At daybreak within the Maurepas Swamp, you possibly can see 11 pink Roseate spoonbills rise into dawn, off to feast on a lavish buffet of Louisiana shrimp and crabs. The swamp is among the final wild locations left in south Louisiana. It’s a spot that also remembers what this land as soon as was and nonetheless is — a residing, respiratory estuary.
However this quiet sanctuary may quickly be spoiled by injection wells, pipelines and industrial noise. That’s the longer term that Air Merchandise, the enormous industrial fuel company, has deliberate for Lake Maurepas.
Inside this space, some of the conservative within the state, the opposition to the mission is excessive. However there’s nonetheless a chance that the governor could approve permits for it. That’s why it’s necessary to grasp what’s behind the scenes, in Air Merchandise board rooms and on the bottom in Louisiana neighborhood conferences.
In November, tons of of individuals packed right into a church in St. John the Baptist Parish for a public listening to on the corporate’s huge “blue hydrogen” and carbon seize scheme.
Air Merchandise calls it clear power. However there’s nothing clear about constructing a hydrogen and ammonia plant in Ascension Parish, capturing some CO₂, and piping it 38 miles for injection beneath Lake Maurepas. It was as soon as touted because the world’s largest carbon-storage mission.
Right here’s the kicker: now, even Air Merchandise doesn’t appear to need the carbon seize a part of the mission anymore.
Final spring, the corporate’s CEO instructed traders that Air Merchandise was “actively working to de-risk” its Louisiana mission and was in “ongoing discussions to divest the carbon sequestration and ammonia manufacturing components.”
Allow us to translate that for you: Air Merchandise desires to dump the legal responsibility for its firm however has no drawback leaving it with Louisiana’s individuals and wetlands.
If it’s too dangerous for Air Merchandise, we’re going to enterprise to say it’s too rattling dangerous for Louisiana.
Air Merchandise continues to be barreling ahead to safe permits for the total mission — together with carbon seize and storage. However from what the corporate instructed its traders, as soon as these permits are issued, the mission turns into a sizzling potato — so harmful, costly, and politically poisonous that Air Merchandise plans to promote the carbon-capture portion of the mission. And with billions in federal tax breaks for so-called “clear power” on the desk, one other firm may take the bait.
In the meantime, communities throughout the five-parish footprint are united in opposition to your entire mission.
At a listening to attended by almost 300 residents, everybody was against the proposed plant, pipeline, and carbon seize scheme besides for 2 paid representatives from financial growth teams.
The proposed CO₂ pipeline may run simply half a mile from Sorrento Major College, a mom instructed the gang, describing her fears. “Think about your baby taking part in on the playground inside ft of that [CO2] pipeline, with flares from the power within the background,” she mentioned. “No baby deserves poison of their playground.”
She’s proper to fret! If this pipeline have been to rupture so near her son’s elementary college, 660 college students may very well be enveloped by CO2 in minutes, in accordance with a latest report.
In 2020, a CO₂ pipeline ruptured close to Satartia, Mississippi, sending a suffocating cloud of CO2 by means of the neighborhood. Forty-five individuals have been hospitalized; some have been discovered unconscious greater than a mile away. Individuals gasped for air on the facet of the street after their vehicles stalled — CO₂ had displaced oxygen of their lungs and their combustion engines.
When Yazoo County emergency director Jack Willingham arrived, he was shocked: “It regarded such as you have been going by means of the zombie apocalypse,” he mentioned.
We’ll say it once more: it’s too rattling dangerous for Louisiana.
No less than six elected officers — a mayor, two parish councilors, two state representatives and a state senator — spoke in opposition to Air Merchandise’ plan to invade Lake Maurepas and the encircling swamp. As a result of they’ve watched business in Louisiana, they know the way this story ends: as soon as one firm drills, others comply with. Quickly, the serene waters may echo with compressors, barges and drilling rigs — all within the title of “clear power.”
Carbon seize and storage is being offered as a local weather answer. However the actuality is evident to local weather teams throughout Louisiana: this new expertise is a pricey distraction that prolongs air pollution slightly than stopping it.
Public opposition to carbon seize is spreading quick from Republicans and Democrats alike, pushed by communities who refuse to be sacrificed for a company experiment. And leaders are listening.
In October, Councilman Coates proposed a decision opposing carbon sequestration wells and pipelines in Livingston Parish and the Council handed it unanimously. Altogether, the Council represents greater than 152,000 individuals!
On October fifteenth, Gov. Jeff Landry — no stranger to siding with business — confirmed that he, too, is feeling the political stress, as he declared a short lived moratorium on new carbon seize injection nicely purposes.
Gov. Landry’s moratorium was lifted final Sunday, however the destiny of Air Product’s mission nonetheless rests with the Governor and state businesses. Our expertise tells us that the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers will possible comply with the state’s lead in deciding whether or not Air Merchandise will get the inexperienced mild to interrupt floor in our quiet swamp.
Since he’s taken workplace, Gov. Landry usually talks about defending Louisiana’s lifestyle. Properly, that is his likelihood to guard this a part of Louisiana, by denying the permits for this mission.
On this matter, the governor has a selection: facet with the individuals of Louisiana, or with company pursuits attempting to bury their waste beneath our land and public waters.
As an alternative of power that depends on hydrogen and ammonia and requires a PR marketing campaign and dozens of lobbyists to cover its true impacts, Louisiana deserves actual clear power — photo voltaic, wind and environment friendly energy.
Louisiana can’t afford to get caught on silly once more, as Gen. Honoré usually says.
Air Merchandise’ carbon seize mission is a foul deal for Louisiana. Now Air Merchandise — the corporate that dreamed it up — desires to stroll away. Doesn’t that inform us the whole lot we have to know?
No one desires carbon seize. Not the general public. Not the parishes. Not even Air Merchandise itself.
Lt. Gen. Honoré (retired) leads The Inexperienced Military, which seeks to search out options to air pollution.
Dean Coates is a parish councilman for Livingston Parish, the place he proposed and handed a decision in opposition to carbon sequestration wells and pipelines within the parish with unanimous help from the council.
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