Speaking of shitty laws signed by John Bel Edwards

The pipeline protest criminalization law is going to court now.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by the Center for Constitutional Rights, argues that the law is “so vague, overly broad, and sweeping in scope that people in the state cannot be sure of where in the vicinity of Louisiana’s vast 125,000-mile network of pipelines they can legally be present, who decides where they can be present, or what conduct is prohibited.”

“Its actual aim,” the suit continues, “is to chill, and harshly punish, speech and expression in opposition to pipeline projects.”

Has John Bel Edwards had an official campaign launch event yet?

This seems like an appropriate venue.

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline is now complete and slated to begin transporting oil between Texas and St. James Parish next week, the companies that own the controversial project have announced.

The 163-mile-long Louisiana section of the pipeline, which sparked years of protest and legal challenges from environmentalists and property rights advocates, links to a nearly 50-mile section in Texas that was completed in 2016.

The Governor and all of his friends in the oil industry could have a big ol' ribbon cutting.  They'd invite the Landrieus and probably some guys from Tiger Swan or maybe the Israeli security contractors he met with last year to help keep protesters at bay. It could be a real celebration of everything this administration has stood for so far. 

Eminent domain

The oil company has the power of the state here. If they want your land they can just take it.

A Louisiana judge on Thursday (Dec. 6) ruled that the company building the controversial Bayou Bridge Pipeline has the right to seize private property to construct the 162-mile-long oil pipeline.

Judge Keith Comeaux of the 16th District Court in St. Mary Parish also ruled that the pipeline’s owner, Energy Transfer Partners, had trespassed when it began construction before finalizing land seizure procedures.

Louisiana is one of the few states that allows oil companies to take private land through expropriation, commonly known as eminent domain. This right is usually reserved for governments constructing highways or other public works.

This is all well and good according to the rock solid conservative principle of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We're not going to fix this

This is more broken record stuff from me, I guess. But the "solution" to the climate problem people may be holding out hope for is never coming. We here in Louisiana who have had a front row seat to its consequences for decades should understand better than anyone that, even in the face of a so-called "existential threat" there is no backstop. Because every threat is really just another opportunity for those who have the power to exploit it.

This is how an "existential threat" to  communities like Isle de Jean Charles is also a big money making opportunity for, yes, certainly Energy Transfer Partners, but also for the lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians who make their living enabling its avarice.

On Tuesday, Nov. 27^th, in St. Martinville, the owners of a 38-acre parcel of land in the Atchafalaya Swamp will face off with Energy Transfer Partners, the builders and operators of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, over these very issues. In next week’s trial, State District Judge Keith Comeaux will attempt to sort out the issues of eminent domain, property ownership, trespassing, destruction of property, and constitutionality of the competing laws and interests.

The company is going to win that.  Not because they have law on their side but because they, with the help of their many friends, run this shit. This is from a Lens op-ed by Anne Rolfes published over the weekend. Rolfes talks about the several lies of the oil and chemical industries in Louisiana and names some of their most prominent enablers.

How many times did those of us who oppose Bayou Bridge have to endure company reps claiming that the pipeline project would be a jobs engine? In January 2017, former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, describing herself as a paid consultant to Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s parent company, invoked the jobs promise at a public hearing before the state Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Never mind that one of the brochures that Landrieu and Bayou Bridge distributed that night pierced their own veil. The pipeline would generate all of 12 permanent jobs, the brochure revealed. Pipeline opponents spoke out, bringing that low number to the agencies’ attention. The company’s response? They edited the brochure and deleted the jobs numbers.

It's not as if someone like Mary Landrieu can claim ignorance about the stakes here. She's from Louisiana. She's seen the damage done to our coastline, she's certainly read about our cancer rates, she's seen her own hometown catastrophically flooded. But the "existential threat" to the state is not specifically a threat to her compared to the amount of money she can make allowing more vulnerable people to suffer.


Similarly, the Governors Edwards are unconcerned with threats to anything but their own prospects.

St. James Parish would be the proposed pipeline’s end point. The parish is also in the crosshairs of two methanol plants, a chemical plant called Formosa and the just announced Wanhua facility. Signs at construction sites advertise temporary rooms for rent, something that in-town workers would not need.

