Southeastern Louisiana University says its scientists will provide independent monitoring of the Lake Maurepas ecosystem as part of Air Products’ work on its Louisiana Clean Energy Complex, and their findings will be available to the public.
As the company is set to begin preliminary studies assessing the viability of the lake for a proposed carbon capture and sequestration project, the university will start an extensive environmental monitoring process of the region. The goal is to determine what impacts the project will have on the area.
Scientists will monitor marine life, including fish, crabs and shrimp, as well as the plant life found in the surrounding wetlands. They will also seek any variations in the water quality.
Findings will be uploaded to a publicly accessible website run by Southeastern. Further details will be announced as the site is developed and monitoring efforts are underway.
“Southeastern will be monitoring all facets of this project involving the lake to ensure up-to-date data and information are available,” said Dan McCarthy, dean of the College of Science and Technology at Southeastern. “We will make all the data we record available to the public to ensure everyone’s right to know any findings.”
The gas supply company plans to open a hydrogen manufacturing complex in Ascension Parish by 2026, which will capture its carbon output and send it down a pipeline to be stored deep under Lake Maurepas.
Air Products approached the university about six months ago to understand its capabilities because the company knew the project would require monitoring of the whole ecosystem, McCarthy said. As it turned out, the university’s capabilities were “pretty much exactly what they needed.”
He added that Air Products leaders emphasized they want to be as “transparent as possible” undertaking a project that has been controversial for those in surrounding parishes.
Andrew Connolly, a project manager at Air Products, said his company realized from the beginning that it would require “comprehensive and independent monitoring” of the lake.
“We are pleased to have Southeastern serve this important role,” he said. “Their scientists have been studying this ecosystem for decades and, with the Turtle Cove Environmental Research Station, they are singularly and best qualified to conduct this monitoring study.”
Turtle Cove Environmental Research Station is located in the Lake Pontchartrain estuarine ecosystem and gives Southeastern’s scientists easy access to Lake Maurepas.
Monitoring efforts will be led by Kyle Piller, who will focus on the fish studies and crab populations; Chris Murphy, who will examine stress levels in marine life; and Gary Shaffer, a wetlands specialist.
The decision to add an independent monitor has briefly eased the minds of some Livingston Parish Council members, who have been staunchly and vocally opposed to the carbon capture projects slated for the region. In the last few weeks the council has approved two temporary, yearlong moratoriums: One on carbon capture injection wells, and one on Class V wells that are used in the testing process before a carbon capture project can begin.
“They’re right down the street, so they have a vested interest,” said council member Tracy Girlinghouse. “I think it’s perfect. You have the university-educated people who know things about that field — who are right down the street. They’re going to give an objective opinion, in my mind, and make sure things are handled the correct way.”
Council member Shane Mack, who initially proposed the moratorium on carbon capture injection wells, said that the situation is “better than no independent monitoring” but that he is ultimately “against all of it pertaining to CO2 injection wells so close to residential structures and in Lake Maurepas.”
Air Products responded to Livingston’s Class V moratorium with a lawsuit this month, asking a federal judge to deem the ordinance “invalid and unenforceable.”
The lawsuit says Livingston’s legal actions contravene the authority of several state agencies and their permitting processes.
Sampling, or obtaining baseline data for the lake’s ecosystem, began last week and will continue for the next two months, McCarthy said. The second, more comprehensive phase — a three-year partnership — will include monitoring that requires more sophisticated equipment, such as remote sensors, to provide a constant flow of information.
“Right now it’s literally people in boats going out and testing,” McCarthy said.
The sensors need to be ordered, built and moved into place on the lake. Once they’re set up and calibrated the university will be able to upload the data. That next phase, too, will involve a bigger team to work on the project “pretty much nonstop,” he added.
“Lake Maurepas is part of our region too, and we’re part of this community,” McCarthy said. “We’ve been studying this area for a long time. It means a lot to us.”
Local environmental groups have expressed serious concerns about the two carbon capture projects planned for the area, citing the potential dangers of CO2 transport and the movement away from renewable energy options in favor of an expensive method they argue allows industry to continue polluting, among other concerns.
Wilma Subra with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network says extensive monitoring along the pipelines and near the wells themselves is critical.
She described how the CO2 could escape subsurface and extend out in large areas, or escape and come back to the surface where it could injure people.
“At the same time [it could] contaminate aquatic and terrestrial organisms, the sediment, the water,” she added. “It can absolutely destroy the environment in the bayou.”
Those in Tangipahoa Parish say that having public data may be helpful, but it doesn’t answer any of their concerns about what irreparable damage may be done to the lake, its wildlife or its boaters. They fear the project could pose a serious threat to the fishers and crabbers who have lived off the lake for generations, leaving the local economy “unprotected,” said Tangipahoa council member Kim Landry Coates.
“Is it just a feel-good strategy to try to get the people on board, instead of actually addressing [our] concerns?” Coates said.
“It’s fine they’re monitoring, but when something goes wrong, then what happens?”
Tangipahoa has not taken legal action or imposed a moratorium against Air Products; the company is not actually building within its bounds. But that doesn’t mean Tangipahoans are unaffected — many use the lake to fish or crab commercially, and even more use the lake as a vacation spot in the summertime.
Laramie Hill, a local crabber and Tangipahoa native, said the monitoring system “couldn’t hurt” and that he could imagine himself using it to help his business. But overall, he just feels like he’s fighting “a losing battle” to keep industry out of the lake his family’s lived off for generations.
To Hill, this monitoring system is making the best of a bad situation.
“If we got to have something in that lake, and nothing we can do to stop it, why not have something like that?”
Air Products supplied funding to the university to back the monitoring project, but McCarthy noted that because the financial support is funneled through the academic institution, the data is Southeastern’s intellectual property alone.
“That’s the advantage of a university. They could have hired a private company. If you do that, then the company is beholden to who is paying them,” McCarthy said. “While with us, we’re beholden to the public. That’s why we exist, for the public.”
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