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'Right Thing to Do': FERC Delays Controversial LNG Export Terminal
"We are happy about the delay, but these projects don't ever need to be approved and neither does any other LNG facility," one frontline advocate said.
Dec 04, 2024
Frontline communities along the Gulf Coast were granted a "temporary reprieve" last week when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission moved to pause its approval of the controversial Calcasieu Pass 2 liquefied natural gas export terminal while it conducts an assessment of its impact on air quality.
FERC approved Venture Global's CP2 in late June despite opposition from local residents who say the company's nearly identical Calcasieu Pass terminal has already wracked up a history of air quality violations and disturbed ecosystems and fishing grounds in Louisiana's Cameron Parish, harming health and livelihoods.
"This order reveals that FERC recognizes that CP2 LNG's environmental impacts are too great to pass through any real scrutiny" Megan Gibson, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), said in a statement on Monday.
"FERC's pause on construction may give us some temporary reprieve, but this project never should have been authorized in the first place."
FERC's decision follows a request for a rehearing of its June decision filed by frontline residents and community groups including For a Better Bayou and Fishermen Involved in Sustaining Our Heritage (FISH) as well as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In their request, the groups and individuals pointed to errors the commission had made in its approval decision.
"With this order, it seems FERC is finally willing to acknowledge that it has not done enough to properly consider the cumulative harm on communities caused by building so many of these LNG export terminals so close together," Nathan Matthews, a Sierra Club senior attorney, said in a statement. "Prohibiting construction of CP2 LNG while FERC takes another look at the environmental impact of this massive, polluting facility is the right thing to do."
"Still," Matthews continued, "FERC must take concrete steps to properly evaluate the true scope of the dangers posed to communities from gas infrastructure moving forward and avoid making unwarranted approvals in the future."
FERC's decision comes over four months after the D.C. Circuit Court remanded the commission's approval of Commonwealth LNG, also in Louisiana, over concerns that it had not fully assessed the impacts of that project's air pollution emissions. Now, frontline advocates are urging FERC to do its due diligence as it weighs the environmental impacts of CP2.
"Through the lenses of optical gas imaging, we've seen massive plumes of toxic emissions, undeniable proof that these projects poison the air we breathe," James Hiatt, director of For a Better Bayou, said of LNG export facilities. "Modeling must use the latest data from the most local sources to fully capture the harm these facilities inflict on Cameron Parish. Anything less is a betrayal of our community. FERC must choose justice over profit and stop sacrificing people for polluters."
Gibson of SELC said that FERC had already repeated some of the errors in its CP2 approval in its new order.
"This continued failure to fulfill its regulatory duty is not just an oversight—it is a failure to protect vulnerable communities and our economy from the real potential harms of this massive export project," Gibson said.
FERC's decision comes as the fate of the LNG buildout itself hangs in the balance. The Biden administration's Department of Energy is currently rushing to complete its renewed assessment of whether or not LNG exports serve the public interest. Environmental and frontline groups have argued that they do not because of local pollution, the fact that they would raise domestic energy bills, and their contribution to the climate emergency. CP2 alone would spew 8,510,099 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per year, which is about the same as adding 1,850,000 new gas cars to the road.
While President-elect Donald Trump has promised to "drill, baby, drill" and is likely to disregard any Biden administration conclusions, a strong outgoing statement against LNG exports would help bolster legal challenges to Trump energy policy.
At the same time, Bill McKibben pointed out in a column on Tuesday that the administration's pause on LNG export approvals while it updates its public interest criteria has acted to slow the industry's expansion, and that FERC's reconsideration of CP2 could add to this delay.
"The vote for the new review is 4-0, and bipartisan," McKibben wrote. "It could slow down approvals for the project till, perhaps, the third quarter of next year. And that's good news, because the rationale for new LNG exports shrinks with each passing month, as the gap between the price of clean solar, wind, and battery power, and the price of fossil fuel, continues to grow."
Ultimately, frontline Gulf Coast advocates want to see the LNG buildout halted entirely.
"I, along with the fishermen in Cameron, Louisiana, know firsthand how harmful LNG exports are, and see the total disregard they have for human life as they poison our families and seafood," said FISH founder Travis Dardar, an Indigenous fisherman in Cameron, Louisiana. "FERC's pause on construction may give us some temporary reprieve, but this project never should have been authorized in the first place. As far as anyone who believes in the fairytale of LNG being cleaner, we have paid with our communities and livelihoods. It's time to break these chains and turn away from this false solution."
Roisheta Ozaine, a prominent anti-LNG activist and founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, said that she, as a mother in an environmental justice community, saw "firsthand how LNG facilities prioritize profit over the well-being of our families. Commonwealth and CP2 are no different."
"We are happy about the delay, but these projects don't ever need to be approved and neither does any other LNG facility," Ozane continued. "My children are suffering from health conditions that threaten their daily lives, all while regulatory agencies and elected officials turn a blind eye. It's time for our leaders to put people before profit and prioritize the health of our communities over the pollution that harms us. We deserve a future where our children's health is safeguarded, not sacrificed."
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'Strong Message to Christian Nationalists': Judge Blocks Louisiana Ten Commandments Law
"Public schools are not Sunday schools," said one advocate, "and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed."