The Formosa facility — which, like the pipeline, enjoys the support of Governor John Bel Edwards — is a $9.4 billion dollar project, called a chemical complex by project boosters. The company’s permits acknowledge that it would operate 24/7 in its production of throwaway plastics like bags and bottles, with no plan to handle the increased waste or pollution it will cause.

Despite these problems, former Governor Edwin Edwards came out of mothballs to cheer on Formosa at a public hearing. Whether he’s on Formosa’s payroll and, like Mary Landrieu, collecting fees for backing environmentally deleterious projects, is unclear.

It's not necessary for EWE to be "on Formosa's payroll" as Rolfes puts it. He is a licensed broker in industrial real estate in the river parishes and so probably stands to benefit from land use decisions like this one. As for JBE, this doesn't even mention  the bill he signed this year criminalizing free speech against the pipeline.  Here is a blurb about that from Bayou Brief back in September. 

Energy Transfer Partners also used its “corporate privilege” to help drive a new law through the Louisiana legislature this past spring. They retained the services of some heavy-hitting lobbyists and coalesced the clout of petrochemical industry groups to push passage of HB 727, now known as Act 692.

While other states – including Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Ohio, and Colorado – have considered a similar measure to this ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) model bill, Louisiana was the only one to fully enact it. The bill designates pipelines as “critical infrastructure,” equivalent to public ports and transportation such as railroads, and public utilities like electric power generating stations and water treatment facilities. The “construction” of pipelines is now included in that definition.

And it makes “unauthorized entry,” also known as trespassing and formerly classified as a misdemeanor, onto the property of one of these facilities a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. If more than one person is involved in the planning or commission of such an offense, it becomes a “conspiracy,” punishable by up to 12 years and a $250,000 fine.

Even though sections were added to the law declaring it was in no way to apply to “lawful and peaceful assembly or demonstration” or “recreational activities conducted in the open around a pipeline, such as boating” (nor to “prevent the owner of a property form exercising right of ownership, including use”), thirteen people have been arrested and charged with felonies under this law since it went into effect on Aug. 1.

I will admit, though, I did chuckle this morning at the Bayou Brief somehow leaving out any mention of Edwards with regard to this heinous law he signed. The same article also talks about the out of state private security contractors  Hilliard Heintze, and Athos Group, ETP has brought in to harass and surveil its adversaries. But it does not see fit to mention that those companies are only able to operate in Louisiana because Governor Edwards chose to allow it. For all the good reporting that gets done over at Bayou Brief, it's remarkable how consistent they are at covering for certain politicians with whom they are friendly. Mary Landrieu's role in promoting the pipeline is also not mentioned there. In fact, looking through the (again, quite good for the most part) environmental reporting at the Bayou Brief, the reader is extremely hard pressed to find much criticism of Landrieu, or Edwards, or John Breaux, or even Chris John who until this month was the head of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association for a decade. I know these political figures all have something in common.  What is it?

Maybe that's a bit beside the point, but I do think it's a key reason we aren't going to fix the climate problem.  If we are unable to recognize the complicity of those who exercise power, if we are unwilling even to name the culprits even as they profit by our distress, how can we even begin to protect ourselves from them? 

Obviously, we can't and we won't.  We aren't going to fix the climate problem. It's like Bob Marshall says here, the game is up with regard to all of that. 

I’ve been watching the growth of this suicidal approach to the crisis through my Google alert for sea level rise, which daily sends news stories on that topic to my email account. And almost every day there are one or more stories about cities or states in the GOP column seeking grants from the federal government to “adapt” to problems already being caused by climate change, or others they see rushing toward them. They might want levees, floodwalls, elevated roads, rebuilt beaches, or the planning studies for guidance on what to do as the temperature and the water continue to rise.

But even as they now admit global warming is happening, they continue to elect congressional delegations who oppose any regulations that would reduce the emissions that are driving warming. They think it makes sense for a nation that has already lost $350 billion in the last decade to extreme weather events and fires linked to global warming to spend hundreds of millions more to “adapt” to these threats – without doing anything to prevent the disasters from happening again.

In other words, surrender, don’t fight back.

