Activists rally community against gas exports on Gulf Coast

Yale Environment 360: What inspired you to found Vessel Project?

Roisietta Ozané: In 2020, I lost everything in Hurricanes Laura and Delta and found myself homeless with my six children. I realized that the community I live in is surrounded by billion-dollar industries and has very few resources for people like me. I took to Facebook and asked, “Does anyone need help?” Many people needed food. Many needed water. Some were newly homeless.

I was looking at the connections between industrial pollution, the storms happening in Louisiana and Texas, and the industries that were being proposed for construction on the Gulf Coast. When I heard about plans for 20 LNG terminals, I began to understand how all of this was connected. My first question was, “Where are they going?” I had an overwhelming feeling that they would displace even more Black communities. I didn’t want that to happen. So I wanted to educate people.

360: No What does it mean that The Vessel Project is a “mutual aid” organization?

Osaga: We don’t receive any funding from the federal government. We get small grants from a few organizations, but a lot of our funding comes from crowdsourcing from all over the United States. I help people with food, shelter, water, clothing, utility payments, rent payments, etc. But they come to our community outreach meetings and they protest. [In late June] I was able to organize over 200 people from Texas and Louisiana to march with over 1,000 people down Wall Street to demand that banks stop funding environmental racism in our communities. I can’t tell people in my community that CP2 is coming when I can’t feed my family or pay the rent. We will build our community from the ground up so that our community is strong enough to withstand any hardship.

360: No Have you already noticed the impacts that the petrochemical industry has on our air and water?

Osaga: I’m originally from Mississippi. When I first came to Louisiana in 2003, I could see the fires and smoke and I immediately knew these industries were bad. One day the air smelled like rotten eggs, the next day it smelled like Clorox. It made me sick. One of my sisters who worked in a petrochemical plant was diagnosed with cancer at age 30. Her job was to observe flames big and small, but not know what was coming out of those flames.

Three of my children have eczema and two have asthma. My son was recently diagnosed with epilepsy. He started having seizures last year at age 17. The first seizure happened while driving between two facilities where flares were being fired. The flares are big, bright and are seizure inducing. It was also a few days after the explosion. [a local refinery]I tried to get answers, but everyone I spoke to said that the chemicals released by these facilities leave my blood quickly.

360: No Does anyone keep track of cancer, asthma, and epilepsy rates in the area?

Osaga: There have been studies done by Tulane University and Louisiana State University, but the studies I saw were industry funded and biased. Louisiana has said that while cancer rates are rising, they are not being driven by industry growth. The third Louisiana has the number one cancer rate in the nation. People hear about Cancer Alley but don’t realize that the entire state of Louisiana is a cancer state. I live about 3.5 hours away from Cancer Alley, but my area is surrounded by over a dozen petrochemical and gas facilities and three LNG facilities.

360: No How does liquefied natural gas harm the environment even before it is burned?

Osaga: LNG is produced by supercooling gas into a liquid, a process that releases methane into the atmosphere. Shipping it across the ocean means more tanker traffic, more dredging, more pollution, and more contaminated seafood. All for export, driving up domestic energy costs. Natural gas prices in Southwest Louisiana are some of the highest in the state.

360: No But will it bring jobs and infrastructure?

Osaga: They are not providing the number of jobs they promised, and the people who work in the facilities are leaving due to cancer. If they are bringing in so many high-paying jobs, why are these communities in the state they are in? Why are people still contacting my organization asking for help paying rent and utilities?

360: No To what extent does racism play a role in all of this?

Osaga: Racism plays a big role. They were built in low-income and communities of color while white and wealthy people said, “We don’t want these facilities in our neighborhoods.” The Vessel Project fought coal in Westlake, Louisiana, and soon after coal came LNG. And soon after LNG, [new] Petrochemical plants, and soon after, CCS [carbon capture and sequestration]It happens over and over again to the same communities.

360: No How explicitly has climate change been included in the discussion at Vessel Project?

Osaga: This work has taught me that if you want to bring people to the table, you have to be gentle when talking about politicized issues. So, even though we don’t necessarily say the words “climate change,” people understand that something is wrong when two historic hurricanes hit the same area back-to-back. Then the flooding happens, and then the ice builds up, and the hurricanes are pushed aside.

We’re talking about Republican states in the South, so we take that out of the conversation and try to teach people that the environment starts with your body. If you’re not breathing clean air and clean water, you’re not healthy. You’re not going to feel good, you’re not going to go to work, you’re not being your best self. We talk about industrial pollution and methane emissions. We’re having a crawfish boil and we talk about how there were fewer crawfish this year than last year, and someone in the audience will say, “That’s because of climate change.” We don’t have to say on a flyer that we’re talking about climate change, but by connecting the dots, people understand.