Lake Peigneur: Battle of the dredge

Save Lake Peigneur Inc. is continuing their battle to cease the expansion of Jefferson Island Storage and Hub, LLC, a subsidiary of AGL Resources, Inc.. at Lake Peigneur, which operates two natural gas storage wells in the lake.

Despite a recent decision to overturn a bill limiting AGL Resource’s use of drinking water taken from the Chicot Aquifer, Vice President of Save Lake Peigneur, Nara Crowley said the organization is “not going to give up fighting.”

Going on its third year, Save Lake Peigneur, a non-profit organization composed of 20 members and residents of Lake Peigneur, has tried to tackle the company from all sides, taking their bill to both former Governor Kathleen Blanco and current Governor Bobby Jindal’s office.

The bill, SB754, limited the use of drinking water from the Chicot Aquifer to AGL for the purpose of dredging caverns to store natural gas in the lake to no more than five million gallons in a parish whose population is more than 70,000 and less than 75,000 people.

The Senate voted 30 to 0 in favor of the bill and it was signed by Jindal, becoming Act No. 241 on June 17 of last year.

However, in the civil court ruling Jefferson Island Storage & Hub vs. State of Louisiana on March 16, 2009 by the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge, presiding Judge Wilson Fields overturned the legislation based on a population clause that was written into the bill. The state Attorney General’s office confirmed that the Judge’s court decision struck down the constitutionality of the Act. Therefore, there are no current restrictions for water usage from the Chicot Aquifer for the company.

Senior director of governmental affairs for AGL Resources, Richard Hyde said the company was opposed to the bill because he believes it “set a terrible precedent and was unconstitutional.”

The bill was one of Save Lake Peigneur’s several attempts to stop the dredging of Lake Peigneur, the site of one of the worst natural disasters caused by man in the region’s history.

In November 1980, the one-and-a-half-mile lake was sucked dry when a Texaco oil rig punctured a Crystal Diamond salt mine that was in operation under the lake. Some 50 miners were without a job weeks before Christmas, and the lawsuits ensued.

Although no one was injured, according to a Meridional article following the incident, the disaster was “bedlam,” causing the once serene freshwater lake to fill with saltwater, resulting in total ecological restructuring, fishkill, and leading to contaminated drinking water in the Chicot Aquifer, which sits below Jefferson Island. In addition, some 70 acres of historic Jefferson Island crumbled away, causing devastation to the historic Bayliss House whose chimney still protrudes from the lake today, almost 30 years later.

Twenty-four years after the 1980 disaster, AGL Resources purchased two, 4,000-foot-deep caverns to store natural gas. Several lawsuits against the company, and countersuits against the state have prevented the company from aborting their position on the lake, and pending litigation is stopping the company from expansion.

Starting in 2004, after AGL began operations at Jefferson Island Storage & Hub, residents reported a mysterious “bubbling” which occurs on the surface of the lake in the fall and winter months, and Crowley estimates some 50 or more incidents have been reported since 2005. The cause of the bubbling is still unknown today.

“It’s unnatural,” she said about the bubbling. “Why would we put natural gas caverns in a lake where unnatural events are occurring?”

Crowley said three reasons supporters of Save Lake Peigneur want AGL to cease operations are the company’s proximity to the sink hole, which residents use for recreational purposes in the summer; the bubbling of the lake which has resulted in fishkill and harm to other aquatic animals; and the danger of operating two natural gas storage wells in an immediate area of more than 5,000 residents.

In addition, Crowley alleges that the company is now dredging in the lake for maintenance purposes, when her group located a local company who could have performed the task using sonar equipment that would not need to dredge the lake. Not only do they suggest using a separate company, but Crowley stated that there are salt domes throughout the state that the company could operate near, but they choose to stay in the one lake in the country that has a salt dome beneath it.

“Hyde publicly stated it is a difference of opinion; it’s not. It’s a choice between doing what might harm the lake or won’t harm it at all,” Crowley said. “It’s definitely a choice.”

AGL’s Hyde commented that the company’s dredging is a requirement of the Department of Natural Resources, and despite publicly stating the company’s intentions to expand, “there is no connection between the two.”

Hyde added “We were very public about expanding, but in the midst of litigation with the state, (it has) prevented us from expanding.”

He further states that there is an “honest disagreement between the two sides,” adding “we’re doing the right thing.”

The Meridional will have more information on Lake Peigneur in future editions.

For more information on Save Lake Peigneur, visit www.savelakepeigneur.org. For information on AGL Resources, visit www.aglresources.com.