RFK Jr. The Defender - Defending American Wetlands with Dean Wilson

Captain Dean Wilson is the Executive Director of the Atchafalaya Basin Keeper in Louisiana. He grew up in Spain, and then he came to Louisiana in 1984 en route to the Amazon. After living in the basin s deep swamps for four months with only a spear, a few hooks and a bow and arrow, he fell in love with the swamps, lakes, and bayous and the rivers of the Achapalaya basin. He is a proud member of the Water Keeper Alliance, and his passion for the basin is known to all who know him when he is not out patrolling or educating communities about the basin and its threats and treasures. He works with his family, owned and operated a swamp tour business called Last Wilderness Swamp Tours, and he is one of my great heroes. I'm fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in the Basin and spent a summer living with him for a summer in the middle of the swamp with Dean and his family. I m really glad that we got to have him on the podcast today. Thank you, Dean! -Bobby & Pam at the Chafala Basin Keeper The Chafalia Basin is the largest forested wildland in North America. It is larger than the Everglades. It s spread out in a bunch of tributaries, and the biggest part of that was the largest and the first distributary of the Mississippi River. And so it s one of the biggest migratory staging grounds for water birds and shore birds in North American or anywhere in the world. And for many of them, the wetlands in the coast of the Delta is where they breathe and feed and feed, and they can go all the way to Alaska. And they fly from Yucatán across the Gulf of Mexico through the other places in the other parts of the Western Hemisphere. - And they don t like to fly over hills over flat areas. The Mississippi River when they fly over the North And South Flyway in the North and they do all of them in the South and they re not like that? - That s right, they fly to the South And the Atlantic Flyway, they can fly to Alaska and they have all the places that they do it in the south and they are in the And they can come to Alaska, they have the best of the South, they are all of that And they have it all of the places and they . - --

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:00.000 My guest today is my friend, Captain Dean Wilson, who is Executive Director of the Atchafalaya Basin Keeper in Louisiana.

00:00:09.000 He's American-born, believe it or not, when you hear his accent, but he grew up in Spain, and then he came to Louisiana in 1984 en route to the Amazon, where he was going to live after living in the basin's deep swamps for four months with only a spear, a few hooks, and a bow and arrow.

00:00:30.000 Dean fell in love with the swamps, lakes, and bayous and rivers of the Atchipalaya Basin.

00:00:36.000 Dean chose to stay in the basin working as a commercial fisherman before forming Basin Keeper in 2004.

00:00:44.000 He is a proud member of the Water Keeper Alliance.

00:00:48.000 Dean's passion for the basin is known to all who know him when he is not out patrolling or educating communities about the basin and has many threats and treasures.

00:00:59.000 He works with his family owned and operated a swamp tour business called Last Wilderness Swamp Tours.

00:01:06.000 I'm fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in the basin with Dean.

00:01:11.000 My son lived with him for a summer and worked before he went to college.

00:01:17.000 It was a really exciting summer living in the middle of the swamp with Dean and a whole arsenal of weaponry, which my son was kind of surprised about.

00:01:26.000 But at that time, Dean was targeted by the cypress industry.

00:01:31.000 And there were a lot of people interested in silencing him.

00:01:35.000 But, Dean, you're one of my great heroes, and I'm really glad that we got to have you on the podcast today.

00:01:43.000 Thank you, Bobby.

00:01:43.000 You're one of mine.

00:01:44.000 Thanks.

00:01:45.000 So, tell us about the Atchvalia Foundation.

00:01:48.000 Well, the Chafalaya Basin is the largest forested wildland in North America.

00:01:53.000 It is larger than the Everglades.

00:01:56.000 We have over 800,000 acres of forested wildlands and over half a million acres of moors.

00:02:03.000 It is the basin of the Chafalaya River, which used to be the first distributary of the Mississippi River.

00:02:09.000 The Mississippi River used to have a lot of distributaries spreading the water and the sediments from the coast of Louisiana.

00:02:15.000 The first one was the Atahafalaya River.

00:02:18.000 So it's the basin of the river.

00:02:19.000 So this was before the levees were created.

