Youngsville, LA: Actions Against Bayou Bridge Pipeline Continue as Landowners Join the Fight

An update from the L’eau Est La Vie Camp on continued resistance to the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana. To listen to our podcast interview with L’eau Est La Vie Camp, go here. 

Those fighting the Bayou Bridge Pipeline are now joining forces with home and land owners who stand to lose them via eminent domain. The Bayou Bridge Pipeline is the tail end of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and threatens water, livelihoods, ecosystems, and homes of people, animals, plants, water, and ecosystems across so-called Louisiana.

The L’eau Est La Vie Camp on Tuesday, April 24th wrote:

Water protectors from L’eau est la Vie Camp are out in Youngsville, LA working with local landowners to fight Energy Transfer Partners & the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. Construction has been stopped for several hours this morning.

The next day the action continued, with the group writing:

Day 2 of occupying the Bayou Bridge Pipeline easement in Youngsville, LA. Water protectors from L’eau est la Vie resistance camp and landowners are fighting together to stop ETP and the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. Construction has been stopped all morning and is expected to be shut down all day.

Meanwhile, a new bill is still being pushed through the halls of power that would further criminalize people fighting pipelines:

And that’s HB 727 and ALEC are all about. While the seemingly innocuous bill appears only to lay out penalties for trespassing onto “critical infrastructure,” and to include “pipelines” or “any site where the construction or improvement of any facility or structure…is occurring” to the definition of critical infrastructure, the wording of the bill includes subtle landmines designed to discourage otherwise legal protests.

For instance, while criminal trespass and criminal damage has long been considered a violation of the law, the bill adds this provision:

“Any person who commits the crime of criminal damage to a critical infrastructure wherein it is foreseeable that human life will be threatened or operations of a critical infrastructure will be disrupted as a result of such conduct shall be imprisoned at hard labor for not less than six years nor more than 20 years, fined not more than $25,000, or both.”

HB 727, which passed the HOUSE by an overwhelming 97-3 vote with five members absent, provides if “two or more” person conspire to violate the statute, each “shall be imprisoned with or without hard labor for not more than five years, fined not more than $10,000, or both.”

Just what would constitute a “conspiracy” in this case? Well, it could mean the simple discussion of possible trespass. Whatever it is, the word “foreseeable” is thrown into the mix again. So, a protest in the proximity of pipeline construction could conceivably be construed by an ambitious prosecutor as “conspiracy” and any discussion during such a protest could become a conspiracy.

Besides being yet another windfall for the private prisons, this bill is nothing more than a means to discourage protests over pipeline construction through sensitive areas such as the Bayou Bridge Pipeline…

Stay up with the resistance to the Bayou Bridge pipeline by following the L’eau Est La Vie Camp here.