‘I want out’: how a natural gas project along the Gulf coast is upending residents’ lives

When America’s newest gas giant arrives in your town, the world turns upside down.

Residents of Plaquemines parish, 70 miles south of New Orleans, say they have faced unreliable essential services, water shortages and impassible traffic since 2021, when Venture Global began construction on what will become one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) hubs .

The terminal, which will export up to 20m metric tons of gas annually when it is completed, is among the largest of seven such sites under construction along the Gulf coast.

Built amid a surge of US LNG exports that began in 2016, the terminals often dwarf the small towns they are sited in, depleting local resources including water, road space and emergency services. Residents in this community of 23,000 say the issues are quickly making their home unlivable, while local officials and records corroborate many of their claims.

The LNG buildout is “totally destroying this whole peaceful fishing community”, said Marcus Ray, whose family has been in the area for generations. Ray, a project manager for an electric company, said that after months of water contamination and shortages, he and his wife have been spending about $100 a month on bottled water to make coffee and cook.

Ray and his wife, Denise Orgeron, said an afternoon trip from their home to the grocery store in town has gone from 30 minutes to more than two hours.

“We’ve got to go through [town] to see our kids and grandkids, and we can’t really do that now because of traffic,” said Ray.

Orgeron said she was afraid of the upcoming storm season. “It’s going to be a nightmare” to evacuate ahead of a hurricane, she said. “I don’t care if I have to live in a cardboard box – I want out.”

They recently applied to a state agency for a buyout.

Ambulances ‘trying to part the Red Sea’

Even for ambulances, the dense traffic is like “trying to part the Red Sea”, said Kristine Whatley, a paramedic in Plaquemines parish for 22 years. She said that Emergency Medical Services (EMS) were already overstressed, and once Venture Global arrived, she got even more calls and fought worse traffic. “I felt like at times I was having a nervous breakdown, because I was just running and running and running,” she said.

Whatley said that construction-related dust in the air, dirt on the roads, and flashing lights near the plant have made for unsafe road conditions. “A lot of [the crashes] are around the LNG plant,” she said. Public records show that between March and July of this year, EMS responded to 19 crashes at the plant and 54 calls overall – meaning that on average, an ambulance responded to an emergency call at the LNG plant every two or three days.

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When asked about the EMS calls, Venture Global stated that only one was a “work-related incident”. The company did not respond to additional questions about how its operations were affecting Plaquemines parish residents .

Capt Chaun Domingue, a spokesperson for the Plaquemines parish sheriff’s office, confirmed via email: “Traffic incidents have increased, including traffic stops and citations.”

Plaquemines was already an ambulance desert , with only three vehicles serving residents along 65 miles of the Mississippi River, and incidents at the plant have added to the strain. Calls to EMS have risen about 90% since construction of the plant began in 2021, according to a source familiar with medical services in Plaquemines, who asked to remain unnamed because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Parish officials who oversee local emergency services did not respond to queries about EMS calls.

In combination, the overwhelmed emergency services and brutal traffic put residents’ lives at risk, said Whatley. “Time is heart muscle. Time is brain, for a stroke,” she said. “Anything can turn bad within minutes.”

Last year, Whatley realized she couldn’t take the strain any more. She retired from the job she loved and moved away.

‘If my house catches afire, it’s gonna burn down’

The Guardian first reported in January that Venture Global was using as much as a quarter of all water in Plaquemines parish. In April, spokespeople with the area’s water system operator acknowledged that Venture Global was affecting residents’ water pressure.

The Guardian reviewed several photos taken earlier this year showing the parish-installed gauge at the fire station reading below 20lb of pressure per square inch, or PSI. Water pressure is considered low when it falls below 40 PSI, and below 20, bacteria can contaminate the water supply.

“My water’s not safe,” said Henry McAnespy, the volunteer firefighter who took the photos. McAnespy said his brother and pregnant niece have already moved inland due to fears the water and traffic could endanger her health.

After months of pushback from residents, the parish directed Venture Global to stop drawing water from nearby fire hydrants, and water pressure improved. But McAnespy still fears what could happen if the company depletes the local water supply again.

Last August, when a marsh fire burned toward his home, McAnespy and the rest of town’s volunteer firefighters stood ready to fight the flames.

“We got ready, we opened the spout – and a little trickle came out the end of the hose,” McAnespy recalled. “Wouldn’t even go 2ft out.” It was the second time during that summer’s unprecedented drought and wildfires that the local fire crew’s hoses had run dry. The fire burned out before reaching any homes. But for McAnespy, it was an ominous sign that resources were being directed to the LNG plant at the expense of residents. Parish officials did not comment on that claim.

“If my house catches afire, it’s gonna burn down,” he said to parish officials at a community meeting this spring.

‘You can smell it’ : reports of raw sewage

Venture Global has received permits to have up to 6,000 workers on-site at any one time, while Domingue from the sheriff’s office said up to 12,000 workers enter the parish each day, equivalent to about half of Plaquemines parish’s population. Many have come in from out-of-state , straining the housing supply.

About 2,000 of these workers have settled in RV parks outside the parish floodwall, according to Shannta Carter, a spokesperson for Plaquemines parish. Many of these camps are hastily built, bare-bones and lack proper permits. Neighbors have complained of raw sewage leaking from unpermitted RVs. ”[It] is going into our water, and we’re fishing in it,” said Marlene Ruiz, who said such ad hoc settlements have sprung up beside her home. Her husband, Bryan, added: “When you go down there, you can smell it [sewage].”

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Unpermitted RVs are “a health concern, especially if they’re not connected up to code with plumbing, drainage, sewer, water – those types of things are health risks”, said Ametra Rose, an official with the parish’s permits office. She said she was not aware of any complaints that unpermitted RVs were leaking raw sewage.

Ruiz doesn’t blame the workers – with no new housing for the influx, “there’s nothing left” to house them, she said.

‘Who in their right mind would come and buy my property?’

Residents also worry about what will happen once the plant is operational, which is scheduled for later this year.

Ruiz, a retired nurse, fears her community will become the next “ Cancer Alley ” – an infamous stretch of petrochemical facilities along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, whose residents suffer high rates of environment-related illnesses.

She worries that air pollution will worsen her asthma, and that the plant’s plans to dump hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater into nearby Lake Judge Perez will poison its waters. (The Louisiana department of environmental quality, which in July authorized Venture Global to discharge up to 128m gallons per day into the lake, wrote in the permit that “discharges from Venture Global are not expected to ... have an adverse impact on Lake Judge Perez”.)

Ruiz wants to sell her home immediately. But, she said, “who in their right mind would come and buy my property?”

Venture Global, which purchased a handful of residential properties in 2021, should be compelled to purchase the homes of those who want to flee, she said. “If you want the land, just buy us out. And then Plaquemines parish can become a natural gas facility,” she said. “They can own the whole region.”