00:02:23.000 The Mississippi River, when it approached the coast, is spread out in a bunch of braided tributaries and The biggest part of that was the Achapalaya Basin.

00:02:35.000 It was the largest and the first distributary.

00:02:38.000 And so it's one of the biggest migratory staging grounds for water birds and shore birds in North America or anywhere in the world.

00:02:48.000 Yes, that's right.

00:02:49.000 So we have birds that come from the tropics every year, like hummingbirds, sunbirds, herons, peregrine falcons, kites, you know, they're called neotropical migrants.

00:03:01.000 And it's divided in two populations.

00:03:03.000 The eastern North American population that goes to the east, the western North American population that goes to the west.

00:03:10.000 So nearly the entire eastern North American population of these birds and many species of the western population come through the coast of Louisiana.

00:03:18.000 The Mississippi Delta is one of the largest in the world.

00:03:20.000 Birds don't like to fly over hills.

00:03:22.000 They like to fly over flat areas.

00:03:24.000 So what they do is they fly from Yucatán across the Gulf of Mexico through the coast of Louisiana.

00:03:30.000 For many of them, the wetlands of the Delta is the most important habitat by itself.

00:03:37.000 That's where they breathe and feed, you know.

00:03:39.000 For many other ones, they step over to go to, they can go Central Flyway toward the Pacific Flyway or along the coast to the Atlantic Flyway, and they can go all the way to Alaska.

00:03:51.000 So, you picture, you know, the ecology of the planet, the Western Hemisphere, and you see all these migratory bursts coming to North America through Louisiana.

00:04:00.000 You have all the wetlands in the coast.

00:04:02.000 The wetlands in the coast are disappearing.

00:04:04.000 Sea level is rising.

00:04:05.000 There is no hope to save those wetlands.

00:04:07.000 So, you look like 50 to 100 years in the future, the only wetlands that we have left, and especially forested wetlands, will be the area that are away from the coast.

00:04:17.000 With the Chakalaya Basin, we'll be the largest And most important of all of them.

00:04:22.000 So, for the ecology of the planet, we're talking about probably the most important single ecosystem in the whole in North America for migratory birds.

00:04:30.000 On top of that, the Chafalaya Basin have the most productive wetlands in the entire world.

00:04:36.000 Now, productivity is different than diversity.

00:04:38.000 Like, if you go to a tropical wetland, it's going to have more species of birds and mammals and animals, you know.

00:04:44.000 The Chafalaya Basin is more productive, meaning you have more quantity per acreage.

00:04:49.000 The reason being that we have the largest production of wild crawfish in the entire world.

00:04:53.000 So, you know, the amount of birds and animals you can feed per acre is greater than any of the world, which is very fortunate for the birds.

00:05:03.000 They have to depend in the future.

00:05:05.000 They will lose all the habitat and we have to depend in the future on the Atchafala Basin.

00:05:11.000 So, it's amazing.

00:05:12.000 It's an amazing place.

00:05:13.000 When the water comes up in the basin, it becomes like a crawfish buffet.

00:05:16.000 Everything is filled on crawfish, you know.

00:05:19.000 Orders, minks, raccoons, alligators, fish, birds.

00:05:22.000 You know, you have fishing spiders.

00:05:24.000 Big spiders like this big around with the legs.

00:05:26.000 They live in the trees.

00:05:27.000 One, they need the water with a bubble of bears, scuba diving, and they catch craffies.

00:05:31.000 Owls catch craffies. 0.99

00:05:32.000 Frogs, bullfrogs catch craffies.

00:05:34.000 And, of course, people.

00:05:36.000 We have the largest production of wild craffies in the entire world.

00:05:39.000 So you get an idea of the importance of the Chocolate Basin for the ecology.

00:05:42.000 On top of that, the Basin is critically important for the whole nation for floor protection.

00:05:48.000 So, to whoever is not familiar with Louisiana, you have the Mississippi River going through Louisiana.

00:05:54.000 And it used to be a time when every time you have a flood in the heart of the country, it used to spread out in 24 million acres of forks.

00:06:02.000 The Mississippi River was called North American Amazon.

