06/11/2026
‼️‼️‼️Attention‼️‼️‼️
⚠️⚠️⚠️PSA⚠️⚠️⚠️
Public hearing tonight at the Johnson bayou community center. !
If you cannot attend in person you can still submit crucial public comments by email to [email protected]!! Please remember to include the AI and permit numbers as you will see below in the comments submitted today by FISH.
⚠️‼️Please do not hesitate to reach out by email or phone for assistance or questions !!! [email protected] or 337-215-0510 .
📝📝📢📢You do not have to be an experienced public speaker or comment writer to help keep our voices loud and the pressure turned all the way up on LDEQ. Do not be intimidated into silence !!!! We have to hold regulators accountable and keep our paper trails going!
FISH’S comments submitted on this matter today are as followed :
LDEQ Public Participation Group
P.O. Box 4313
Baton Rouge, LA 70821
Re: AI Number 119267, Permit Numbers 3184-V0 and PSD-LA-864, Activity Numbers PER20250007 and PER20250008
Sabine Pass LNG, LP and Sabine Pass Liquefaction, LLC Sabine Pass LNG Terminal – Trains 7-9
Dear Public Participation Group:
My name is Robyn Thigpen, Executive Director of Fishermen Involved in Sustaining Our Heritage (FISH), an organization representing more than 180 fishing families and coastal residents across Southwest Louisiana. I submit these comments on behalf of community members whose lives, livelihoods, and future are directly affected by the continued industrial expansion being proposed along our coast. I am also a lifelong resident of SWLA.
After reviewing the permit application and associated Environmental Assessment Statement, I am left with a simple question: at what point do regulators finally acknowledge that our communities have already given enough?
For years, Southwest Louisiana has been treated as a sacrifice zone for the fossil fuel industry. Project after project has been approved while residents are told that each individual permit will have “no significant impact.” Yet when we step outside our homes, look at our waterways, examine our fisheries, and listen to the stories of families who have lived here for generations, we see the cumulative reality that regulators continue to ignore.
At this point my repeated comment letters are starting to sound redundant but the facts do not change so we will go through the spill every time.
The proposal before you cannot be evaluated in isolation.
Sabine Pass LNG already operates one of the largest LNG export facilities in the world. Additional emissions from Trains 7-9 must be considered alongside emissions from the existing facility and alongside the modifications currently proposed for Trains 1-6. Communities do not experience pollution permit-by-permit. They experience it as one continuous burden on their air, water, health, and quality of life.
Our fishing families have watched industrial expansion transform the coast at a pace never before seen. We have witnessed wetlands disappear, waterways become increasingly industrialized, vessel traffic explode, and environmental protections weakened in the name of corporate profit. Every new permit is presented as if it exists in a vacuum, while the cumulative impacts continue to mount.
The Environmental Assessment Statement repeatedly dismisses concerns about aquatic ecosystems, underwater noise, vessel traffic, thermal impacts, invasive species, and air pollution. These conclusions are particularly troubling because they conflict with what coastal residents and fishermen are witnessing firsthand. WE THE PEOPLE have begged and pleaded time and time again. We are forced to live beside the very operations you all keep approving while ignoring the reality you have created for us to live in.
The agencies and consultants may conclude that fish, shrimp, crabs, oysters, and wildlife have become “acclimated” to industrial activity. Our members see something very different. They see declining fisheries, shrinking harvests, changing ecosystems, and increasing industrial pressure on waters that have sustained generations of Louisiana families.
The notion that adding more vessel traffic, more emissions, more noise, more thermal discharges, and more industrial infrastructure will somehow have no meaningful effect on the environment defies both common sense and lived experience.
Equally concerning is the continued failure to adequately address disaster risk. Southwest Louisiana is one of the most hurricane-prone regions in the United States. We know firsthand what storm surge can do. We know what happens when critical infrastructure fails during extreme weather events. Yet these risks are consistently minimized in environmental reviews despite the obvious dangers posed by increasingly intense storms and a rapidly industrializing coastline.
