Sneath at propublica/times-picayune/advocate: Louisana State is a fossil fuel subsidiary
"As the Bayou Bridge Pipeline was under construction in 2018, Anne White Hat ventured deep into the Atchafalaya Swamp in St. Martin Parish to protest it."
"She [Anne White Hat] was arrested on two felony counts related to trespassing. She posted a $21,000 bond and was released."
" the pipeline company itself had been trespassing at the time of White Hat’s arrest. The main owner, Energy Transfer Partners, had not obtained easement agreements ... penalty: a $450 fine "
"The judge who set White Hat’s bond at $21,000 was the same judge who imposed Energy Transfer Partners’ fine."
“This is yet one more in a long line of examples of how Louisiana laws are first made by oil and gas corporations and then are ignored by the same corporations if they feel like it,”
"Louisiana has blazed a trail for other states in discouraging environmental protests by raising the legal stakes for those who trespass ... can be traced to corporate lobbyists. BP and DuPont ... arguing that enhanced penalties would discourage attacks by terrorists"
"the state’s elected leaders have historically sided with industry"
"Legislators are trying to reduce local officials’ power to decide whether to exempt industry from local taxes."
" a larger, coordinated strategy. The three Louisiana lawmakers who sponsored the trespassing bill were members of the American Legislative Exchange Council"
" Between 1997 and 2016, the board rejected just eight of the 16,931 applications for relief through the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, for an approval rate of 99.95%, "
"coastal communities have become ever more susceptible to storm surges and sea level rise ... it’s undisputed that oil and gas exploration has played a key role — in part, by dredging 10,000 miles of canals."
"metropolitan New Orleans filed an audacious lawsuit that sought to hold 97 oil and gas companies accountable for damaging the region’s natural flood defenses ... the Legislature filed 20 separate bills in 2014 to gut the lawsuit ... Ultimately, the lawsuit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown, who said oil and gas companies had no legal obligation to pay the levee authority for wetland damage, a view upheld by an appeals court. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case."
"In 1997, former Gov. Mike Foster pressured the Louisiana Supreme Court to trim the sails of student law clinics after the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic helped St. James Parish residents fight a polyvinyl chloride plant ... residents — with the help of Tulane — filed a complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ... Foster was apoplectic. He encouraged Tulane alumni and business leaders to reconsider their financial support for the university ... "
"The Tulane clinic has continued to garner the ire of industry over the last two decades. In 2010, Adley introduced another bill aimed at stopping the clinic from going after chemical plants"
“There is this systemwide hostility to people fighting back,”
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-louisiana-lawmakers-stop-residents-efforts-to-fight-big-oil-and-gasBest justice money can buy.
sidd
