exceeded its permitted level of pollution and that the fines it does issue are under the maximum amount and usually not high enough to dissuade the companies from reoffending.
"A company gets fined less than one person who's affected by it would spend on medical bills… it's very unfair," resident Carolyn Stone told Amnesty.
A 2022-23 review of the agency said its commissioners were "reluctant regulators" who largely allowed the industry to monitor itself.
"There is no effective regulatory deterrent to prevent these firms harming people, which they are doing with near impunity," Khambay said in a statement. "The current system is stacked in favor of the companies and against the people they harm. The human rights abuses related to the petrochemicals industry worldwide are often staggeringly harmful. This must and can change."
'The End of Fossil Fuels'
Both reports point out that the pollutants harming the residents of Cancer Alley and the Houston Ship Channel are also helping to destabilize the global climate and expose people around the world to extreme weather and other impacts. Around 150 plants in Cancer Alley were responsible for 66% of Louisiana's 2020 greenhouse gas emissions and released the equivalent of what 140 coal plants would release in a year between 2016 and 2021.
Petrochemical plants also produce plastics, a major environmental pollutant and health hazard. Yet their production is set to double by 2040, Amnesty said.
"It's long past time for governments to uphold their human rights obligations and for these sacrifices to end."
Both HRW and Amnesty said that regulators should stop approving new fossil fuel facilities in polluted areas and instead focus on a just transition to cleaner industries. HRW called for a Federal Fossil Fuel and Petrochemical Remediation and Relocation Plan, whereby companies in Louisiana would work with communities to provide jobs, decommission plants, remediate polluted areas, and offer to pay the moving expenses of residents who wished to relocate. Amnesty pointed out that renewable energy has the potential to employ more than 1.1 million people in Texas in the next quarter-century.
"I would like to see the end of fossil fuels," Lavigne told HRW. "If that's going to make me live a longer life, breathe clean air, drink clean water, they should shut them down."
HRW also said that Louisiana regulators should stop issuing permits in communities with high levels of pollution and that the EPA should use its Clean Air Act authority to shut down facilities until they can operate without breaking the law. In Texas, Amnesty said that local agencies should increase monitoring and enforcement, and also that the EPA should step in more frequently to enforce federal standards.
"It's long past time for governments to uphold their human rights obligations and for these sacrifices to end," Juhasz said in a statement.
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'A Pause Isn't Enough': Biden to Reportedly Halt LNG Buildout
"Biden is afraid that his climate hypocrisy will cost him the election if he doesn't make real progress on fossil fuels," one campaigner said.
Jan 24, 2024
The Biden administration has paused the approval of the controversial Calcasieu Pass 2 liquefied natural gas export terminal and is asking the Department of Energy to consider how the project would impact the economy, national security, and the climate emergency, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The news comes as climate advocates and Louisiana residents have been mobilizing against the buildout of LNG infrastructure, with a sit-in planned at the DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C. for February. If approved, activists have noted, CP2 would emit 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions than the controversial Willow oil drilling project, and the more than 20 LNG export facilities planned for the U.S. Gulf Coast would release more climate pollution each year than the European Union.
"Biden's action shows two things," Oil Change International's U.S. Program Manager Allie Rosenbluth said in a statement about the reported delay. "One, the marches, petitions, and grassroots organizing from frontline communities and their allies are working. And two, Biden is afraid that his climate hypocrisy will cost him the election if he doesn't make real progress on fossil fuels."
"Remember, none of us are free until we're all free, until we can halt these permits and get them to sop being approved permanently, until we can kick polluters out of our communities, the fight must continue."
According to The New York Times, the DOE's decision on CP2 could be postponed until after the November election. In addition to determining whether the project is in the "public interest," three sources familiar with the situation told the Times that the administration had ordered the department to also consider its climate impacts.
Climate advocates greeted the news with cautious optimism.
"Um, I think we all just won," Bill McKibben, who brought the LNG fight to national attention with an article in The New Yorker last year, wrote on his Substack.
"If it's true, and I think it is, this is the biggest thing a U.S. president has ever done to stand up to the fossil fuel industry," McKibben said.
Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, told Common Dreams that "if this reporting is correct, it's a major win in the fight against fossil fuels."
"This decision would stop nearly 20 new LNG facilities, representing 675 coal-fired power plants of emissions, dead in their tracks," Henn said.
Jean Su, director of the the Center for Biological Diversity's Energy Justice program said, "We would welcome the Biden administration pausing the monstrous, climate-killing CP2 project, but a pause isn't enough."
"Growing national pressure from youth and frontline communities to end fossil fuel expansion got us here. Now the administration needs to go the full nine yards and reject CP2 and all new oil and gas projects. To preserve a livable planet, we need a public interest test that denies any new project that would drive us further into climate catastrophe and violate U.S. commitments to transition away from fossil fuels."
