Livingston Parish residents worry about CO2 pipeline proximity

SATSUMA — Residents are speaking out against the construction of a carbon dioxide pipeline they say will bring risks right up to their backyards and near community schools. 

Property owners near the planned CF Industries CO2 pipeline voiced their opposition to the project and displeasure with the lack of information from public officials about details including safety plans. The proposed line will stretch 50 miles from Ascension Parish to Livingston Parish, crossing through a cypress swamp as well as near schools and residential areas. 

Residents shared their concerns Wednesday during a tour the environmental justice group Louisiana Bucket Brigade conducted. The group led reporters to homes near the proposed pipeline to speak to community members about their thoughts on the project. 

“It just gives me anxiety of something potentially dangerous right behind my property line, and since it’s not on the acreage that I own, I have no say,” said Gabrielle Settoon, whose family, including three elementary-aged children, live in Satsuma about 30 yards away from where the pipeline is planned.

Settoon learned the pipeline would be near her home at a community meeting on carbon capture projects and said it’s odd that local officials aren’t talking more to residents about the project. 

“When I saw the map, I was like, ‘Oh my, this is behind my house,’” she said. “I didn’t know how close it actually was. So then I really started paying attention once I realized I’m living right in front of it.”

The pipeline would transport a projected 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide annually from a new ammonia plant CF Industries is building in Modeste, a community just upriver from Donaldsville. The gas would be routed northeast to an underground injection site in Holden. A permit for the injection well awaits approval from the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy. 

CF industries did not respond to emails and a call requesting comment. 

Residents on the Bucket Brigade tour referenced the 2020 CO2 pipeline rupture in Sartoria, Mississippi, which hospitalized 45 people. The colorless, odorless gas leak caused people nearby to pass out from lack of oxygen and stopped internal combustion engines from working, hindering evacuation and emergency response. 

“If it passed to a remote area where there’s no chance of somebody getting injured or a rupture that would affect anybody, OK, that’s fine,” said Blane Smiley of French Settlement. 

“But this is passing right through a very small bedroom community with not a lot of emergency services. We’ve got a volunteer fire department that does a great job, but they’re not equipped to handle something like this,” he said. 

Smiley’s mother-in-law, Irene Moore, echoed his safety concerns. 

The pipeline was originally supposed to cut through Moore’s property on the Amite River but is now planned for farther away. Residents said they believe the relocation was the result of their complaints, but CF Industries has not offered an official explanation. Still, Moore said she frets over the project’s proximity to schools.

“I’m still just as worried because going up there another quarter-mile maybe and getting into the [Maurepas] swamp … It’s gonna pass French Settlement High School and elementary school,” Moore said. “It’s just too close.”

Some residents said they feel disillusioned by the silence from political figures or their outward support for carbon capture and sequestration. 

“We don’t like big business coming in here having their way because they’re kissing up to Governor Landry,” Moore said.

“I just can’t believe our politicians of this state have sold us down the river like this,” said Danny Aydell, a Livingston Parish landowner. 

Aydell said that he was disappointed in Landry’s ardent support for carbon capture projects despite the moratorium the governor issued on them last October. His executive order stopped the review and approval process for all new carbon injection well applications, but it allowed the state to continue with the more than 30 permit submissions received before his edict. 

The state Department of Conservation and Energy lists 23 active applications for carbon storage projects across the state, each representing anywhere from one to eight wells to pump CO2 underground. So far, three wells have been permitted in Louisiana: in Ascension, Cameron and Caldwell parishes. One permit has been rejected, and eight have been suspended, withdrawn or voluntarily put on hold. 

The only CO2 injection well application submitted for Livingston Parish is for the Pelican Sequestration Hub in Holden, where the CF pipeline ends.