NEW ORLEANS (AP) A pipeline company must pay attorneys who won $30,000 for three fractional owners of land where the company began work before getting legal permission, the Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled.
The two protesters and a journalist say a Louisiana law that designates the thousands of miles of pipeline in the state as critical infrastructure has chilled their free speech rights.
In this April 27, 2018 photo, trees in a cutback sit between an existing pipeline channel, left, and a new pipeline channel, on Bayou Sorrel in the Atchafalaya River Basin in Louisiana. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
(CN) A federal judge has decided two protesters and a journalist arrested at a 2018 protest over the construction of a pipeline in Louisiana can continue to challenge the constitutionality of a state law that prohibits unauthorized entry near a pipeline.
3 arrested can challenge Louisiana pipeline trespass law
JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press
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1of3FILE - In this April 27, 2018 file photo, a great white heron appears through trees on Bayou Sorrel in the Atchafalaya River Basin in La. A federal judge says demonstrators and a journalist may continue their challenge of a Louisiana law making it a felony to trespass in the area of a pipeline through the Louisiana swamp. Activists said they had landowners’ permission to protest on the land in the environmentally sensitive Atchafalaya Basin and have described the state law as part of a larger effort against environmental activism. Gerald Herbert/APShow MoreShow Less
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Opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline accused Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards of meeting with representative of the oil and gas industry while refusing to meet with activists and communities affected by the pipeline’s construction. They further allege that the administration has instead placed them under surveillance, pointing to similar treatment of Dakota Access pipeline opponents in North Dakota in 2016. Their claims are based in part on emails and other public records released by the state.
The activists brought their grievances to the Democratic governor’s home and office on March 1, holding a press conference in front of the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge and then occupying the foyer to his office in the State Capitol for over an hour.
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Oct 10, 2019 @ 21:39
“It is a crime against nature,” Jody Meche, president of the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association-West, said while scanning the Bayou Bridge pipeline right-of-way on the west side of the Atchafalaya Basin, the country’s largest river swamp in a designated National Heritage Area.
His voice trembled with rage as he told me that he was speaking for all the animals living in the basin that can’t speak for themselves.
“The Bayou Bridge pipeline has left a dam across the Atchafalaya Basin affecting the fisheries, the birds, the otters, minks, raccoons, and nutria,” Meche said.
On September 27, I joined Meche and Dean Wilson, executive director of the conservation group Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, on a monitoring trip to the west side of the pipeline. It was their first trip along the pipeline’s construction path, which only recently became visible after unusually high water levels in the basin receded.