Marshall is trying to make a  rhetorical point about "conservatism" here but this sort of thing is hardly limited to Republicans. Democrats in New Orleans have been selling "resilience" and the various grifts and scams associated with that similarly fatalist philosophy for years now.  Disaster capitalism is bipartisan.

What is John Bel doing in Israel?

The Governor took off with a host of state officials and press in tow for the middle east this week to attend meetings with government and business leaders there. The meat of their trip would appear to be centered on "cybersecurity."

Edwards says the trip stems from his position as co-chairman of the National Governors Association’s Resource Center for State Cybersecurity. The NGA’s cybersecurity conference will be held in the Shreveport area in May 2019.

Edwards says Louisiana can learn from Israel’s work and research on cybersecurity.

Previously Edwards declared October to be "Cybersecurity Awareness Month"
saying also that we should all be very afraid during this time.

"There are more threats out there than you can imagine," Edwards said during a proclamation-signing ceremony on Thursday. "If you think about it too much, you almost can't even sleep at night."

The problem a lot of us are having, though, is we can't be properly freaked out if they won't tell us what it is we are supposed to freak out about.  Edwards refused to identify any of these specific threats that were keeping him up at night.  There was a guy there from something called the "Cyber Innovation Center" who said only that "Our adversaries are extremely capable," and "The threats are real."

Who knows what they mean by that?  From the looks of things the "threat" they've been most concerned with this year has been environmental activists mildly annoying the progess of construction on the Bayou Bridge pipeline. 

We do know Edwards and his entourage are hoping to come back from Israel with all sorts of new ideas about stuff to throw money at just in case that helps. That probably has something to do with explaining the anti-BDS order the Governor signed in May.  Wouldn't want anybody's scruples over supporting a terror state get in the way of contractors doing business.  That would really keep some people up at night.

Tiger Swan is definitely operating in Louisiana

Last summer, the private security firm infamous for harassing and spying on DAPL protesters last year in North Dakota  was denied a license to operate in Louisiana.  But you really don't have to be very clever to get around the rules here.

Not only is TigerSwan appealing the Louisiana denial, but a deposition given to the security board suggests the firm — operated by military special operations veterans of the war on terror — may have set up a front company in order to get around the licensing mess. TigerSwan did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

The same month that the board denied TigerSwan’s license application, a person named Lisa Smith rented office space in Lafayette, Louisiana. She registered her new company, LTSA, with the secretary of state’s office and submitted an application for a license with the private security board.

It's not like a private para-military security contractor has too much to worry about in Louisiana, anyway.  It's easy enough when your client already has the Governor on the payroll and that Governor is taking steps to expedite the entry of firms like yours into his state.  It helps also when the state legislature works quickly to provide a pretext for treating that client's opponents as criminals. 

House Bill 727 was introduced Monday. Louisiana law specifically prohibits trespassing at various sites known as critical infrastructure. Power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants, water treatment facilities, natural gas terminals and the like are already considered critical infrastructure. The new law would add pipelines and construction areas for critical infrastructure sites.

The bill also lays out penalties for people who damage such sites — one to 15 years in prison with a $10,000 fine or six to 20 years plus a $25,000 fine if the damage could threaten human life or disrupt site operations. Blowtorches, explosives and possibly firearms all could be used to damage pipelines, according to various sources.

Finally, it criminalizes “conspiracy” to commit trespass with up to a year behind bars. Conspiracy to commit damage would be punishable by one to 20 years and fines of up to $250,000, depending on whether the judge thinks the conspiracy would have threatened life or operations.

Major Thibault's Thought Crime against Pipelines bill passed unanimously out of committee last week and is scheduled for floor debate in the House on Thursday.   

Overall the environment for private policing of political opponents is growing richer in Louisiana, as it is elsewhere. The state Republican Party just named the owner of New Orleans Private Patrol as its new Chairman. Everyone in New Orleans knows about Sidney Torres's rising star and the outsized influence he and his PAC was able to exert on the recent municipal election.   And, of course, there is the current mayor and his fascination with cameras and "predictive policing" technology.  One thing I thought would have come up during the recent Palantir flap was Mitch's use of a private security firm to spy on monument supporters and opponents alike last year.  But somehow that's already under the rug.

Do they mean the part that bridges the bayou?

Probably could just leave that out, right?

