Green Army Gen'l Honoré: War On Environment Is Next Generation's Vietnam

Fossil fuel industry’s free reign that Louisiana state lawmakers have provided to ravage the state’s coastline, swamps and lives must be fought, head of the Green Army, General Honore told a crowd of fans Thursday night in Lafayette.

“Every generation has a great challenge, and this is the Vietnam of the next generation,” said retired U.S. Army Gen. Russel Honoré to a crowd of admirers Thursday.

Honoré said that instead of shipping off to war, the next generation’s big challenge will be the environment.

The state’s adored retired General’s popularity catapulted during his leadership in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath when he helped turn around government’s dismal response to New Orleanians’ suffering.

Now Honoré leads the New Orleans-based Green Army, comprised of local environmental and human rights groups fighting fossil fuel industry’s gross abuses of Louisiana’s environment and people.

(Read SPECIAL REPORT: U.S. General Leading Revolutionary Army To Takeover Louisiana (VIDEOS))

‘Expiration date on clean drinking water’ 

“There’s an expiration date on clean drinking water in Louisiana and this is because of the acts of men, greed and a failed democracy — a democracy that put the flags of oil and gas companies over our state capital,” Honoré said Thursday, according to IND Media.

He was joined for a panel discussion at the Clifton Chenier Center, in Big Energy’s hub, Lafayette, by attorney Warren Perrin and John Barry.

Barry’s a former vice-president of Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East and now spearheading a lawsuit filed last year against 97 oil and gas companies for damage they’ve wreaked on Louisiana’s coast.

For decades, Louisiana state legislators have created an environment that puts oil and gas industry interests above the people’s interests, said Honoré on Thursday, pointing to lack of oversight by the state Department of Natural Resources.

That department alone has allowed 80 percent of mineral royalties owed to the state to go unpaid.

“Oil companies are allowed to self-report. They get to tell us what they got,” explains Honoré. “We also have 6,000 abandoned wells along our coastline because our legislature created a rule that if [the oil and gas companies] sign a piece of paper once a year saying that [they] may go back, then they don’t have to cap those wells.”

Barry told The IND’s editorial staff that the SLFPA-E lawsuit is bound to meet heavy opposition in the upcoming legislative session, as industry lobbyists and Gov. Jindal, who did not reappoint Barry to the board after his term expired late last year, have vowed to kill the suit.

Though Barry no longer sits on the board, he’s still actively involved in preventing the derailment of the SLFPA-E lawsuit through his nonprofit Restore Louisiana Now.

“All we’re asking is what every parent or teacher asks of their kids: Keep your word, obey the law, and take responsibility for your actions,” says Barry.

According to Louisiana’s Coastal Zone Regulations, that’s backed by state law, when oil and gas companies sign permits for drilling, or dredging exploration canals, they are agreeing to return the land to its “pre-existing condition”. That, however, rarely happens, according to Barry.

“And despite a number of studies showing the industry has caused up to 80 percent of Louisiana’s total coastal land loss, he points to an industry sanctioned study that still attributes 36 percent of that erosion to oil and gas operations between 1932 and 1990,” IND reported.

“There’s not a single scientific study that says the industry isn’t responsible,” said Barry, who added that although the state has a master plan for how to fix the problem, its $50 billion price tag, as of now, will mostly be footed by taxpayers, not industry.

“Beginning in March, the industry and our governor have promised to kill the lawsuit in the Legislature,” explained Barry at Thursday night’s panel discussion. “What they’re saying is ‘We’re above the law,’ and I don’t think they are. It’s up to us to make sure the law applies to them as it does to everyone else.”

If the suit survives the session, Barry expects it will result in a negotiated settlement, he said.

While the SLFPA-E lawsuit only applies to the coastal land east of the Mississippi River, its filing last July prompted a number of coastal parishes to file similar lawsuits against the industry.

Though Barry says the parish suits may have delayed a settlement in the SLFA-E case, in the long run, he says the multitude of suits could result in a statewide solution, considering the levee board’s suit survives the upcoming session.

Despite Jindal’s pledge to stop the suit, a recent poll commissioned by Restore Louisiana shows that a majority of coastal Louisianans do not share the governor’s sentiment. Of the 1,000 respondents, 74 percent were against a legislative intervention, while 90 percent agree that the oil and gas industry should pay. In Acadiana, despite its designation as the Hub City of the oil and gas industry, 62 percent of the people polled were against intervention by the Legislature.

While Louisiana Oil and Gas Association President Don Briggs and other naysayers are quick to say any attack on the industry will lead to a mass exodus leaving countless Louisianans jobless, Barry says that’s “highly unlikely.”

Gen. Honoré says such claims are nothing short of “psychological warfare,” and that tactic, he says, has been used too long on the people of Louisiana.

According to Honoré, it’s time to put up a fight and take the state back.

Below is a video of Honoré as keynote speaker at the Customized Logistics and Delivery Association (CLDA) Annual Meeting last year in New Orleans, showing his no-nonsense leadership to help the U.S. recapture the spirit that made it great. His deeply-held principles for leading in the 21st century from Wall Street, to Main Street, to what he calls “Railroad Street” — are ever present and gaining momentum in his Green Army – well, at least in Louisiana’s deep south.

Also read: SPECIAL REPORT: U.S. General Leading Revolutionary Army To Takeover Louisiana (VIDEOS)