00:06:06.000 And so you could have gone by boat from Louisiana all the way to Missouri through the forest in Howard.

00:06:12.000 Now you have all the floodwaters confined in one channel.

00:06:15.000 As the Mississippi builds up toward the coast and through the Louisiana, you really cannot build levees high enough to protect all these communities at all times.

00:06:24.000 So what the Corps did is build two spillways.

00:06:28.000 A spillway is an area you spill the water if it's over the levees.

00:06:31.000 So the first one, you know, from the coast is going to be the Bonacare spillway to protect the city of New Orleans.

00:06:39.000 So the water will go, big gates along the levees, they open the gates, go underneath I-10, they coach a train, they burn, go for Mexico, save the day for New Orleans. 0.63

00:06:48.000 The other one that they build is to protect everything above it.

00:06:51.000 And we're talking about the largest port in the United States, which is between Baton Rouge and the Orleans.

00:06:57.000 It's all a long port.

00:06:58.000 On top of that, we have 150 plants, industry, chemical plants, refineries, aluminum factories, all kinds of things in there.

00:07:06.000 Baton Rouge, you know, there's so many people that depend on that.

00:07:10.000 So to protect all that section of the river, they built the Morgansa spillway.

00:07:14.000 So what they did, they used the Atchafalaya Basin as a spillway.

00:07:17.000 Now, if they would have put levees along the Atchafalaya River, they would have the same problem.

00:07:21.000 But they got to move the flow water 135 miles or so from Sinsport around Baton Rouge and all those plants.

00:07:29.000 All the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

00:07:30.000 So what they did, they needed flood capacity.

00:07:33.000 Float is like a bathtub to hold the floodwaters until it can reach the Gulf.

00:07:36.000 Because the water is going to build up faster than it can drain.

00:07:39.000 So what they did, they built levee systems along the Chafalaya Basin.

00:07:43.000 At this time, they put them like 18 miles apart on average.

00:07:47.000 So that's your bathtub.

00:07:48.000 When they built the levee systems in the Chafalaya Basin, they cut the surface of the Chafalaya Basin by less than half of where it used to be.

00:07:55.000 That creates huge environmental problems because when they build those levees, they have no consideration for the ecology of the basin.

00:08:03.000 They cut rivers in half, entire lakes in half, so huge problems.

00:08:08.000 So now you have an 18-mile-wide bathtub.

00:08:11.000 So imagine there's a bathtub in your house.

00:08:14.000 So that's flood capacity.

00:08:16.000 One of the threats to the Chafala Basin is we're building land within the levee systems away from the coast.

00:08:22.000 When you build land within the levee systems, within the levee, you know, within the levee systems, afro, from the coast, what you're doing is reducing flood capacity. 0.99

00:08:30.000 And every time you reduce flood capacity, the basin can handle a lesser flood.

00:08:34.000 So eventually, by doing that, what they're doing is putting at risk 150 plus chemical plants and different refineries and all that.

00:08:43.000 The Port of Butternut and New Orleans is going to come to a point where the basin won't be able to handle a major flood.

00:08:49.000 If that ever happens and the Mississippi level fell, we're talking not only about the environmental catastrophe like we've never seen in the United States.

00:08:56.000 We're talking about economical impact that I don't know if we can ever recover.

00:09:00.000 Imagine you just have the Port of Baton Rouge and New Orleans out for months and over 150 plants go out for months, you know, what would cost the economy of the country.

00:09:10.000 So the basin is very, very important for the planet and very, very important for the nation.

00:09:15.000 Tell us a little bit about your personal story.

00:09:19.000 How did you end up there?

00:09:21.000 Well, I came here, you know, like you mentioned, you know, by accident.

00:09:24.000 I didn't even know there was an Atchafalaya Basin.

00:09:26.000 I just came to the basin because when I look at a road map, it's an emptiness.

00:09:31.000 It's a space between Lafayette and Baton Rouge where there's no roads, no towns.

00:09:36.000 So I figured it had to be a wilderness.

00:09:38.000 And I didn't know I was looking at Atchafalaya Basin.

00:09:41.000 And when I came here, I fell in love with the basin.