The Louisiana Bucket Brigade called the move "a huge potential victory for Louisiana" on social media.
"If enacted, this will be a first step toward phasing out gas exports from Louisiana completely," the group wrote. "This industry is already destroying our coast and fishing communities. It should not be allowed to expand, it should not be allowed to continue. Gas exports don't belong here. We do."
In a video posted on social media, frontline environmental justice activist and Vessel Project founder Roishetta Ozane said: "This will be a win for all of us. So many have been fighting so hard to get to this moment."
However, Ozane said that the fight was not over.
"Remember, none of us are free until we're all free, until we can halt these permits and get them to stop being approved permanently, until we can kick polluters out of our communities, the fight must continue."
Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said that the DOE would have to follow through with actually making an environmentally just and climate-friendly decision following the extended review process. The New York Times pointed out that the department has never declined a gas project on environmental grounds.
"We don't need new criteria if they only serve to arrive at the original conclusion, and increased exports are eventually approved," Hauter said in a statement. "President Biden should permanently halt new and existing oil and gas exports, and aggressively ramp down the fossil fuel industry once and for all."
The news came the same day that a new study from Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, and BailoutWatch found that the main beneficiary of new LNG facilities would be oil and gas companies and financial speculators, not U.S. or European consumers. At the same time, just eight facilities considered in the report would emit as much each year as 113 coal plants.
The Times news suggests that the administration is beginning to take heed of the drawbacks of the LNG buildout, yet existing infrastructure such as Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass has already polluted Gulf Coast communities and seriously impacted the livelihoods of shrimpers and fishers in the area.
Travis Dardar, founder of Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage (FISH), told Common Dreams that fishing in the area had already decreased by 50%.
"They said they were going to pause it, they didn't say they were going to stop it," Dardar said. "There's a big difference there."
His experience with oil and gas companies like Venture Global has taught him to be wary and to continue to fight.
"They've taken so much from us down there," he said. "That's how I know how relentless they can be."
National organizations also emphasized the importance of maintaining pressure.
"Big Oil and Gas knows it is up against the ropes and will put up a fight to continue putting its profits over our collective future," Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous said in a statement. "But despite industry fearmongering, it's undeniable that LNG export projects are simply not in the public interest."
"These facilities pollute our communities, make energy more expensive for American families, and exacerbate the climate crisis all for the sake of more gas the world does not need," Jealous continued. "Our movement will not give up, and we will keep working to ensure that this reported groundbreaking step will lead to meaningful change."
Henn said that February's sit-in would go forward unless the administration officially announced the pause in writing.
"Our work is never over, but this will be a win to celebrate and use to stop other projects to come," Henn told Common Dreams.
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Frontline Fishers Force Early End to New Orleans Gas Conference
"We want our oystering back. We want our shrimp back. We want our dredges back. We want LNG to leave us alone," one participating fisherman said.
Jan 19, 2024
Frontline fishers and environmental justice advocates forced the meeting of the Americas Energy Summit in New Orleans to end two hours early on Friday, as they protested what the buildout of liquefied natural gas infrastructure is doing to Gulf Coast ecosystems and livelihoods.
Fishers and shrimpers from southwest Louisiana say that new LNG export terminals are destroying habitat for marine life while the tankers make it unsafe for them to take their boats out in the areas where fishing is still possible. The destruction is taking place in the port of Cameron, which once saw the biggest catch of any fishing area in the U.S.
"We want our oystering back. We want our shrimp back. We want our dredges back. We want LNG to leave us alone," Cameron fisherman Solomon Williams Jr. said in a statement. "With all the oil and all the stuff they're dumping in the water, it's just killing every oyster we can get. Makes it so we can't sell our shrimp."
The protest was part of the growing movement against LNG export infrastructure, which is both harming the health and environment of Gulf Coast residents and risks worsening the climate crisis: Just one of the more than 20 proposed new LNG terminals, Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2, would release 20 times the lifetime emissions of the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. Activists have also planned a sit-in at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., from February 6-8 to demand the agency stop approving new LNG export terminals.
The Americas Energy Summit is one of the largest international meetings of executives involved in the exporting of natural gas. More than 40 impacted fishers brought their boats to New Orleans to park them outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where the meeting was being held. After a march from Jackson Square, the fishers revved their engines to disrupt the meeting. One attendee said the disruption forced the meeting to conclude at 11 am ET, two hours earlier than scheduled.
"Wen you're here on the ground, seeing it with your own eyes and talking to the people... it feels like looking into the devil's eyes."