The company building the Bayou Bridge pipeline asked a federal judge to suspend her Friday order stopping construction of the cross-state crude oil line, saying the stoppage would cost the company almost $1 million daily.

In court papers filed Monday in Baton Rouge federal court, Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC also told U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick that the company is interpreting her order as only halting pipeline construction inside the Atchafalaya Basin.

Update:  Putting this limited interpretation of the order into practice led to confrontations with protesters this afternoon.

High deference

A federal judge refused to order a halt to construction on Bayou Bridge.  This isn't the end of the case but there's little reason to expect success. At least that's what the judge says.

Dick said the plaintiffs correctly noted that they didn’t have to “win the case” at this stage. But the judge said she couldn’t justify the “extraordinary remedy” of a temporary restraining order because she isn’t convinced it’s “substantially likely” the groups will “prevail on the merits” of the case.

Energy Transfer Partners spokeswoman Alexis Daniel said in an email Tuesday that “construction activities” began in the basin earlier this month.

Yesterday a letter appeared in the Advocate laying out some of the lawsuit's complaints. Among those, the Corps of Engineers' faulty adherence to its own permitting procedure. 

The Corps must also analyze and address the cumulative impacts of a proposed project. Cumulative impacts are the result of any past, present, or future actions that are reasonably certain to occur. Such effects “can result from individually minor but collectively significant actions taking place over a period of time.”

Leaving spoil banks in place after completion of pipeline construction is a violation of permits issued by the Corps. However, the Corps has failed to enforce such permits; allowing pipeline companies to leave these spoil banks in place for years or decades, to the considerable detriment of the Basin’s ecology. Given budget cuts to all agencies, I’ll speculate there isn’t funding to enforce the law. Permit cost needs to be high enough to pay for verification of compliance. And failure to comply should carry a penalty big enough so it’s cheaper to comply than not.

But, as the judge points out, the Corps tends to get a lot of leeway.

Judge Dick, however, said she reviewed the Corps’ 92-page environmental assessment and “cannot find that the Corps was arbitrary and capricious” in its review.

“Simply having an opposing opinion, or disagreeing with the mitigation plans imposed, is insufficient to establish a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, especially in light of the high deference that the law requires the Court to afford the Corps,” she wrote.

Right now flooded out Houstonians are grappling with the implications of that same high deference. We're already pretty familiar with it ourselves.

What did John Bel know and when did he know it?

I guess Bayou Bridge is moving into the "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" phase of the operation.  

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline has begun construction in Louisiana, the company building it announced Wednesday.

The Atchafalaya Levee Board gave its approval last week, and the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has issued a letter of no objection, though environmental groups are trying to hold up construction in court.

"We are excited to be able to conclude the more than 2 year permitting and have begun construction activities," Energy Transfer Partners spokeswoman Alexis Daniel wrote in a Wednesday morning email to The Advocate. The company is the majority shareholder of Bayou Bridge LLC.

Technically speaking, they do have permission. At least they have permits from the state Department of Natural Resources and the Army Corps of Engineers to go to work. However there are still court challenges to those permits pending.  Here is a closer look at those. I'm especially interested in a suit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade which seeks release of the Governor's communications.

And on January 16, the center filed suit on behalf of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, 350.org New Orleans, and the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, asking for Bayou Bridge LLC to turn over records relating to the company’s use of eminent domain, and for the governor’s office to release its communications with private entities involved with the project.

“Instead of calling for an Environmental Impact Statement throughout the months-long controversy about the pipeline, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has repeated the company’s talking points,” Ann Rolfes, founder of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, pointed out. She expressed her disappointment in a politician who claimed to champion the environment in an editorial published by NOLA.com.

“After 68 days of waiting [for the public records], the governor’s office sent me a laughable total of seven pages of irrelevant correspondence,” Rolfes said, prompting her organization to sue in order to compel a release of these records.

Louisiana’s governor hasn’t been shy about his support for the pipeline. Despite the controversies around the project, he told the Baton Rouge Advocate that “another pipeline traversing the Atchafalaya Basin wasn’t going to keep him up at night.

We know John Bel loves oil companies and all. But wouldn't it be fun to read him telling them just how much in his own words?

