Gerald Herbert/AP
Lake Charles, Louisiana, in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura
When Hurricane Laura made landfall, she careened toward towns that refine thousands of gallons of oil and natural gas, such as Lake Charles, Louisiana. Lake Charles burned for days after a chemical plant caught fire near the city. Climate journalists such as Emily Atkin wrote about how our addiction to fossil fuels not only made Hurricane Laura stronger as it gained energy across hotter ocean temperatures, but its path slammed right into “America’s petrochemical hub.”
Lake Charles is the origin point of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which I wrote about in March. It runs across Louisiana for 162.5 miles to St. James parish, and it also runs right through hundreds of acres of one of the most important ecological sites in the county, the Atchafalaya Basin. Parts of the basin are privately owned, like the parcel the Aaslestad siblings possess along with 400 other partial titleholders. Shared ownership like this is common in Louisiana for land often used for fishing and hunting. But other parts of the basin are essential to Louisianans’ livelihoods—such as crayfishermen who trawl in the area.
Katherine and Peter Aaslestad, along with Theda Larson Wright, another joint owner of the same parcel, sued the company that owns this pipeline, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline company. The company is a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, and the pipeline is part of an extension of the Dakota Access pipeline. The lawsuit alleged that Bayou Bridge had illegally trespassed on the land when they began constructing the pipeline long before they even had a permit, and it also contested the company’s exercise of eminent domain in building the pipeline.
In the court’s final ruling, the landowners won damages and legal fees for trespassing, but the judge didn’t take up the question of eminent domain, and whether or not a pipeline constitutes a “public purpose,” a prerequisite for a company to exercise eminent domain rights.
Now, Bayou Bridge is contesting their obligation to pay the landowners’ legal fees and challenging the appellate court ruling at the state Supreme Court, Katherine Aaslestad told me. “They want to have it both ways—have the state power for eminent domain but not the accountability that comes with it when their case has a ruling against it,” she wrote. The Louisiana attorney general has even filed an amicus that “parrots” Bayou Bridge’s position, and the landowners’ lawyers plan to respond by the new September 30 deadline after receiving an extension in light of Hurricane Laura’s impact.
It’s unclear when or how the Supreme Court of Louisiana will respond, but historically the state has shown deference to fossil fuel companies. Petrochemical plants are a huge source of jobs and revenue in the state, albeit with a devastating environmental and public health cost, as we just saw in Lake Charles. “Cancer Alley” refers to part of the state where high concentrations of carcinogenic chemicals impact predominantly Black and poor communities. Scholar Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote an entire book, Strangers in Their Own Land, about the state’s reliance on the fossil fuel industry, its effect on marginalized communities, and some Louisiana voters’ seemingly paradoxical support of Tea Party candidates who push deregulation of the petrochemical industry.
Even if the Louisiana Supreme Court rules in favor of the landowners, the pipe is already built and in operation. The damage to the Atchafalaya basin—preventing natural water flow essential to this ecological environment and damaging the basin’s flood abatement abilities—is done. Moreover, the extreme weather events that see increases in intensity due to burning fossil fuels make the transportation of such products a hazard in itself. For excess pipelines like this one, its “public purpose” may instead be hurting the public.
This story has been updated.