As an organization representing fishing families, we are also deeply concerned about the dramatic increase in LNG vessel traffic associated with this proposal. The Sabine-Neches Waterway is already heavily congested. Additional LNG carriers will increase risks to navigation, create further disturbances to aquatic ecosystems, and add to the industrialization of waters that support commercial and recreational fishing throughout the region.
One of the most disturbing things is the broader pattern this permit represents.
The people of Southwest Louisiana are repeatedly not asked but told to accept more pollution, more risk, more industrialization, and more uncertainty while receiving fewer and fewer assurances that their interests matter. Regulatory agencies continue to approve expansion after expansion while communities are left to absorb all of the consequences and risks while multibillion dollar corporations line their pockets even more. The community cannot afford to treat the illnesses these BILLION DOLLAR companies are leaving at our doorsteps. We cannot afford fuel and groceries. WE CANNOT AFFORD OUR ELECTRICITY BILLS .
Fishermen, deckhands, seafood processors, small business owners, and coastal residents deserve more than assumptions, modeling exercises, and predetermined conclusions. They deserve honest evaluations, meaningful consideration of cumulative impacts, and a regulatory process that prioritizes public welfare over corporate expansion.
The burden should not fall on communities to prove harm after permits are issued. The burden should fall on applicants to demonstrate beyond doubt that their projects will not further damage the people and ecosystems that already bear the weight of decades of industrial development.
Until cumulative impacts are fully evaluated and the concerns of affected communities are meaningfully addressed, these permits should not be approved.
Southwest Louisiana is not merely an industrial corridor. It is our home. It is where families have fished, worked, worshipped, and raised children for generations. Regulators have a responsibility to protect those communities, not simply accommodate the next phase of expansion.
Sadly the last piece to this comment letter is something I have automatically started including in all LDEQ comment letters because every time I pray that even ONE person in your department will be listening.
We were told to show up at meetings from local to state even federal, we have and we do . We were told to write public comments , so we educated ourselves and brought that back to the community. We've shown up in numbers, community members forced to become advocates because the truth is our local government continues to fail us , our state government continues to fail us and federal government continues to fail us.
What has changed ? NOT A SINGLE THING, proof that the meaningful community engagement that is a requirement of these processes means nothing to the very agencies that are meant to protect WE THE PEOPLE and our environment.
LDEQ has the authority to demand stronger safeguards, stronger scrutiny, stronger monitoring, and stronger accountability. The question is whether this agency has the courage and integrity to use that authority.
I urge LDEQ to reject weak oversight, reject complacency, and reject the idea that industrial expansion matters more than the people and ecosystems of this region.
Please do your job before even more irreversible damage is done.
If the duty and responsibility that comes with your position and your department doesn't compel you to step up then let it be your moral obligation that finally pulls you to do the right thing by WE THE PEOPLE.
AND if that is still not enough -
I ask again as I have many times before today,
PLEASE STEP DOWN SO WE HAVE A SHOT AT SOMEONE ACTUALLY STEPPING UP TO DO WHAT THE JOB REQUIRES.
We need people that refuse to accept any agenda other than the agenda of the people you are suppose to be representing. The governor does not speak for us , the police jury/local government does not speak for us and your department hasn't spoke for us in a way that truly represents the reality that we are forced to live in every day. It's time to change that.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Respectfully,
Robyn Thigpen, a lifelong resident of SWLA
Executive Director
Fishermen Involved in Sustaining Our Heritage (FISH)
Public meeting set for June 11 on Sabine Pass LNG expansion in Southwest LA
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality will hold a public hearing on draft air permits for the Stage 5 expansion project at the Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. The project would add three new liquefaction units to the existing Sabine Pass LNG Terminal, increasing the facility’s export capacity by almost 20 million metric tons per year. The project would also include a new 55-mile gas pipeline and two new compressor stations. The hearing will be at 6 p.m. on June 11 at the Johnson Bayou Community Center, 5556 Gulf Beach Highway, Johnson Bayou, LA 70631.
https://oilandgaswatch.org/alert/c537e151-a94c-4ded-9941-2f7ad6a446cb
Healthy Gulf, For a Better Bayou, The Vessel Project of Louisiana, FISH - Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage, Micah Six Eight Mission