Hold that Tiger Swan

The state board in charge of such things has denied Tiger Swan, the para-military security firm hired to spy on NODAPL protesters, a permit to operate in Louisiana.  This sounds like good news but nobody should expect this means they or some similar outfit won't be here.  Governor Edwards recently signed Louisiana onto an agreement that might actually circumvent the permitting process under certain circumstances.  Also the Governor received $5,000 in contributions from Energy Transfer Partners during the last election.

Here comes Tiger Swan

They go wherever the pipeline goes.

Baton Rouge, LA -- TigerSwan, the mercenary firm under fire in North Dakota for using counterterrorism tactics against water protectors opposing Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, has applied for a license to operate in Louisiana.

While the application process does not require the firm to indicate who they will be working for, Energy Transfer Partners spokesperson Alexis Daniel said the pipeline company anticipates work to begin on the Bayou Bridge pipeline in the third quarter of this year.

We'd complain to the Governor but he's on Energy Transfer Partners' payroll. We'd complain to Mitch but he actually likes to hire mercenaries for beefing up security. It's actually kind of his thing.

Doing it like DAPL

Among the fruits of the recently concluded legislative session we find,

On June 19, Louisiana’s Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards signed a bill into law which will enter his state into the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC).

EMAC is the compact which last year gave out-of-state cops the legal authority to flood into North Dakota during the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, owned by Energy Transfer Partners. The Louisiana bill, SB 151, was signed as Energy Transfer Partners has another pipeline proposed to run through Louisiana, the Bayou Bridge pipeline. Bayou Bridge is an extension of Dakota Access, set to run from Nederland, Texas, to refinery markets and export terminals in Louisiana.

The compact, signed into existence by President Bill Clinton in 1996, was created in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew with the intent of expediting and bolstering natural disaster response efforts. But the federal legislation creating the compact also has language allowing for a governor of a state to issue an emergency order in the case of the rise of an “insurgency or enemy attack.”

The Louisiana legislation, which got rid of its previous membership in the Interstate Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Compact, passed unanimously in both the House of Representatives and the Senate without debate.

According to state campaign finance data, Governor Edwards received a $5,000 campaign contribution from Energy Transfer Partners during his successful 2015 run for governor, with the company serving as one of his biggest donors. In February, Edwards endorsed Bayou Bridge.

As we've noted previously, Energy Transfer Partners didn't just bring "out of state cops" into North Dakota to shut down protests. It brought in these very scary modern day Pinkertons. 

As people nationwide rallied last year to support the Standing Rock Sioux’s attempts to block the Dakota Access Pipeline, a private security firm with experience fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan launched an intrusive military-style surveillance and counterintelligence campaign against the activists and their allies, according to internal company documents.

Its surveillance targets included everyone from Native American demonstrators to the actress Shailene Woodley, along with organizations including Black Lives Matter, 350.org, Veterans for Peace, the Catholic Worker Movement, and Food and Water Watch. The records label the protestors “jihadists” and seek to justify escalating action against them.

Among the concerns raised by the presence of Tiger Swan, (that's what the paramilitary spy company calls itself) and other private firms like it, is the subversion of the constitutional protections that typically limit what police and other government agencies can do.

A private security company probably doesn’t face the same prohibitions, legal scholars say, but the close collaboration between TigerSwan and local, state, and federal authorities detailed in the firm’s internal reports raised red flags with them. Several legal experts described the contractor’s tactics as highly disturbing and perhaps unprecedented.

“It’s like a big brother society, with a private corporation — with even less restraints than the government — totally interfering with our right to privacy, free speech, assembly, and religious freedom,” said prominent civil rights attorney Jeff Haas, who works with the National Lawyers Guild and represents several of the nearly 800 people arrested while opposing the pipeline.

If the government can’t do it, he added, “Why should a private corporation working for another private corporation be able to?”

As activists continue to organize in Louisiana against Bayou Bridge, it's worth asking what sort of surveillance, defamation, harassment, or worse they will be subjected to by privatized commandos operating with the blessing of Governor Edwards. 

Meanwhile it's worth continuing  just what Mitch Landrieu paid another private security firm Trident Response Group to do in New Orleans during the monument removal events. Lee Zurik looked into the Trident contract last week and found more questions there than answers.

