Tag Archives: Louisiana Environmental Action Network
As recently as five years ago, few Americans had even heard of fracking. The controversial process for freeing pockets of trapped natural gas or oil from deep shale deposits — which was not economically viable using conventional drilling — was only well known to industry insiders, who pushed special protection for fracking through Congress back in 2006. When the landmen and the first wave of drillers showed up in places like rural Pennsylvania, property owners [...]
Read More »Recently I’ve told you about one of the more exciting pieces of environmental news we’ve had in Louisiana in some time: The new political crusade led by Gen. Russel Honore, the straight-talking Creole who won deserved high marks for the Katrina recovery in 2005. The now-retired general is working with long-time Louisiana environmentalists and with author John Barry, the former levee-board activist who spearheaded a groundbreaking lawsuit against Big Oil [...]
Read More »It was a terrible week on Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” This narrow strip of the bayou country between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is home to more chemical plants and refineries than just about any area in the world, let alone the United States. Over the decades, these plants have been a source of both jobs and income for a state in desperate need of both. But as the nickname implies, [...]
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Louisiana citizens wise up to pipeline dangers
For most of the last eight decades or so that Big Oil’s had its way with the state of Louisiana, it was rare — unheard of, really — for local residents to oppose an energy-related project. For most folks, environmentalism — opposing new drilling or unsightly pipelines in your backyard — was something that maybe “the Yankees” did, but not Louisianans. And the main reason was a simple four-letter word: [...]
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