An environmental group filed a lawsuit against the state to block the construction of a new carbon dioxide pipeline through Maurepas Swamp.
The lawsuit is the latest attempt to stop a U.S.-based international chemical company’s contentious proposal to store millions of tons of carbon dioxide beneath Lake Maurepas.
Air Products wants to build a “blue hydrogen” complex in Ascension Parish. The facility would turn natural gas into hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel, by removing the carbon from the gas. The captured carbon would then be piped about 40 miles before being injected deep underground below the lake.
Much of the new carbon dioxide pipeline for the project would cut through the Maurepas Swamp, which is a wildlife management area protected by the state that spans over 100,000 acres west of New Orleans. In its filing, the Louisiana-based group Healthy Gulf accuses the state’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the State Mineral and Energy Board of violating state law by allowing the pipeline to move forward.
In 2020, the two Louisiana agencies signed an interagency agreement that would allow the Miner and Energy Board to approve leases and operating agreements for carbon storage projects like Air Products’. The board granted the company the right to build carbon dioxide pipelines through the entirety of the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area in 2021.
According to the lawsuit, all of the land included in the wildlife management area was donated to the state. The donation agreements for the large tracts required the state to conserve the land and keep it natural.
Some of the agreements that would be affected by the pipeline’s construction even explicitly barred “industrial development” or any state action that “diminishes” the land’s natural state.
The lawsuit argues that approving the new pipeline breaches those donation agreements — which is illegal under state law.
Healthy Gulf, which filed its lawsuit in East Baton Rouge Parish, wants a state judge to block the agency from approving any plan to build a pipeline through Maurepas.
