Despite numerous protests and multiple court battles, owners of a 162-mile-long oil pipeline under construction in the Atchafalaya Basin say the project is almost 90% complete.
A spokesman for Energy Transfer Partners—majority owner of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline project—says the owners anticipate it will be in service by the end of the year.
But opponents are pressing on with efforts to delay or stop it.
On Friday, pipeline opponents and owners of a 38-acre section of land plan to argue in a St. Martinville courtroom that the project owners trespassed on private property without completing the necessary process—known as expropriation—to obtain it. They also say the expropriation process itself in Louisiana violates the state and federal constitutions.
