The big push is on to finalize (again) a design choice for the proposed I-49 route through downtown Lafayette. DOTD and Lafayette Consolidated Government leaders along with their corporate sponsor/patrons at OneAcadiana say they’ll make a decision in the next few days. 

The rush to get the project built contrasts dramatically with the same group’s aversion to determining the extent of ground and water pollution in the Union Pacific rail yard that stretches 1.5 miles from Simcoe Street in the north to Taft in the south. 

The proposed I-49 road way would run right through the Union Pacific rail yard (area in yellow). Base map by DOTD. 
The rail yard operated about 70 years before all but a few people appreciated the connection between industrial operations and quality of life. The long length of ground and water contamination at the site leads some local environmental activists to believe it is extensively polluted. 

The road proponents don’t appear at all concerned by that. 

They should be. The north end of the site is literally across Simcoe from an aggregation point for a water well field belonging to Lafayette Utilities System. The LUS wells already show the presence of trace presence of chemicals linked to the Union Pacific site. 

These wells serve as the source of drinking water for most of the city of Lafayette. 

I-49 through downtown poses the very real threat to speed the pollution of the LUS wells because it would run through most of old rail yard, requiring pilings to be driven. In some places in the vicinity of the yard, the Chicot Aquifer — the sole source of drinking water for Lafayette and most of south Louisiana — rises to as little as 40 feet below the surface of the ground. 

Driving pilings through the pollution would drive it toward the water supply by breaking the barriers that separate the aquifer from the ground above it. The chemicals dumped in the rail yard over those seven decades might well have accomplished some of that already. 

Kim Goodell of WaterMark Alliance. 
Kim Goodell of WaterMark Alliance is alarmed by the folly of proceeding to disturb the site when no comprehensive assessment of the pollution there has ever been carried out. There has been some spot testing and even some spot cleanups in connection with land transactions. But, Goodell says a thorough assessment is an essential step to an effective cleanup and that has never occurred. 

The LUS water well field pumps 20 million gallons a day out of the ground just north of the Union Pacific site. That pull has created a current of sorts in the aquifer — a cone of depression which draws water and whatever is in it toward the wells. 

Goodell is adamant that the problem is real and that the pollution threat exists separate from the I-49 project. Her concern is that the project will make matters worse because state and local officials are refusing to acknowledge the serious nature of the threat posed by the long-term pollution at the site. 

Goodell is working with community groups across the city through her WaterMark Alliance to call attention to the general need to create more citizen awareness of the pollution issue and the importance of clean drinking water to the ability to sustain life. Think Flint, Michigan. Or, closer to home, St. Joseph, Louisiana. 

Proponents of I-49 say the train is about to leave the station on that project. If it does before the extent of pollution at the Union Pacific site is discovered, that train just might take our drinking water with it.

RootsCamp LA 7 is coming to Lafayette on March 18-19 and it’s a ‘must make’ event this year because of the surge of new activists that are now engaged in the political and civic process, many for the first time. 

Dawn Collins, RootsCamp LA founder and chief organizer. 
RootsCamp started small and has been growing organically since 2010. The first session Dawn Collins organized was in a union hall assembly room near Alexandria. It moves in two-year cycles and has been held in Baton Rouge and New Orleans since the first two events in Central Louisiana. 

What’s great about RootsCamp is that the agenda is set by the attendees once they arrive. There are some panel discussions that are scheduled, but the vast bulk of the agenda is set on-site by attendees voting their level of interest. 

What became starkly clear last year during the Democratic primary season – where the first wave of 2016 activists were drawn into the process – is how little understanding there is among people about how government is organized and operates, and how parties work. Progressives seem to need Civics classes. Many people couldn’t distinguish between their congressional representatives and their state legislators. Not a minor issue. 

We are in a tight spot here. Those who are focused on trying to get members of Congress to respond to voters’ demands are, in many instances, engaged in futile activity. Why? Because the U.S. House of Representatives has been gerrymandered in succeeding Census cycles to lock in congressional Republican majorities in the Congress based on minority vote totals. 

Oh, by the way. Those House congressional district lines are drawn by state legislatures. Look at Louisiana as an example. Louisiana has had six congressional seats since the 2010 Census. Louisiana happens to have a non-white population of 37% — about 33% African American, with the rest being Hispanic, Asian, Native Americans and others. Under the concept of one-person, one-vote, Louisiana should have two of our six congressional districts that are winnable by non-Republicans. But, we don’t. Why? Because in 2011 the Louisiana Legislature did the work of then-7th District Congressman Charles Boustany (whose district was disappearing) and carved the 3rd District in such a way as to give Boustany the advantage over then-Congressman Jeff Landry who represented the 3rd District at the time. 

I’m not saying Louisiana is a progressive state. See the 2016 presidential election results to settle that. But, I am saying that congressional redistricting and redistricting of districts in the Louisiana House and Senate have been carried out in a partisan way to lock in Republican advantage and to make our state appear more conservative than it actually is. 