"They going to run us out of the channel and if they run us out of the channel then it's over," Phillip Dyson Sr., a fisherman who attended the protest with his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, said in a statement. "We fight for them. We fight for my grandson. Been a fighter all my life. I ain't going to stop now. So long as I got breathe I'm going to fight for my kids. They are the future. Fishing industry been here hundreds of years and now they're trying to stop us. I don't think it's right."
The fishers were joined by other local and national climate advocates, including Sunrise New Orleans, Permian Gulf Coast Coalition, Habitat Recovery Project, the Vessel Project, For a Better Bayou, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and actress and activist Jane Fonda.
"I thought I understood. I read the articles, I read the science, I've seen the photographs. But when you're here on the ground, seeing it with your own eyes and talking to the people... it feels like looking into the devil's eyes," Fonda said at the protest. "I've talked to people who have lost what was theirs over generations and are losing their livelihoods, the fishing, the oystering, the shrimping…"
Fonda called on the Biden administration to take action: "If President [Joe] Biden declared a climate emergency he could take money from the Pentagon and he could reinstate the crude oil export [ban]. Once the export ends, the drilling will end. They're only drilling because they can export it."
The successful action came despite interference from police, who threatened to issue tickets and tow away the six boats the fishers had originally parked in front of the convention center. Some participants agreed to move their boats, but the group was able to park two boats in front of the center and persevere in their protest.
"We're standing in the fire down there. And these people over here, the decisions that they make, for which our fishermen are paying the price. That's bullshit," Travis Dardar, who organized the fishers' trip and founded the group Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage (FISH), said in a statement."The police got us blocked here, they got us blocked there. But know that the fishermen are here and we're still going to try and give them hell."
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Shut Down CP1 and Don't Permit CP2, Frontline Advocates Say
A new report from the Louisiana Bucket Brigade documents how Venture Global's history of violations and evasions has continued into 2023.
Dec 13, 2023
Venture Global's existing Calcasieu Pass liquefied natural gas terminal experienced operational problems for more than 63% of the first half of 2023, according to a Louisiana Bucket Brigade report released Wednesday.
The findings build on the terminal's record of permit violations during its first year in operation and come as Venture Global seeks federal approval for the Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) facility, which would emit 20 times more greenhouse gases than the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.
"Calcasieu Pass needs to be shut down, and this company should not get any other permits," report co-author Anne Rolfes, who directs the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said in a press briefing.
"I think that it's fair to say that there's reason to fear that these other facilities that Venture Global is building will have the same kind of air emission problems that we're seeing at the Calcasieu Pass facility."
The Louisiana Bucket Brigade has been keeping tabs on Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass facility since it released 180,099 pounds of gas in an accident the day before it began operating at the start of 2022.
"That's enormous," Rolfes said. "And for me, that kind of set the scene for this facility."
The company went on to violate its air permit more than 2,000 times during 2022, and then asked the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) to respond to the violations by increasing its pollution limits.
"The plan is to retroactively make everything legal," Rolfes said. "And if that sounds crazy, welcome to Louisiana."
But Rolfes and other frontline advocates don't believe Venture Global should be trusted with an expanded permit. During both 2022 and 2023, it failed to submit letters to LDEQ and to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) within seven days of any incidents, as mandated by the Clean Air Act. All the information the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has been able to gather comes from Venture Global's Title V Semiannual Monitoring reports for the first and second halves of 2022 and the first half of 2023, as well as from the careful documentation of people who live close to the facility and observed many more gas flares and sirens then the company reported.
In 2023, for example, the plants' neighbors observed flaring on 34 days that Venture Global failed to mention in its report for the first half of the year.
"If we didn't have these neighbors who were documenting the problem, Venture Global would be getting away with this," Rolfes said.
Even when it does submit reports, Venture Global's information is vague. For example, the 2023 report combined with neighbor testimony found the terminal experiencing problems on 115 of 181 days, or 63.5% of the year so far. However, one of those incidents was a 78-day accident that Venture Global said only lasted only five hours. If this strange report is omitted, then neighbors documented flaring on 69 more days than the company admitted.
Another concern raised by the report is that Venture Global does not appear to have taken steps to fix the underlying issues causing these accidents.
In 2022, the company said that issues with its turbines caused more than half of its permit violations, but that it had taken action to solve the problem. Despite this, it again stated that the turbines were behind 75% of 2023's permit violations.
"If this issue had been resolved in 2022, as Venture Global stated, why are the facility's turbines still the primary source of the problem?" the report authors asked.
This is concerning because Venture Global has said that CP2 and another LNG facility it is currently building in Plaquemines Parish, will be "technologically identical" to Calcasieu Pass.