The city signed the contract with Trident on May 4; the final monument was removed on May 19. The city's homeland security department says its representatives worked hand in hand with Trident, and monitored their work daily.

But apparently, a line-by-line account of employees' hours and duties doesn't exist. For one week, all we know is that an average of six field operators worked 345 hours - their rate, $250 an hour.

"Gary" was a strategic adviser for 68 hours - his rate, $250 an hour. And "Bob" worked 83 hours at a $275 rate. So, in seven days, "Bob" worked 83 hours as a strategic adviser at $275 an hour.

Friedman says we can't confirm whether "Bob" worked those hours. "We don't know if he did it," he says. "We don't know what he did. We don't know whether what he did was necessary or is just padding. And I'm not saying that it was improper - my point, in response to your question, is we don't know. That's the problem. It's the lack of monitoring in a situation where they're using public money when the city is strapped for funds."

"We believe that the invoices are sufficient, knowing that the homeland security office has gone over the details before processing payment," Berni tells us.

Beyond the suspiciously sparse billing items, we still have little idea what the firm was actually doing. The Advocate reported earlier this month that Trident had targeted groups on "both sides" of the monument controversy. This encompasses a large number of people and community groups who lent their voices to the Take Em Down coalition.  Landrieu's people have since claimed that they "did not spy on local groups" but refused to provide any substantiating evidence of this.  Recall that Mitch purposefully distanced himself from local grassroots movements in order to claim their share of credit for himself as he moves onto the national political stage. There's no reason anyone should have to trust him.

This morning's Advocate published an unhinged "guest column" from a crazy racist man demanding the city "take back our streets" from criminals by dumping the NOPD consent decree and beefing up security with privatized patrols.

Fortunately, there are additional steps we can take to stem this tide of senseless violence. Most importantly, we need to complement the NOPD with a private security force in the French Quarter and the Central Business District.

It's funny to me that there are people who think the anti-crime rhetoric and policies deployed by our current leaders are somehow any less authoritarian than what this guy is arguing for. Mitch and John Bel are already giving their blessing to unaccountable secret police.  How much worse do you want them to be?  But clearly someone thinks there's room to push the window further to the right. Otherwise, why would the Advocate have published this letter?

Hard to find a rock to stand on in South Louisiana

Protesters against the proposed Bayou Bridge Pipeline are setting up a camp anyway on whatever kind of ground they can find. They aren't saying where just yet.

The protest group is modeling their new camp after the one established near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation in North Dakota, said Cherri Foytlin, with Bold Louisiana, an environmental advocacy group. The camp opened Saturday in Louisiana along the route of the proposed pipeline. Protesters are not disclosing the exact location of the camp.

Let's hope they are careful. These rural Louisiana Sheriffs don't have the best of reputations when it comes to protecting the civil liberties (or the lives, frankly) of individuals within their jurisdictions.  They don't need any reason to feel emboldened. Or any outside help for that matter.

Bullies

One thing that doesn't get mentioned a whole lot just yet about the Trump idiom is how it filters down to embolden some of the local brutes. It's going to cause a serious problem.

Joseph Lopinto, an attorney from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s office who spoke on behalf of the National Sheriffs’ Association, seemed to relish enraging project opponents. “The federal government failed to provide local law enforcement [in Standing Rock, North Dakota] with support to control hostile, often violent protesters that caused millions of dollars in property damage and shot at law enforcement officers,” he said, while the pipeline opponents yelled so loud his testimony was almost inaudible.

“We don’t want the same thing occurring here in Louisiana,” he said.

Oh but it's so rude and uncivil to protest and shout and stuff. But Lopinto's people have all the guns and tear gas and are spoiling for a fight so.... 

Pipelines are so good

Van Ness Feldman lobbyist Mary Landrieu wrote to the Advocate this week in support of the proposed Bayou Bridge pipeline through South Louisiana wetlands. As is standard practice in rolling out these talking points, Landrieu highlighted the project's safety.

Bayou Bridge will employ state of the art technology, displacing the far more perilous modes of truck, rail and barge/ship transportation. The pipeline will provide significant economic benefits to Louisiana, including jobs during construction, jobs at the pipe manufacturing facility near Baton Rouge and taxes paid to the state and parishes.

And then wouldn't you know, the very next day... 