Coming to Lafayette mid-March 2017. 
For those of you whose interest is primarily at the federal issue, this is critical information. Why? Because we cannot see better outcomes in Congress unless and until we understand and change the redistricting process in Louisiana (and other states). Control of Congress, then, can be and has been affected by actions at the state level. 

The next state legislative elections are in 2019. The next Census is 2020. The redistricting of the Congressional seats will take place in 2021 for the 2022 elections. The redistricting of state legislative districts will likely take place around the same time, although that work does not have to be completed until 2023. 

All of these things require that citizens engage in the process and assert their ownership rights to it. That is the essential requirement of the United States’ experiment with our democratic republic. It’s gotten away from us in recent decades. The corrective is activism and engagement. 

That’s why RootsCamp LA is essential. 

See you there! 

Register here. 

••• 

Thanks to Matt Roberts, AOC’s Community Programming Director for help locating the music used in this segment. 

A Foolish Game by Hans Atom (c) copyright 2017 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/hansatom/55394 Ft: Snowflake

The closed chamber burning of 16 million pounds of munitions accelerant is weeks away from being completed at Camp Minden. That work, led by the Concerned Citizens of Camp Minden, prevented a potential public health disaster from unfolding in northwest Louisiana. That threat grew out of the U.S. Army’s plan to burn the explosive materials in the open air — 80,000 pounds per day for 200 days. 

The burn chamber portion of the closed burn system installed at Camp Minden to dispose of 16 million pounds of munitions accelerant. 
Camp Minden is east of Shreveport in Webster Parish. Wind would have carried the contaminated fallout from the burning in any direction on any given day. Dr. Brian Salvatore recognized the threat and spoke out. He galvanized the community against the open burn. It sparked a grassroots movement that succeeded in getting the Army to change its plans — and to pay for it. 

The notion that an open burn of those materials could be carried out was not new. It had happened in other communities with Army munitions depots over the years. Some communities fought for safer disposal methods and prevailed. The Concerned Citizens of Camp Minden connected into that network of community activists and experts, engaged local and state governmental leaders. They engaged the EPA as well as members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation which, ironically, was home to some of harsh critics of the agency. 

The burning method that was selected as the disposal mechanism offered the most reliable, proven method of disposal of the material Dr. Salvatore explains in our conversation. But, it’s not perfect. He points out that the monitoring of the exhaust from the burn process is not highly refined, that there is no analysis of the amount of individual chemicals emitted after the burn. But, he says its a vast improvement over the open burn operation. 

Dr. Brian Salvatore
This being Louisiana, a group in the region now sees a business opportunity with the Camp Minden burn unit and wants to make it permanent. That would make Camp Minden a hazardous waste destination, with toxic materials of all kinds being shipped there through the region to be burned. 

It is typical for Louisiana which, dating at least as far back as the Mike Foster administration, has had as official state policy to take the wastes that others don’t want for disposal here. 

The most glaring early example of this was when an Exxon drilling operation at the mouth of Mobile Bay failed in the mid-1990s. The company had a large amount of hazardous waste on its hands that it needed to eliminate. Alabama officials would not allow the company to dispose of the materials in their state. Instead, the materials were hauled by truck to the Lafourche Parish community of Grand Bois in 1998. 

Dr. Mike Robichaux of Raceland was a member of the Louisiana Senate at that time. Grand Bois was in his district. He sought to have the legislature block the importation of hazardous wastes into Louisiana and was roundly defeated with the help of Governor Foster and the oil, gas and petrochemical industries. He succeeded in bringing national attention to the plight of the citizens there, as well as to the misclassification of “normative oilfield wastes” as non-hazardous. 

The push to establish Camp Minden as a permanent hazardous waste disposal facility is as short-sighted as burying oilfield wastes in land that is a more membrane than either land or marsh as was the case in Grand Bois. Despite having near state-of-the-art technology in place at Camp Minden, there is little doubt that some toxins (hopefully in safe levels) have been released during the months of burning that will soon end. 

Prolonged exposure to toxins and carcinogens over time is the course that sometimes leads to cancer and other diseases. We already have numerous examples of this in Louisiana now. Here’s one. Here’s another. This report is about Calcasieu Parish. This is about mercury contamination of water here. Where does your electricity come from? 

What those examples above have in common is that for much of the time the pollution and contamination was taking place, there was little or no public awareness of the processes at work. Anyone who proposes to put a permanent hazardous waste incineration facility in a community under the guise of jobs and community benefits is engaged in a special kind of cynicism. 

For too long the problem in Louisiana has been that our elected officials and those who claim to regulate industry have been willing to allow the poisoning of some of us as a means of enriching a few of us. If we are going to leave a state that our children and future generations can inhabit, that must stop. 

A new fight has erupted over Camp Minden. The good news is that the good people who defeated the Army and the EPA should be able to handle this skirmish. 

••• 

Thanks to Matt Roberts, AOC’s Community Programming Director for help locating the music used in this segment. 

A Foolish Game by Hans Atom (c) copyright 2017 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/hansatom/55394 Ft: Snowflake