Calcasieu Pass was built using modular construction, with parts including the power source made by Baker Hughes in Italy and then shipped to Louisiana for assembly, journalist Sara Sneath said during the briefing. When the entire power operation was assembled, the turbines emitted beyond permitted levels.
"I think that it's fair to say that there's reason to fear that these other facilities that Venture Global is building will have the same kind of air emission problems that we're seeing at the Calcasieu Pass facility," Sneath said.
Finally, the report raised alarms about what the LNG buildout is doing to Louisiana's fishing industry. Dredging to make room for large LNG tankers is polluting the estuary and harming fish, and the tankers themselves stir up enough silt and dirt to make fishing in the area impossible for half a day.
"What makes Louisiana, Louisiana?" Nathan, a third-generation crabber from Cameron, Louisiana, asked in the report. "It's not LNG plants. It's not refineries. It's seafood and the culture behind the seafood. I want to preserve that so my kids can experience it like I did, and the generations of fishermen before me."
The report makes six recommendations:
- LDEQ should deny Venture Global's request for additional Calcasieu Pass permits and instead shutter the facility.
- Venture Global should compensate area fishers for two years of lost wages and stress.
- LDEQ should fine the company for its violations.
- LDEQ, the Department of Natural Resources, EPA, Department of Energy, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should all deny permits for CP2.
- The agencies should cancel the permits for the Plaquemines terminal.
- The Department of Energy should not grant Venture Global permission to export gas from CP2.
There is evidence that opposition from climate advocates and local communities is making a difference on the federal level. Rolfes said advocates had expected CP2 to be on FERC's agenda for the fall, but it was not listed for October, November, or December.
"Every month it is not on the agenda, we consider a victory because it means that it's not getting part of the federal approval that it needs," Rolfes said, adding that she took it as a sign that "our work has some momentum."
"We do believe that we've reached the ears of the Biden administration," Rolfes said.
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'Train Wreck': Company Behind CP2 Gas Export Project Has History of Environmental Violations
"It's supposed to be a very clean type set up, but we're not seeing it here down where I live," one local advocate and expert said.
Oct 18, 2023
Frontline Louisiana activists are warning that the company behind the proposed "carbon bomb" Calcasieu Pass 2, or CP2, liquefied natural gas terminal already has a history of environmental violations.
Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass terminal, which began operations in January 2022, racked up more than 2,000 deviations from its air permit during its first year alone. Now, the Arlington-based company is seeking approval for CP2, which it says will be "technologically identical" to its first facility, Louisiana Bucket Brigade campaign coordinator Shreyas Vasudevan said during a Tuesday press briefing.
"Why are we moving forward with the permitting for CP2 when this facility in just one year has such an egregious history?" Vasudevan asked.
Too Much Flare
John C. Allaire, a retired environmental engineer for both BP and Amaco, lives about 1,600 meters across the river from Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass in Lousiana's Cameron Parish. For the past 22 months, he has kept a record of every time he has seen gas flare from the facility.
"They've got about a 30-to-40 foot flame on their flare this morning," Allaire told reporters Tuesday. "They were flaring yesterday."
The facility got off to an inauspicious start when, on January 18, 2022, the day before it began exporting LNG, it released 180,099 pounds of gas in an accident it later determined "could have been prevented" if it had followed established procedures, according to a 2022 Louisiana Bucket Brigade report.
"There's a huge discrepancy between what they've also reported for this year and what's been seen at the facility."
Allaire then observed flaring on 91 of the facility's first 131 days in operation, or 68% of its first five months.
Flaring is an emergency means of burning off waste gas. Calcasieu Pass' environmental impact statement, prepared by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), said that the facility "would avoid flaring at night, during low visibility conditions, and during peak migration seasons." Yet Allaire observed flares both at night and during the peak migration season for non-tropical birds.
In its semiannual monitoring report, submitted to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) on March 30, 2023, Venture Global admitted that Calcasieu Pass had exceeded its permitted amount of emissions more than 2,000 times in 2022.
"In total, out of 343 days of operation last year the facility was in violation of their permit for 286 days, meaning they were only in compliance for 17% of their time in operation last year," Allaire wrote in his analysis of the report.
In response to the report, LDEQ issued a compliance order, but Venture Global responded by insisting it had "solved all of these issues and that because of that, this compliance order is unnecessary," Vasudevan said.
Yet continued monitoring by Allaire belies that claim. He told reporters he has continued to observe flaring on many more days than Venture Global admitted to accidents in its most recent September 30 report.
"There's a huge discrepancy between what they've also reported for this year and what's been seen at the facility," Vasudevan said.
This follows the company's pre-established reporting pattern. An initial semiannual monitoring report for the first half of 2022 claimed only 32 violations, while a revised report published later disclosed more than 70 during the same time period.
