Turtle Island Restoration Network, alongside Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Healthy Gulf, and Louisiana Bucket Brigade filed a lawsuit against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for approving another methane gas export facility. The groups argue that FERC violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Natural Gas Act by approving another methane gas export facility—Commonwealth LNG—in southwest Louisiana, as the approval fails to properly analyze project alternatives and arbitrarily concluded that the Commonwealth LNG project poses no environmental justice concerns.
Commonwealth LNG is one of seven proposed LNG, or methane gas, export terminals in southwest Louisiana. In the region, there are already three operational massive LNG export facilities in the region, in addition to dozens of petrochemical megaplexes.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, the majority of these terminals are planned in communities that are in the top 25th percentile (i.e., have higher levels than 75 percent of the country) for percentage of people of color, low income population, air toxics cancer risk, and/or air toxics respiratory hazard index.
Building the Commonwealth LNG would be one of the largest polluters in the Gulf region, destroy over 100 acres of wetlands, and more. You can read the lawsuit here.
