"The Mitigation For This Permit Is A Joke" - 23-Mile Pipeline Swath Being Cut Through Atchafalaya
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The oil project runs 162 miles across southern Louisiana, cutting through the heart of the Atchafalaya Basin about an hour southeast of Baton Rouge. Wilson and a coalition of crawfishermen and environmentalists are concerned that the pipeline's 23-mile traverse through the basin will wreck the delicate ecosystem here, which has already been damaged by other projects. The Atchafalaya's forested wetlands support migratory birds, gators and crawfish and play a critical flood protection role by sponging up floodwaters to spare downstream neighbors. Some advocates say it should be a national park.
"Just like Yosemite has its natural features that make your jaw drop, so does the Atchafalaya," said Anne Rolfes, head of the grass-roots Louisiana Bucket Brigade. "It's a significant, unique ecosystem." The iconic natural feature here is the bald cypress. Known for its feathered leaves, flared trunk and knobby "knees" that rise in surrounding wetlands, the Louisiana state tree is treasured for its peculiar appearance and vital role in the ecosystem. Cypress swamps filter water, provide wildlife habitat and help prevent erosion. Some of the trees are centuries old.
Wilson was dismayed when he heard the federal government's plan for mitigating Bayou Bridge's damage to the swamps: restoring a different type of wetland in an agricultural area some 55 miles away. The offsite project, at the northern edge of the Atchafalaya Basin, is a type of mitigation strategy federal regulators routinely approve to offset wetlands damage. But pipeline critics say it's a bad match, doing nothing to repair the destruction of the cypress ecosystem.
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The policy gives preference to "mitigation banks," which are private wetlands sites that sell credits to developers to offset damage elsewhere. A permittee makes up for wetlands damage caused by its project by purchasing credits for acreage at an approved mitigation bank. The long-standing federal goal is "no net loss" of wetlands. The approach has attracted controversy through the years, with critics arguing that mitigation banking allows developers to use cash to sidestep Clean Water Act compliance. Some environmentalists are skeptical that off-site banks can really replace the natural resources lost to project development. In the case of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, though, it's not the banking approach itself that concerns opponents. It's the way it's being done.
Bayou Bridge is expected to affect nearly 600 acres of bald cypress-tupelo swamp. The Army Corps considers about 75 percent of those impacts to be temporary, but pipeline opponents contend that all the damage should be considered permanent because it's nearly impossible to re-establish a cypress swamp in modern hydrologic conditions.
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060080387