Allaire continues to hear alarms sound and smoke and particulate matter pollution rise out of the facility's flares and smoke stacks.
"It's supposed to be a very clean type set up, but we're not seeing it here down where I live," Allaire said.
Muddying the Waters
Venture Global's LNG exporting has polluted the water as well as the air. Around 22 months ago, the company pumped the silt and mud from its marine berth for LNG tankers out into the Gulf of Mexico 400 yards from Allaire's beachfront.
The dredge material transformed what "used to be a nice sand and shell beach," Allaire said.
"You walk into the water, and as you get ankle deep, you sink, and as you get knee deep, you sink. And as you get waist deep, you're in this black viscous sludge that they pumped out," Allaire said.
"It is clear that fishermen have not been able to have adequate community input."
Allaire isn't the only Gulf resident who has been impacted by the release of dredging material.
"That has been a consistent problem that's been experienced in the town of Cameron," Vasudevan said. "And so fishermen have been complaining of marshes being filled with mud."
In this regard, say advocates, Venture Global has not been honest with regulators. It told FERC that it was listening to the concerns of fishers through a Community Advisory Group, even as it acknowledged that no shrimpers or commercial fishers were actual members. It did say that police jurors and other local government officials were involved, but when the Louisiana Bucket Brigade filed a public records request with the Cameron Parish Police Jury, the jury responded that they had not participated in Venture Global's group.
"It is clear that fishermen have not been able to have adequate community input," Vasudevan said, "and the permitting for CP2 must be halted until their concerns are completely understood and addressed."
'Bigger and Badder'
While Venture Global is pumping pollutants into Louisiana's air and water, it's not actually pumping much money into the economy beyond employing a few workers, Allaire said.
That's because the company, which sold around $18.2 billion-worth of LNG cargo since March of 2022 according to Reuters, has been granted a 10 year industrial tax exemption from the Louisiana Board of Commerce and Industry. For 2022, that means the company escaped paying $184.6 billion that would have otherwise helped fund schools, pave roads, and supply first responders, Allaire told reporters.
"There's all kinds of downside with the flaring, the increased air pollution, the noise pollution, the light pollution. And it's just crazy that they won't contribute anything to the local economy here," Allaire said.
"The last thing that people in these communities need is another project of this magnitude."
That trade-off is partly why advocates are wary of CP2, what Vasudevan called Venture Global's "bigger and badder" proposed site which would be located across the Calcasieu River from the original. FERC could approve the new facility by the end of 2023.
If it does, 350.org and Third Act co-founder Bill McKibben said, it would be "an environmental justice train wreck."
"The last thing that people in these communities need is another project of this magnitude," McKibben said during the briefing.
And its impact would extend far beyond southwest Louisiana. During its lifetime, critics warn, CP2 would lead to 20 times the greenhouse gas emissions that would be released over the lifetime of the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.
"That we would even consider doing that, anything like that in 2023, which the scientists have now told us is the hottest year we've experienced on this planet in 125,000 years, that's obscene and dangerous," McKibben said.
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'The Next Climate Litmus Test': Sen. Merkley Joins Fight Against CP2 LNG Terminal
CP2, which the Biden administration is expected to either approve or reject in the coming months, would emit 20 times the climate pollution expected from the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.
Sep 29, 2023
Democratic Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley has joined the growing movement to stop the Calcasieu Pass 2, or CP2, a liquefied natural gas export terminal planned for Louisiana's Gulf Coast.
Experts warn that CP2, which the Biden administration is expected to either approve or reject in the coming months, would emit 20 times the climate pollution expected from the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.
"The Calcasieu Pass 2 LNG export terminal in Louisiana is the next climate litmus test," Merkley tweeted Thursday. "CP2 would poison communities and fly in the face of our climate goals."
Directly addressing President Biden, Merkley added: "Say no to CP2!"
Merkley's statement came less than a week after longtime climate activist Bill McKibben wrote an article in The New Yorker detailing how CP2—and the broader expansion of LNG exports it represents—threatens to undermine U.S. climate goals and force the 1.5°C temperature-rise target out of reach.
The U.S. is already the world's leading exporter of LNG, and CP2 is only the largest of at least 20 Gulf export terminals in the pipeline.
"If this buildout continues, and if you counted the emissions from this gas against America's totals, it would mean that American greenhouse gas emissions would not have budged since 2005," McKibben wrote on his Substack.
"Thank you Sen. Jeff Merkley for calling on POTUS to stop CP2 and protect Louisiana's coast, and our fishermen and shrimpers."
However, the Biden administration has a chance to stop the project. First, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) could reject CP2 at its October commission meeting, though McKibben noted in The New Yorker that this appears unlikely. In July, FERC opined that the project would not have a major impact on local resources, making no mention of its global climate impacts.