A fire at the Phillips 66 pipeline near the Williams Discovery natural gas plant in Paradis continued to burn Friday morning (Feb. 10), hours after an explosion injured two workers and left another missing. The area immediately around the plant has been evacuated.

St. Charles Parish officials and representatives from Phillips 66 will talk about the pipeline explosion and fire during a news conference Friday at 11 a.m., the parish announced.

The news conference will be held at the parish's Emergency Operations Center in Hahnville and will be broadcast live on the parish's government channel, Cox Channel 6 and U-Verse 99.

According to a 2 a.m. statement from Phillips 66, the pipeline had been blocked in and the remaining product in the line continued to burn. The pipeline, which runs from Venice to Paradis, carries y-grade, or raw, natural gas liquids.

It's unclear how long it will take the fire to burn out. St. Charles officials remained at the site as of 8 a.m. Friday.

Almost immediately Landrieu's colleagues in the oil and gas apology business issued a #NotAllPipelines statement. Not everybody is buying that, though. 

"The oil industry and the elected officials they've bought off will have a thousand excuses about this accident," said Anne Rolfes, Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. "They'll say that this is a natural gas pipeline, not oil. They'll say that new technology would have prevented it. But the fire and the explosion speak for itself. Pipelines are dangerous and we don't want more in Louisiana." 

This afternoon the fire was still burning but should be out shortly.  So, if you've got a really big boiling pot, now might be the time. 

As crawfish season rolls on, the prices continues to tumble. This week, the average price for boiled crawfish around New Orleans dropped 33 cents to $4.68 a pound.

Still too damn high, if you ask me. But it might be your only option for at least another month. 

Louisiana’s vast estuary coastline has historically netted a tremendous crab harvest. The state is by far the nation’s top blue crab supplier, producing an annual average of 43 million pounds. But lately state officials have seen warning signs of over fishing.

Louisiana’s blue crab fishery is certified sustainable, which means local fishermen can assure buyers their product comes from a healthy, well-maintained resource. As part of that certification process, there are benchmarks for tracking the condition of the fishery.

“When we cross those benchmarks, we have to take action so we don’t run past the point of no return,” said Jeff Marx, crustacean biologist with the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Last summer, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission approved a crab fishing closure for 30 days each year in 2017, 2018 and 2019, beginning the third Monday of February.

One wonders how much healthier our fisheries might be today were it not for the past century's worth of spoilage at the hands of oil and gas exploration.  Maybe Mary can address this in her next letter.

What is this person's job title again?

For some reason The Advocate identified Mary Landrieu only as a "Former Senator" when it published this op-ed today. In fact Ms. Landrieu is employed by Van Ness Feldman, a lobbying firm with strong ties to the oil and gas industry.

Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu has been hired by the lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman (VNF), the company announced today. Landrieu's title will be "senior policy advisor," and a release from VNF said Landrieu would "advise clients on various public policy, strategic, and regulatory issues with an emphasis on energy, natural resources, and infrastructure matters."

According to the website Open Secrets, VNF's client base includes several companies dealing in oil and gas, as well as the energy field in general — a natural fit for Landrieu, who served as chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 2014. The company has offices in Washington D.C. and Seattle.

When an oil lobbyist writes a letter to the paper advocating approval of an oil pipeline through an already threatened section of our polluted and eroding wetlands, it's probably a good idea for the paper to disclose that relationship. Participants at a public hearing in Napoleonville last night understood it well enough.

As politician after politician lined up to throw their support behind the project, members of the crowd began to chant "How much? How much?" in reference to how much they receive in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, received the brunt of the ire.

Oil-and-gas professionals and environmental groups have sparred over the pipeline for months. The debate has occurred against the backdrop of the demonstrations in the Standing Rock Reservation against the Dakota Access pipeline, which some have attributed to the national interest in pipeline construction.

Bayou Bridge and DAPL are both projects of Energy Transfer Partners.  This week, ETP received a go-ahead from the Army Corps of Engineers to resume construction in North Dakota. 