Nov 12, 2024
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Louisiana law requiring every public school classroom in the state to display, in large font, a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments—a mandate that the new ruling characterizes as plainly unconstitutional.
The decision by U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana Judge John deGravelles, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, prohibits Louisiana's Republican-dominated government from enforcing the Ten Commandments requirement, which was set to take effect on January 1, 2025.
The judge wrote that the law—which President-elect Donald Trump endorsed earlier this year shortly before Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed it—is "unconstitutional on its face and in all applications."
The injunction against H.B. 71 came in response to a lawsuit brought in June by a coalition of Louisiana parents who argued the mandate "substantially interferes with and burdens the right of parents to direct their children's religious education and upbringing."
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican, pledged to "immediately appeal" the decision.
Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said in a statement Tuesday that "this ruling should serve as a reality check for Louisiana lawmakers who want to use public schools to convert children to their preferred brand of Christianity."
"Public schools are not Sunday schools, and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed," Weaver added.
Rev. Darcy Roake, a plaintiff in the case, called H.B. 71 "a direct infringement of our religious-freedom rights, and we're pleased and relieved that the court ruled in our favor."
"As an interfaith family," Roake added, "we expect our children to receive their secular education in public school and their religious education at home and within our faith communities, not from government officials."
H.B. 71 is the first state law to require public schools to display a government-approved version of the Ten Commandments since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky mandate in 1980, calling it a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Tuesday that "this ruling will ensure that Louisiana families—not politicians or public school officials—get to decide if, when, and how their children engage with religion."
"It should send a strong message to Christian nationalists across the country that they cannot impose their beliefs on our nation's public school children," said Laser. "Not on our watch."
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Report Exposes 'Systemic Abuse' at For-Profit Migrant Detention Centers in Louisiana
"These individuals have fled persecution and violence only to be thrown in 'civil' detention and left to fend for themselves in an abusive, profit-driven, and manipulative system."
Aug 26, 2024
A coalition of rights groups on Monday released a report documenting "systemic human rights abuses" at migrant detention centers in Louisiana and called for an end to the use of for-profit facilities by U.S. agencies.
The 108-page report, drawn from more than 6,000 interviews at Lousiana immigrant detention centers since 2022, was produced by Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Human Rights, the ACLU, the ACLU of Louisiana, Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, and the National Immigration Project.
Louisiana has nine immigrant detention centers that together typically hold more than 6,000 people—second only to Texas. Eight of the nine are run by for-profit companies that have contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The report—which calls for these detention centers, which are under the remit of the New Orleans (NOLA) ICE field office, to be shut down—details a wide range of abuses including sexual assault, humiliating speech, medical neglect, and a lack of nutritious food and clean water.
"These individuals have fled persecution and violence only to be thrown in 'civil' detention and left to fend for themselves in an abusive, profit-driven, and manipulative system," Sarah Decker, a lawyer at RFK Human Rights and a lead author of the report, said in a statement.
"We've heard horrific stories over the last two years, stories that have been corroborated by extensive documentation," she added. "Our findings further support what detained people and their advocates have long demanded: the NOLA ICE jails must be shut down."
The New Orleans #Louisiana ICE Field Office (“NOLA ICE”) detains over 6,000 immigrants each day, more than any other state in the U.S. but Texas.
Our new human rights report shares first-hand accounts from detained people of abuse and degrading conditions in NOLA ICE jails,… pic.twitter.com/w63e7zCKaj
— Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (@RFKHumanRights) August 26, 2024
Many of the interviews with the rights groups were conducted as part of initial legal screenings with detainees seeking representation. The work revealed widespread "inhumane treatment" at the nine facilities, including prolonged solitary confinement and the extended use of restrictive five-point shackles.
The report says the centers' food is insufficiently nutritious and cites instances of it being contaminated by rats or cockroaches. Authorities there often deny detainees access to menstrual products and key medicines, it says.
The report's authors argued that some of the abuses qualified as torture. "In some instances, the abuses that detained people describe firsthand in this report meet the definitions of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under international human rights treaties to which the United States is a party," they wrote.
The nine facilities are in rural Louisiana, far from New Orleans. One is connected to an airport—the only such ICE facility in the country, making it a key hub for the federal agency as it moves detainees around. The network of Louisiana facilities the result of what the report authors called an "explosion of immigrant incarceration" in the state that took place in the late 2010s.
Four of the nine centers are run by Geo Group, a Florida-based multinational prison firm that has long been the target of activist rage and reform efforts, which the Biden administration hasn't successfully delivered. The company reported $2.41 billion in revenues for 2023. Four other facilities are run by LaSalle Corrections, which operates facilities across the U.S. South, while one is publicly run per an ICE contract with a local sheriff's office.
The report says that the "for-profit incentive" leads to "a dangerous combination of overcrowding and understaffing" as the firms seek to pad their bottom line. A woman at one detention center said she was not fed enough so she had to buy extra items at its commissary, where a bag of Doritos cost $9. Meanwhile, detainees who took jobs at the center earned as little as $1 per day.
The rights groups' statement calls for an immediate investigation into abuses at facilities under NOLA ICE's remit. In fact, the detention centers have already been the subject of a federal oversight investigation, initiated in December 2021, but no findings have yet been released publicly, an ACLU spokesperson told Common Dreams.
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