by: Julie Rosenzweig, Delta Chapter Director
The Sierra Club Delta Chapter strongly condemns the approval of an US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) permit allowing a company with a proven history of pipeline leaks to construct a 162-mile long crude oil pipeline through our nation’s largest river swamp, the Atchafalaya Basin.
“Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) pipelines have a solid history of leaks and accidents, including a natural gas pipeline operated by ETP that exploded in a fire near Sommerville, Texas, just last week,” says Julie Rosenzweig, Sierra Club Delta Chapter Director.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, oil and gas pipeline accidents in the US spilled on average 76,000 barrels of oil per year, or 200 barrels per day, from 1986 to 2013. The Bayou Bridge Pipeline seeks to move 280,000 barrels of oil per day through the fragile Atchafalaya Basin.
In its press release, issued late last week, the USACE promises that they "will remain vigilant in monitoring the project." This assurance rings hollow in light of the Corps’s failure to allocate sufficient funds and resources to follow through with on-site inspections of other, already permitted projects in Louisiana.
Furthermore, the USACE permit allows ETP to destroy 142 acres of extremely high quality forested wetlands in the Atchafalaya Basin by converting that acreage to permanent pipeline right of way. These wetlands are impossible to replace, even with the mitigation the permit requires. In all, the pipeline will impact 455 acres of of Louisiana’s wetlands.
ETP plans to build their pipeline in parts of the Atchafalaya Basin that already bear damage from previous pipeline construction and operation. The USACE does not require ETP to remediate this damage as part of their permit, nor did ETP offer to do so.
This prior damage has many causes, but previous pipelines construction in the basin leads the pack. Canals for this construction, and their spoil banks (mounds of dirt dredged to build the canals piled along the sides of the canals) block natural water flow from north to south in the basin. This results in dead zones (hypoxic [low oxygen] conditions toxic to marine life) and sediment infill in the basin. These dead zones and sediment infill are destroying the basin’s aquatic ecosystem, resulting in the conversion of wetlands to dry land. The Bayou Bridge pipeline, planned to cross the basin from west to east, will exacerbate this effect, resulting in more loss of our precious wetlands.
“A permit of this scope and magnitude should never have been issued before the performance of a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS),” says Rosenzweig. “The National Environmental Policy Act requires a full EIS and detailed public notice for damaging projects of this magnitude, yet the US Army Corps of Engineers is requiring none.”
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