Protesters rallied at demonstrations nationwide Wednesday to protest the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to greenlight the construction of the contested $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. The company behind the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, says it will start work immediately. Hundreds of people gathered outside the White House in Washington, D.C., to protest the project, which many fear could contaminate the Missouri River, which serves as a drinking water source for millions. Crowds also gathered in Los Angeles, Manhattan, Denver and San Francisco, where about a dozen people were arrested blockading the doors of the Federal Building. More protesters rallied in Ithaca, New York; Columbus, Ohio; and Chicago, where four people were arrested after locking themselves to each other to shut down a Citibank to protest its investments in the pipeline. Many of the protesters were furious not only about the government’s approval of the pipeline, but also about Trump’s recent claims that no one had called the White House to express opposition to the project.

The White House, in fact, has not been taking public comment phone calls at all.  Your Congresspersons do, though. Most of the time anyway. Unfortunately for us, the folks Louisiana voters send to Washington mostly just want to grow up to be oil lobbyists like Mary Landrieu.  But until they get there, they still technically need to field your comments.  

Mary Landrieu loves pipelines

This week an "extremely large number" of protesters gathered at a public hearing in Baton Rouge to speak against Energy Transfer Partners' proposed Bayou Bridge pipeline across the Atchafalalya basin. This pipeline would form the ass end of ETP's infrastructure associated with the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline you may have heard about. 

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would form the tail end of the now infamous Dakota Access route. The Dakota Access Pipeline would carry crude oil from the North Dakota oilfields to an oil tank farm in Illinois, where it would then be transported to Nederland, Texas. A newly completed pipeline connects Nederland to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would carry 480,000 barrels of oil per day a final 162 miles across the state to refineries and ports, through eight watersheds and long stretches of fragile wetlands.

Climate change activists, indigenous residents, crawfishermen, rice farmers, health care professionals, conservationists, and Louisianans who live along the proposed route all showed up to protest the pipeline’s construction. The hearing lasted five and a half hours, as speaker after speaker weighed in on how the pipeline would affect them.

Speaking on behalf of the ETP was career oil stooge Mary Landrieu.  

The Bayou Bridge builders argue pipelines are the safest way to transport crude oil that would otherwise use less efficient trains or trucks to get to refineries. Former Democratic senator-turned-energy lobbyist Mary Landrieu was among the proponents of this argument at Thursday’s hearing.

“I would be testifying for this pipeline [even] if I did not work for them,” she said, amid boos and jeers from the audience.

But past pipelines have proven to be less airtight than the industry claims.

A new report by the Bucket Brigade found that there were 144 oil and gas pipeline accidents in 2016. Many of these accidents were caused by corrosion or ruptures in the pipe, prompting the advocacy group to conclude the existing pipelines are in “deplorable condition.”

Even if she did not work for ETP Mary would have just gone there and talked about the pipeline. It's a personal passion of hers, apparently. 

What's at the other end of DAPL?

Perhaps not so surprisingly, we are.

Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, is building the 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter Dakota Access Pipeline from the Bakken and Three Forks oil production areas of North Dakota, through South Dakota and Iowa, to an oil tank farm in Illinois. From Illinois, the oil would travel to Nederland, Texas, then would be transported via a just-completed pipeline to Lake Charles.

Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the DAPL, owns Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC, the company whose name appears on the Louisiana pipeline permit applications. Energy Transfer and Sunoco already built a pipeline from Nederland to Lake Charles. Now they want to extend it from Calcasieu Parish through Jefferson Davis, Acadia, Vermilion, Lafayette, Iberia, St. Martin, Iberville, Ascension and Assumption parishes, ending on the west bank of New Orleans near St. James.

The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would provide a connection between the North Dakota oilfields and Louisiana's refineries and ports.

The 24-inch diameter Bayou Bridge Pipeline would be 162 miles long and cross eight Louisiana watersheds including the Mermentau, Vermilion, Bayou Teche and Atchafalaya watersheds. In the Atchafalaya Basin, 77 acres of wetlands will be permanently affected and 171 acres of wetlands will be temporarily impacted.

Now, as we all know, there is already a shitload of oil and gas infrastructure snaked through the Louisiana wetlands. But what we also know is, that's sort of.. you know.. the reason we're losing the Louisiana wetlands.  It would be asking an awful lot of Louisianians to organize against a project like this given that we just voted overwhelmingly for Trump on the idea that he would bring back their drilling jobs. But, then, there's never a bad time to start.