Construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline has continued in and around the Louisiana town of St. James despite a judge’s ruling that a state agency wrongly issued a permit allowing this oil pipeline to be built without an emergency and evacuation plan for the vulnerable town. A follow-up judgment formalizing the initial ruling came on May 15.

A Louisiana judge ruled that state regulators violated guidelines when they issued a coastal use permit to build the Bayou Bridge pipeline in the town of St. James. The judge’s decision, made on April 30, could halt construction of the final 18 miles of the pipeline, which is part of a network carrying fracked oil that begins with the Dakota Access pipeline.

Hope Rosinski kept watch over the construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline as one of its segments was installed on her land in Arcadia Parish, Louisiana. While she had signed an agreement allowing Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, to use her property, she had little choice in the matter and she didn’t want the pipeline there. 

Like anyone along the route of proposed oil or gas pipelines, Rosinski was in a position where, had she not signed the agreement, her land would have been taken anyway by virtue of eminent domain — a right the government can assert to seize private property for public use. So she negotiated the best contract she could, which included a clause specifying that the company could not begin work until all its permits were in place. 

But with the crude oil export ban lifted and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports on the rise, landowners like Rosinski are starting to question whether or not giving up their land to serve these private aims qualifies as “public good.”

On Thursday, April 5, opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline attempted to shut down its construction by blocking an industrial supply company’s facility in Iowa, Louisiana, just outside of Lake Charles on the same day a bill spelling out harsher penalties for pipeline protesters was advanced to committee during the Louisiana legislative session.