00:09:43.000 It was so beautiful.

00:09:44.000 You see all the beautiful green cypress trees.

00:09:46.000 I came here in the spring.

00:09:47.000 They're my favorite time of the year.

00:09:49.000 And see the big, beautiful egrets flying like angels through the forest.

00:09:53.000 I mean, it was just amazing.

00:09:55.000 Your plan at that point was to go live like an Indian in the Amazon. 1.00

00:10:02.000 That's correct.

00:10:03.000 And you wanted to test whether you were able to survive in the wild in that kind of ecosystem with minimal equipment.

00:10:13.000 That's correct.

00:10:13.000 And I wanted to get used to the heat because when I grew up in Spain, I grew up in the mountains.

00:10:19.000 You know, I was very used to the cold.

00:10:20.000 I'm very, you know, I'm like torch man.

00:10:23.000 You know, like, I do wet weather in cold weather than hot weather.

00:10:26.000 And I figure if, you know, every time a mosquito bite me, I get a wee whelp.

00:10:30.000 So I figure if I go to the Amazon, I cannot get out, you know, easily, you know.

00:10:36.000 So I wanted to get used to all that before I ventured into the Amazon.

00:10:39.000 And what happened?

00:10:41.000 Well, when I came here, I stayed for four months, leaving all the land in the basin, and I just fell in love with it.

00:10:47.000 And at that point, I decided to stay in the Chapala Basin.

00:10:49.000 I made my living off the land in the basin instead of going to the Amazon.

00:10:53.000 So for over 20 years, 16 years full time, I made my living hunting and fishing.

00:10:58.000 My family ate, well, what I catch.

00:11:01.000 You know, we have a big garden and we buy some things, but we depend very heavily for food.

00:11:06.000 And for money in the Chapala Basin to pay our bills.

00:11:10.000 And then, you know, one reason I stay in the Chapala Basin also because you look in paper, everything is fine and protected.

00:11:16.000 So I figured it was a stable place on the planet where I can live there without any stresses and conflicts, you know, in my entire life.

00:11:26.000 And then I realized that what they put on paper It's completely different than the reality.

00:11:31.000 So there's a couple of things that really got me involved in protecting the Chapala Basin.

00:11:36.000 The first one happened in 1991.

00:11:40.000 You know, in 1987, it was a series of easements.

00:11:43.000 It's supposed to protect the surface rights of the Chaffala Basin in perpetuity, El Saples included.

00:11:48.000 And then somewhere around 1999 or 1990, the mulch industry contacted the big landowners in the town.

00:11:55.000 And they told them they could make a lot of money by logging the El Saples trees down and all the willows and everything else.

00:12:00.000 And they're all up together and making mulch.

00:12:03.000 So, and then...

00:12:05.000 Their proposal was to take the cypress trees, these beautiful cypress trees with beautiful root systems.

00:12:13.000 And some of them are a thousand years old.

00:12:16.000 Oh, two thousand years old.

00:12:18.000 Two thousand years old.

00:12:19.000 They were here when Jesus Christ walked in the earth.

00:12:22.000 And they're going to take those trees and turn them into garden mulch and sell them at garden stores. 0.65

00:12:28.000 Yes.

00:12:29.000 So I knew that.

00:12:30.000 And I talked with different environmental groups and nobody was taken seriously because it's hard to prove and it's all hearsay or whatever reasons.

00:12:39.000 But anyway, in the year 2000, they actually started occurring in the suburbs.

00:12:43.000 And another thing happened in 1991.

00:12:47.000 The Chafalaya River had these tributaries.

00:12:50.000 These tributaries bring all the water to the swamps.

00:12:54.000 And they realign one of them.

00:12:56.000 You know, what they did, they dammed the tributary, and they make a channel And we land it to the top of a river at the end of a curve of the river.

00:13:05.000 So what happened, when you have a lot of sand coming through a river, sand is heavy, so it moves with the current.

00:13:10.000 So when you have a curve on the river, that's where the current goes, that's where the bulk of the sand goes.

00:13:14.000 So you make a cut at the end of that curve, what you're doing is directing the sand away from the main river into the swamps.

