For the past year and a half, Rayne resident Cherri Foytlin and a group of activists have gathered in a part of the Atchafalaya Basin that belongs by heritage to the Gulf Coast Atakapa-Ishak tribe to protest the Bayou Bridge Pipeline.
As The Nation reports, the Energy Transfer Partners pipeline project is a lot like the higher-profile Dakota Access Pipeline, and Foytlin and the other protesters say it will have a “devastating” impact on the safety of water in the area.
The members Foytlin’s group see their fight as the continuation of the struggle that began at Standing Rock.
The Bayou Bridge Pipeline is part of the same network of pipes as those that make up the Dakota Access Pipeline. It’s meant to ferry crude oil that comes all the way from the fracking sites in North Dakota to Louisiana refineries.
To bury the pipe, which runs 163 miles west to east through Louisiana, the company must clear a 75-foot-wide path.
Expert witnesses who are testifying in a civil action brought by Atchafalaya Basinkeeper and Earthjustice to halt the project say the pipeline will create “irrevocable harm” to the area. They say it will destroying old-growth trees and habitats that support migrating bird species and 90% of the region’s crawfish and will reduce the basin’s ability to buffer storm surges from the Gulf and operate as a spillway for river floods.