Then, the Department of Energy needs to grant CP2 a license to export gas through the terminal. Such a license can only be approved if an export is in "the public interest."
"After a northern hemisphere summer like the one we've just experienced, that should be an easy call," McKibben wrote on his Substack.
Merkley's statement indicates he agrees.
"Many many thanks for standing up here, Senator!' McKibben posted in response.
Climate advocacy group Oil Change International boosted Merkely's call.
"The proposed CP2 LNG export terminal is a climate and environmental justice disaster, many times over," the group wrote. "It's also a clear test for President Joe Biden."
CP2 also faces local opposition. Louisiana's Gulf Coast is on the frontlines of the climate crisis in myriad ways as it suffers sea level rise, more intense storms, and increased pollution that results from fossil fuel expansion.
The LNG buildout in particular destroys habitat for fish and shrimp, threatening the ecosystem and the livelihoods of fishers and shrimpers, according to a press release from local environmental justice group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. The increase in shipping traffic brought by the terminals also makes fishing and shrimping more difficult.
"Thank you Sen. Jeff Merkley for calling on POTUS to stop CP2 and protect Louisiana's coast, and our fishermen and shrimpers," the group wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "This is the federal leadership we need. We'd love to have you come down and see firsthand how gas exports are decimating our beloved seafood industry."
The Louisiana Bucket Brigade also called on their own Senator, Republican Bill Cassidy, to step up.
"Are you going to protect your own constituents, the fishermen and shrimpers whose livelihoods will be decimated by CP2," the group asked, "or are you going to rely on Sen. Jeff Merkley from Oregon to do it for you?"
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Critics of Louisiana LNG Project 'Hopeful' as Huge Sales Contracts Canceled
"The fight is not over," says one activist, but "from tax breaks to pollution and now to these recent financial downswings, we have all the evidence we need to understand that Driftwood will be a parasite."
Sep 23, 2022
Frontline leaders in Louisiana and environmental advocates cautiously celebrated Friday after gas developer Tellurian revealed that major deals with Shell and Vitol have fallen apart, a big blow to an export terminal project.
"Our priorities are backwards; we should be putting people first, not big polluters."
"While the fight is not over, this is hopeful news," declared Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project and Southwest Louisiana organizing director with Healthy Gulf.
Ozane and other campaigners hope the canceled contracts are a step toward stopping the development of the Driftwood liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and export terminal on the west bank of the Calcasieu River.
Tellurian said in a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it "received a notice of termination from Shell" regarding a pair of sale and purchase agreements and also "delivered a notice of termination to Vitol" for another 2021 deal.
In other words, the LNG developer has "lost two of its biggest potential customers," and, as a result, "Tellurian's shares, halted multiple times after the disclosure on Friday, were last down about 20%," Reuters reports. "The company announced the canceled deals a few days after withdrawing a $1 billion high-yield bond sale that would have funded the initial construction."
Tellurian noted in a statement Friday that it "has updated its Driftwood LNG financing strategy to prioritize securing equity partners." Highlighting sales last quarter and future expectations, president and CEO Octavio Simoes said the company has "made good progress on our construction plan" for the new terminal "and will continue funding that with our cash and operating cash flow."
Meanwhile, activists urged action from elected officials and investors alike to kill the project.
"It has been clear from the beginning that Tellurian's Driftwood project is a bad investment," said Sierra Club's Adele Shraiman, asserting that the company "has led investors on a roller coaster of reckless gambles and abrupt changes for years, burning through hundreds of millions in investor cash and yielding abysmal results."
"Their newest offering promised massive risk and very little stability for investors, so it's not surprising that investors have backed away from this deal," she added. "Driftwood LNG also faces several legal challenges and community opposition, so its financial future is tenuous at best. Banks and investors would be wise to reconsider support for other reckless LNG expansion projects."
Ozane similarly argued that "from tax breaks to pollution and now to these recent financial downswings, we have all the evidence we need to understand that Driftwood will be a parasite on Southwest Louisiana. It's time that our public officials and the banks that support this awful project finally pull the plug on Driftwood."
Noting that some local residents of the already heavily industrialized area are still dealing with the destruction of hurricanes from the past few years, the campaigner said that "our priorities are backwards; we should be putting people first, not big polluters."
James Hiatt of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade also called for focusing on the needs of locals rather than pouring money into "destructive and dangerous" projects in communities "still recovering from record-breaking natural disasters caused by our collective dependence on fossil fuels."
"Our food and electricity bills soar while gas companies make record profits," Hiatt said. "Damaging our coasts and livelihoods for the profits of the few is a fool's errand."
Southwest Louisiana resident Natalie McLendon agreed and expressed relief that the Driftwood development may not happen.
