New Orleans-based Healthy Gulf and the Sierra Club have petitioned a federal appeals court to review a dredge-and-fill permit issued in 2019 for the construction of a $25 billion liquefied natural gas facility in southwest Louisiana.
The two environmental groups filed the petition, a prelude to a formal legal complaint, July 19 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth District. The petition does not identify specific problems with the permit, but Louisa Eberle, a Sierra Club attorney, said in a statement that the Lake Charles area is in the “crosshairs of climate change” and that the Army Corps of Engineers, which issued the permit, failed to mitigate the loss of wetlands that would occur if the Driftwood LNG facility is built.
“There is no (legal) complaint because under the Natural Gas Act, we must file a petition for review in the federal circuit court where the project is located,” Eberle told the Louisiana Record in an email. “Neither Driftwood LNG LLC nor Driftwood Pipeline LLC are defendants because the petition is challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to approve the Clean Water Act permit for the facility.”
Environmental groups, however, expect the companies to attempt to intervene in the litigation, she said. The parent company of Driftwood LNG did not respond to a request for comment about the challenge to the dredge-and-fill permit.
The region’s wetlands help to protect residents from major storms that roll in from the Gulf of Mexico, according to Healthy Gulf.
“Wetlands protect southwest Louisiana from storm surges from major hurricanes like Hurricanes Laura and Delta,” Roishetta Ozane, the group’s organizing director in the region, said in a prepared statement. “Every acre of wetlands holds 1 million gallons of storm water. Driftwood LNG wants to destroy hundreds of acres of wetlands.”
The project, which would export liquefied natural gas produced through hydraulic fracturing, would affect 718 acres of terrain and lead to the destruction of more than 300 acres of wetlands, environmentalists say. Operating the plant would generate greenhouse gas emissions greater than the carbon dioxide output of two coal plants, they say.