Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré recruits St. Martin fishermen

Nobody will ever accuse Jody Meche of being a shrinking violet, of not projecting his voice, or of using wimpy passive verbs. If Bobby Jindal is a machine gun, Meche, vice president of the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association West, is an M777 howitzer.

A commercial fisherman and the descendant of fishermen, hunters and trappers, Meche has often over the years leapt to his feet to bellow at politicians and bureaucrats about threats and actual losses of access to the wild waters of the Atchafalaya Basin for himself and his people. “Truth to Power” is his middle name.

Nor is he a lone voice crying in the wilderness. LCPAW President Mike Bienvenu is a canny strategist, and they’re backed by a membership of hundreds of commercial and sport fishermen, trappers, hunters, photographers, naturalists, paddlers and birders. This includes the indefatigable environmentalist Harold Schoeffler of the local Sierra Club, and crackerjack Lafayette attorneys Joseph “Buzzy” Joy and Gordon Schoeffler.

Lately they’ve teamed up with Atchafalaya Basinkeeper Dean Wilson of Bayou Sorrel, which brings the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic and the aerial watchdog organization SouthWings into the phalanx.

They succeeded in getting a federal judge to declare a perched lake surrounded by private land to be nonetheless navigable and thus open to the public. But that ruling applied only to that one lake. To secure unqualified access to the hundreds of lakes and streams that have historically been the fishing, hunting and trapping grounds of the swamp dwellers, they would have to take someone to court on each individual water body.

A massive and long-running suit over slipshod laying and maintenance of pipelines, which affects water quality as well as access, has been settled out of court. The plaintiffs, all hardworking fishermen, will get some money for what they’ve suffered over the years in lost income. But it remains unclear if the practice of digging lateral ditches across the path of the seasonal floods, throwing up illegal levees and blocking natural watercourses, will ever be publicly decried, let alone repaired.

A call by LCPAW to delineate the boundaries between private and public lands in the Basin was rebuffed by the state and the courts.

It’s an uneven fight at best. The extraction of oil and gas produces a lot more money than fishing for crawfish. Not that the two activities are mutually exclusive. It’s about where the money is going. One day, some judge might question why private citizens are getting mineral royalties from “lands” where commercial fishermen in 20-foot boats with 200-horse outboards are catching crawfish.

But time and nature are on the landowners’ side. As the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers funnels more than the Atchafalaya River’s share of Mississippi sand and silt between the Basin’s levees, lakes are rapidly disappearing. By law, land accumulating this way still belongs to the public, but the state, which would not be party to the suit over boundaries, continues to ignore the issue.

Landowners have accepted thousands of dollars in environmental easements – promising not to develop their properties in the Basin – and then, using Corps of Engineers permits for temporary board roads, built permanent limestone roads to hunting camps and well locations, blocking natural waterways. The state ignores the violation of the easements and the Corps gives the landowners after-the-fact construction permits.

In short, it’s David and Goliath but with no likelihood of an upset.

Into this mess last week stepped “one John Wayne dude” (so dubbed by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin) that the fishermen and the lawyers all knew well – by reputation, at least. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led the National Guard to help rescue the thousands stranded in New Orleans after Katrina, is the point of a brand-new spear called the Green Army, a collection of peoples aggrieved by the ham-handedness of the oil and gas industry and the reticence of its regulators.

Residents of Bayou Corne, many of whom have had to flee the ever-growing sinkhole there, coaxed the general out of retirement because they were frustrated with the lack of official action. Honoré soon became aware of other situations with a haunting similarity. Residents at Lake Peigneur, site of another disastrous salt dome failure, worrying about the natural gas company increasing the vast caverns below them. Over at Baton Rouge, industry sucking billions of gallons of ground water from the Southern Hills aquifer, threatening the source of East Baton Rouge tap water with saltwater intrusion, and paying not a dime for it.

“Democracy is not serving our people well in Louisiana,” boomed Honoré. “Politicians lining their own pockets have squandered our future.”

He was addressing the annual meeting of the LCPAW in the Catahoula Elementary gym, searching the crowd with a gimlet eye for politicians. With his Have-Gun-Will-Travel moustache and military bearing, Honoré is a formidable presence at the mic. He spotted St. Martin Parish President Guy Cormier and leveled a .45-caliber finger at him. “You, Mr. President!” He bellowed. “The parish needs to sue because the public is not getting a fair share [of the oil and gas royalties].

“If Louisiana keeps on the road it’s on, the state will not be the same in 20 years,” he said.

Honoré, who once led an army of a half a million, believes that superior numbers are the answer.

“When I call for you, I need you to come,” he said to the crowd. “We can’t sue ExxonMobil [over the unfettered use of ground water] because the law says they can do what they do. But we can show up with a thousand grandmamas, each with a grandbaby in her arms, at the refinery gate. And we’re gonna tell the world what kind of company you are.”

Honoré says he’s not against oil and gas, noting the jobs the industry brings, but Louisiana’s political environment, “has allowed the extraction companies to self-regulate, self-repair, and negotiate their fines.

“I’m an advocate for this industry, oil and gas, but I’m also an advocate for if you break it, you fix it,” he has said.

Honoré’s package of proposals includes barring former industry officials from working for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, requiring legislators to recuse themselves from voting on matters affecting companies that have given them campaign contributions, and reducing subsidies to the oil, gas and pipeline industries.

Gamely following the general to the podium was Parish President Guy Cormier, who said he had been well-prepared for Honoré challenge by Jody Meche, who harangues him at every opportunity.

“I gotta say, though, [Gen. Honoré] is Jody Meche on steroids!”

Before this crowd, at this time in history, that was a great compliment and a huge source of hope.