"We don't need more LNG export terminals," she said. "I just want people to be able to enjoy the land and water without the blight of industry, and all the pollution they impose on our communities."
Speculation over the terminal's future comes as scientists continue to stress that for the sake of ensuring a habitable planet, human health, biodiversity, and the global economy, the world must swiftly transition away from fossil fuels.
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Locals Celebrate 'Tremendous Victory' Against South Louisiana Methanol Petrochemical Complex
The company "finally threw in the towel having learned that our community will not back down in the fight to protect our health and well-being from more industrial pollution," said Sharon Lavigne of RISE St. James.
Sep 09, 2022
Community organizers and their supporters are celebrating that after years of local resistance, South Louisiana Methanol won't complete a stalled $2.2 billion petrochemical complex in a region known as "Cancer Alley."
"It took hundreds of residents banding together to force LDEQ to recognize how overburdened the community is with industrial pollution, and to show polluters that we will not accept another plant moving in."
In a statement Friday, the environmental law organization Earthjustice and groups it has represented in challenges to the project--RISE St. James, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, and Sierra Club--highlighted a letter to the company from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ).
As the letter details, the LDEQ in July notified South Louisiana Methanol (SLM) that its application to modify permits for the complex in St. James Parish would be withdrawn from review unless the company provided the department with necessary information by August 19.
"No response from SLM was received. Accordingly, LDEQ hereby withdraws the aforementioned application from review," the letter states, adding that new authorization would be required to start or resume construction.
Corinne Van Dalen, senior attorney at Earthjustice, noted Friday that "St. James Parish was targeted by a petrochemical industry accustomed to breezing through the permitting process that has ignored community concerns and allowed toxic plants to move into predominantly Black neighborhoods."
Sharon Lavigne, founder of RISE St. James and a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, declared that "South Louisiana Methanol finally threw in the towel having learned that our community will not back down in the fight to protect our health and well-being from more industrial pollution."
"Today is a tremendous victory, but we will never stop fighting against polluters who think our health is less important than their dirty profits," said Lavigne, whose group sent members to Washington, D.C. for Thursday's major mobilization of frontline organizers and residents.
Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, also welcomed the development, charging the that proposed complex "has been a hazard since its conception" and SLM "bungled this project for over a decade, as demonstrated by its ongoing starts and stops."
"It should have been obvious to the state that the company was in no shape to run such a hazardous facility," she added. "It took hundreds of residents banding together to force LDEQ to recognize how overburdened the community is with industrial pollution, and to show polluters that we will not accept another plant moving in."
The celebrations Friday came after the St. James Parish Council earlier this month rejected a zoning ordinance that would have allowed other industrial use of the company's property.
As The Lens reported:
The proposed ordinance would have rezoned a residential neighborhood in the parish's 5th Council District--a low-income, majority-Black district on the parish's west bank that is already home to a large number of industrial sites--to a "residential/future industrial" designation.
The council's rejection of the change effectively precludes SLM--a joint venture between the New Zealand-based Todd Corporation and a Houston-based subsidiary of the Saudi Arabian company SABIC--from selling the property to any entity with designs for industrial development.
The ordinance, introduced by Councilmember Donald Nash, never went to a vote, as no council member seconded a motion to consider it.
"We saw humanity there tonight," Barbara Washington, a resident of St. James Parish and a founding member of the nonprofit Inclusive Louisiana, told The Lens of the council meeting. "It seemed like all the time that we've been talking, they haven't been listening--but tonight, it seemed like they were actually listening, and that's hopeful for us."
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DC Mobilization to Warn Manchin Permit Deal Is a 'Threat to Our Democracy'
"We need real climate solutions, not false compromises to line pockets, threaten tribal sovereignty, and weaken our already lacking environmental protections," said Cheyenna Morgan of Ikiya Collective.
Sep 07, 2022
Frontline organizers and community members fighting against U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin's proposed federal permitting reforms that would benefit the fossil fuel industry are set to descend on Washington, D.C. Thursday.
"We want Democrats in Congress to understand that Manchin's side deal is using people as sacrifice zones and it is unacceptable."
Since Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) agreed behind closed doors to push through a permitting measure in order to secure support from Manchin (D-W.Va.) for the Inflation Reduction Act, signed last month by President Joe Biden, campaigners across the country have been organizing against the deal--including with arrests at congressional offices.
Despite pressure from campaigners and dozens of Democrats led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, Schumer confirmed Wednesday that he plans to pair the "dirty side deal" with a continuing resolution that members of Congress must pass this month to prevent a government shutdown.
After weeks of virtually lobbying lawmakers, campaigners intend to have in-person conversations about the permit policies and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) on Thursday. Naadiya Hutchinson of WE ACT for Environmental Justice told Common Dreams that "the goal of these meetings is to really showcase people's stories."
