Environmental Organizations Challenge Plaquemines LNG Export Facility, Citing Evidence Levees May Fail During Catastrophic Storms

Plaquemines Parish, LA - Today, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Healthy Gulf and Sierra Club filed a petition to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (LDNR) to require a Coastal Use Permit for the fracked gas export terminal Plaquemines LNG that is under construction in Southern Louisiana. The organizations detail many issues with the plant, including the negative impacts that it will have on Black and Indigenous communities, the destruction of disappearing and vulnerable wetlands, and the fact that it is being built in an active hurricane zone prone to severe flooding.

Plaquemines LNG is on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 35 miles south of New Orleans, and is expected to have an export capacity of up to 24 MTPA, which would have the greenhouse gas equivalent of 31 coal plants or 26.3 million cars, every year for the 30 year life of the project. It would involve 36 liquefaction trains, two 730 MW gas fired power plants, an export terminal, and destroy more than 300 acres of wetlands. Petitioners contend the facility will have direct and significant impacts on coastal waters and therefore a CUP is required under state law. Petitioners also contend LDNR is violating its state constitutional duty to protect the public and the environment, and that this project is inconsistent with the State Coastal Zone Master Plan. 

In fact, the site where Plaquemines LNG is being built was flooded for more than a month after Hurricane Ida, which ravaged South Louisiana exactly one year ago today. Research shows that the site will continue to flood during severe storm events. Plaquemines LNG is creating a system of 26-foot levees and storm walls that they claim will help protect the site from any potential storms and flooding, but models show that these barriers will not be able to withstand even a Category 3 hurricane. The leader of the State of Louisiana’s Official Hurricane Katrina levee failure study team, Ivor Van Heerden, explains in an affidavit as part of today’s filing that Plaquemines LNG’s levees have critical design flaws and are likely to be overtopped during a severe storm event. 

Additionally, Plaquemines LNG will have direct and significant impacts on coastal waters and wetlands. There is a significant risk the site could be flooded, with pollution and chemicals being carried off-site into homes, businesses, farmland, and fragile coastal wetlands. The construction will also destroy nearly 400 acres of wetlands that provide a storm buffer for nearby communities, including the city of  New Orleans. On average, Southern Louisiana has already experienced an average land loss of a football field every 100 minutes since the 1930s. Wetlands play an important role in flood protection and storm resilience; and losing these critical wetlands puts people and ecosystems at greater risk.

Flooding, hurricanes, land loss, and inequitable disaster recovery are actively displacing people in Southern Louisiana, and primarily Black and Indigenous communities. Many people in Louisiana’s southern river parishes like Plaquemines and Terrebonne Parish are still recovering from the devastation from Hurricane Ida while this current hurricane season continues to linger over the Gulf Coast. Moreover, any emergencies at Plaquemines LNG could shut down Highway 23—the only evacuation route in the area—placing surrounding communities in serious jeopardy.

“Louisiana communities are in a vulnerable place with the double disaster of storms super-charged by climate change and toxic industrial hazards, “ said Monique Harden, Assistant Director of Law and Public Policy at Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. “We need the Department of Natural Resources to meet its constitutional obligation of protecting people and our environment.”

"If we want to address land loss on our coast, and we want to lend a hand to the environmental justice communities in lower Plaquemines Parish, we must not allow any more fossil fuel facilities to destroy valuable wetlands from these areas and pollute the surroundings. If our public officials fail to act, then 55% of the remaining land in Plaquemines Parish will disappear in less than 30 years,” said Naomi Yoder, staff scientist at Healthy Gulf. “Communities along the Mississippi River are still struggling to recover from Hurricane Ida. We must do better.  It's time to stand up for the people of lower Plaquemines Parish who have struggled for way too long, and say no to another wetland destroying, greenhouse gas-belching, polluting fossil fuel monstrosity."

“The burning of Plaquemines LNG’s fracked gas exports will contribute to climate change on a major scale while failing to protect Plaquemines Parish and its neighboring parishes from climate change impacts such as rising sea level and more frequent and severe storms,” said Lisa Diaz, attorney for Sierra Club. “This is a risky and harmful project that should not be built.” 

“The area where they are building this plant is very vulnerable. In the early 1950s, the high tide would bring water all the way to Highway 23 and local people would go out there to catch shrimp with their cast nets. In West Point a la Hache, the nearest community to Venture Global's gas plant, we evacuate for every storm because water blocks off the highway. Our only escape route is along the river levee, which is currently blocked off by vehicles working on the construction of the gas plant,” said Elliot Sylve, a Lower Plaquemines resident. “We are in the midst of hurricane season, and I worry that we in Lower Plaquemines currently have no escape route in the event of a major storm. I am disgruntled about the whole ordeal, especially as our community is still displaced, a year after Ida made landfall and brought 10 feet of floodwater to West Point a la Hache. Resources are coming into Plaquemines Parish to build this plant, but no help is coming in to rebuild our community or strengthen the levee to protect us.”

“For far too long Louisiana has been a sacrificial zone for the wealthy and while profits soar, we are left to deal with the pollution, illnesses caused by it, and hurricanes that are increasing in intensity thanks in part to human induced climate change. Entire communities that have been inhabited for generations are being displaced, our home is becoming uninhabitable,” said Jessi Parfait, Louisiana-based Representative for Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign. “Plaquemines LNG is yet another polluting facility that the coast does not need; not only will it destroy acres of wetlands, our best line of defense against storms, the emissions it produces will further exacerbate the climate crisis in an area that is already so vulnerable to it. We need to say enough, we need to put our communities and our people first.”