This story was originally published by the Louisiana Illuminator.
A grassroots environmental group says this week’s explosion of a natural gas pipeline in Cameron Parish is why its community air monitoring mission needs to be expanded.
The Habitat Recovery Project has tracked air quality in the area since December as part of its monitoring of nearby liquified natural gas export facilities. Its air monitoring equipment, positioned 25 miles away from where Tuesday’s explosion happened, recorded a spike in potentially harmful pollution one hour after the blast.
Its monitor tracked a steep spike in particulate matter at the time of the explosion and a substantial increase in volatile organic compounds four hours afterwards as natural gas from the pipe burned. VOCs, such as benzene, can cause short-term irritation to lungs and airways, while long-term exposure is linked to diseases such as cancer and liver problems.
The 28-mile-long pipeline near Holly Beach and Johnson Bayou burst into flames while crews were performing routine maintenance, Cameron Parish officials confirmed Tuesday afternoon. Louisiana State Police reported one maintenance worker sustained minor injuries, and the fire has now stopped.
“We’re not really sure what happened to cause the mishap. They were cleaning the line out when the rupture happened,” said Ashley Buller, assistant director for the Cameron Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness.
The principal at nearby Johnson Bayou High School, about 6 miles from the explosion, kept students inside during recess as a precautionary measure, Buller said, with no official shelter-in-place order issued.
The pipeline is owned by Delfin LNG, which is developing three LNG storage vessels the company will station off the Louisiana coast. State Police Trooper Roy Jones, public information officer for Troop D, said the agency’s hazardous materials team will investigate the cause of the rupture and compile a report in the coming days.
Even with the VOC spike, air quality near the monitor was relatively safe, likely because the explosion was nearly an hour away. But Misha Mayeur, deputy director with the Habitat Recovery Project, said the readings are still valuable to keep community members aware of what they were breathing and validating the group’s persistence in monitoring air quality near industry.
“Having public-facing air monitoring data allows for people to validate their experiences and then choose to act accordingly if they want to put on a mask, if they may not want to go outside as much,” she said. “… It’s giving you real time updates every 15 minutes, so that feels like it is a huge win for accessibility of information.”
Gunnar Schade, an associate professor with Texas A&M’s Center for Atmospheric Sciences, said this type of explosion can emit VOCs that air monitoring would capture, even as far away as the one the Habitat Recovery Project uses.
“Depending on what they actually measure and how big the event was, it’s entirely possible that it’s picked up,” Schade said.
The professor said he analyzed a similar situation with a gas well blowout in Texas, where state-operated air monitors detected pollutants “many tens of miles away.” While simply recording increases in VOCs “doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s dangerous,” having access to quick information about air quality can be valuable for people living nearby, Schade said.
“Living close to a hazardous piece of industrial equipment is not fun,” he said, adding that accidents like this do happen and have the potential to negatively impact air quality.
“It’s the same with any type of hazardous operation where you’re transporting highly flammable fossil fuels.”
Jennifer Richmond-Bryant, an associate professor with the North Carolina State University College of Natural Resources, studies human exposure to air pollution and said accessible information is exactly the point of having community air monitors.
“The community monitoring effort can seek to really accomplish a couple things, one of which is reassuring the community, if, if there is or is not, in fact, potential issue,” she said.
“There’s also this bigger policy issue that communities can effectively take this information, be empowered by it, and say, ‘This is where we want to draw in the state government to provide support,’ because that’s their job,” she said.
Richmond-Bryant co-authored a recent publication on Louisiana’s Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act and how it undermines efforts to increase surveillance of nearby industry pollution levels. The law, approved in 2024, prevents data from monitors without U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certification from being used in any regulatory enforcement or legal action against alleged industrial sources of pollution. Most community environmental groups do not have the resources needed to purchase EPA-approved monitoring equipment.
“It puts communities in a very precarious situation,” Richmond-Bryant said
Financial penalties for violating the state law can reach $30,000, which also deters local air monitoring efforts even for education or awareness, she added.
“Oftentimes community groups, especially in communities that are already overburdened, that might have a lower economic base, that’s not affordable,” she said. “The end result of this kind of policy is to discourage people from doing their own personal monitoring and sharing it out with other members of their own community.”
Mayeur with the Habitat Recovery Project said the group wants to expand its program to keep track of each LNG facility in Cameron Parish, where there is always the potential for another pollution producing accident.
“Hopefully they never happen, but they inevitably will happen,” she said.