"There are Indigenous folks and frontline folks that are deeply, deeply concerned about what further construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline would do to their health, well-being, and livelihood," she said. "So this is really an opportunity for grassroots and community voices to be heard in person, face-to-face, with many of the people that will be in many ways determining the difference between life and death for some of our communities."
The mobilization, "No Sacrifice Zones: Appalachian Resistance Comes to D.C.," is being organized by the People vs. Fossil Fuels and Stop MVP coalitions. After meeting with lawmakers, the groups plan to hold a 5:00 pm rally at the Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon, at the intersection of New Jersey and Constitution avenues.
As frontline activists mobilize in D.C., the Democratic National Committee is scheduled to vote on a resolution opposing the deal. The Washington Post reported that "although the resolution is not expected to pass, it highlights a growing rift in the Democratic Party over permitting reform, a critical issue on the congressional agenda this fall."
One of the rally speakers, Cheyenna Morgan of the frontline-led group Ikiya Collective, told Common Dreams that "we want Democrats in Congress to understand that Manchin's side deal is using people as sacrifice zones and it is unacceptable."
"We know that those that hold the power will never be impacted the way we will, the way our future generations, cultures, and languages are being affected," Morgan said. "We need real climate solutions, not false compromises to line pockets, threaten tribal sovereignty, and weaken our already lacking environmental protections. People are not sacrifice zones."
Manchin's demands include prioritizing projects of "strategic national importance," setting time limits for permit reviews, making changes to clean water rules, restricting court challenges, enhancing federal authority for certain projects, and completing the MVP--a fracked gas pipeline that would run through his state.
A Wednesday letter from 80 groups to Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) argues that the MVP "is an ecological and climate disaster that threatens one of the largest remaining wild landscapes in the Eastern United States," and including support for it in the bill "would send a clear message that Congress is willing to ignore climate science when it is inconvenient, and species can go written off to the dustbin of extinction when it is politically expedient to do so."
Though a draft bill leaked to the Post last month did not mention the MVP by name, the newspaper noted that "a person familiar with the matter said the permitting package would still help the pipeline, which has been mired in litigation and other delays, by expediting permitting and licensing under the Clean Water Act."
Referencing the draft reported by the Post in August, which had a watermark of a key fossil fuel trade group, Louisiana Bucket Brigade director Anne Rolfes said in a statement Wednesday that "we have seen this too often: Industry ghostwrites a bill, and a politician eager for campaign contributions does its bidding."
"This time it is the polluter loophole bill, a cynical and greedy play by Sen. Manchin and his backers, the American Petroleum Institute, that will not only exacerbate the effects of climate change, but will also sacrifice generations of Louisianans, especially Louisianans of color," she continued. "And for what? For money."
Joye Braun of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Indigenous Environmental Network told Common Dreams that a main message of Thursday's mobilization is that Manchin and Schumer's deal "is not flying and is not going to fly with frontline leaders, Indigenous communities, BIPOC communities, especially along the Mountain Valley Pipeline or any other extractive industry that threatens our communities and ties us into worsening and hastening climate catastrophe."
"They're calling it a permitting deal but we don't need to reform permitting. Permitting is actually working," she emphasized. "What isn't working is industry forcing their way through our communities, forcing their way into polluting our waters, lands, and the air that we breathe, and putting people's lives in jeopardy--and even killing some people."
"This is our environment--all of our environment. This isn't a free-for-all for extractive industry."
"This is a threat to our democracy," according to Braun, who also highlighted concerns about tribal sovereignty. "This is a threat to the right [of] the people to have a say in our laws and in the way that we protect our environment. This is our environment--all of our environment. This isn't a free-for-all for extractive industry."
Hutchinson similarly stressed that "we do not believe that the permit side deal should be connected to the continuing resolution because the permit side deal should go through the full legislative process. This side deal was a deal between a select few and doesn't reflect the wider needs of our constituencies. It doesn't respect the work of environmental justice communities and, honestly, it undermines in many ways our democracy."
With the mobilization, she said, "I think one of the core messages that we want to send to members of Congress is that we need a just transition, which requires full participation of communities in permitting."
"When communities come together and dream and envision a future for ourselves, that has created legislation like the Environmental Justice for All Act, which is in direct opposition with what this permit side deal is leading us toward," Hutchinson said, referencing a bill sponsored by Grijalva and passed by his committee in July.
Given the recent attacks on American democracy, "I think we should be uplifting" it, she added. "The Environmental Justice for All Act is one of those ways that we uplift democracy, and the permitting side deal is sadly a reinforcement of the direction we don't want to be going in."
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