It has become perhaps the most controversial environmental issue in southeast Louisiana, reports Louisiana Illuminator.
The residents who oppose a plan to let heavy industry use Lake Maurepas as a storage site for carbon dioxide emissions span the spectrum of race, class, age, education level and political affiliation.
Chemical giant Air Products wants to drill wells in Lake Maurepas to inject 5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year about a mile below the lakebed. It’s part of a $4.5 billion hydrogen manufacturing complex in adjacent Ascension Parish that would use carbon capture and sequestration technology to pipe air pollution under the lake rather than release it into the atmosphere.
If successful, the project would allow Air Products to produce “blue hydrogen,” a cleaner alternative to natural gas and other fossil fuels that petrochemical manufacturers burn to make their products.
An increasing number of residents in Tangipahoa, Livingston and St. John the Baptist parishes see the Air Products project as little more than profiteering and reckless industrialization of an iconic lake they say has only recently begun to recover after generations of ecological destruction.
Kim Coates, who lives in Tangipahoa Parish, has been strongly opposed to the project and made it one of the central issues in her recent campaign for the District 73 seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives, which she won. In an interview Thursday, she said Air Products’ Lake Maurepas project is just about the most universally hated idea in southeast Louisiana.
So far, opposition from neighbors has not prompted Air Products to change its Lake Maurepas plans or consider moving to a new area.
Air Products plans to apply for another drilling permit in the coming months if its test well data indicates pore space below the lake is suitable for storing CO2, spokesperson Christina Stephens says.
“We remain committed to the Lake Maurepas community and to ongoing outreach and education with the public, residents and local officials,” Stephens says.