00:13:21.000 So the court did that, you know, saying they did it to minimize the amount of sand.

00:13:26.000 They were lying.

00:13:27.000 You know, they actually...

00:13:28.000 They were maximizing the amount of sand in the swamp.

00:13:31.000 So that year, within the next three years, my fishing grounds went completely submerged by sand, completely disappeared.

00:13:37.000 So that's, I realized, I mean, they're lying to the public.

00:13:39.000 What they're saying is not true.

00:13:41.000 They intentionally fill in the basin for oil companies, pipeline companies, and large line corporations.

00:13:47.000 And then in the year 2000, when they started going, the sub-price down, and nobody was doing anything about it.

00:13:52.000 At that point...

00:13:54.000 Just to interrupt you for a second, the Corps of Engineers is a captive agency.

00:14:01.000 It is not serving the American public.

00:14:04.000 It's not serving the interests of future generations and the public trust and the shared commons and the environment.

00:14:13.000 It is serving the interests of big oil companies, and the shipping companies, and the big lumber companies, and the land companies who want to get at those resources, exploit them, and privatize them.

00:14:28.000 In other words, to privatize, to take a publicly owned wilderness area.

00:14:34.000 And turn it into private cash, liquidate it for cash.

00:14:38.000 That's correct.

00:14:39.000 So, as you know, marketing is the science of deception.

00:14:44.000 In this world, the only thing that matters is perception is not the truth.

00:14:48.000 Whether you're an attorney going to court, you're a good attorney, you're a good marketeer.

00:14:52.000 You know, the truth is no matter in that courtroom.

00:14:55.000 It matters the perception you create to the jury of the judge.

00:14:57.000 It's the same thing with the public, you know, industry, politicians.

00:15:00.000 So the state was promoting the logging, and they were saying they were making beautiful homes and lumber, and it was all sustainable.

00:15:08.000 It's part of our culture.

00:15:10.000 It's been ongoing for generations.

00:15:12.000 I had no clue what they were doing with it.

00:15:14.000 I knew they was going to make molds.

00:15:16.000 I knew that much.

00:15:17.000 But at that point, I started following the trucks and found out what they were doing with it.

00:15:21.000 And to back out, I was going to say before that, the main reason I got involved in protecting the cypress, it was more spiritual reasons, is I didn't think we have any hope to stop anything.

00:15:33.000 But I just couldn't see myself walking this planet at a time of history, when that was taking place, and do nothing about it.

00:15:40.000 I believe there is a heaven, and I don't think I will go to it if I just looked the other way.

00:15:45.000 And, you know, because I really think that...

00:15:47.000 I strongly believe that we inherit everything we own from our, you know, we are stewards of everything we own from our kids and grandkids.

00:15:55.000 That's the inheritance.

00:15:56.000 At least we call landowners, instead of landowners, we call them land stewards because really that's what we are.

00:16:02.000 And I just couldn't see myself looking the other way and just live my life like nothing's happening.

00:16:07.000 So that's, at that point, spiritually speaking, it didn't matter because The day I die, I can say I'll try.

00:16:15.000 And I know I did.

00:16:16.000 So I just went after them.

00:16:17.000 And what I did, they started following the trucks.

00:16:19.000 And that's when I found out they were making mulch.

00:16:21.000 By the year 2006, they were logging 20,000 acres per year.

00:16:26.000 And they have seven mulch plants in Costa Louisiana.

00:16:29.000 The mulch was being sold in, you know, mainly, in many different places, but mainly Home Depot, Los, or Walmart was the big driver of all that.

00:16:37.000 The mulch was being sold in bags that would say made with environmentally harvested cypress.

00:16:43.000 So when you go to the stores, you think it's nothing green.

00:16:45.000 They will put a Florida address.

00:16:47.000 You think you're coming from Florida, so there will be no connection to what's happening in Louisiana and the most exciting in the stores.

00:16:53.000 So that's what I found out, and we went from there.

00:16:56.000 And the Cyprus industry did not like you.

00:17:01.000 Well, I think many people in Louisiana, other than the fishermen, like me.

00:17:07.000 And what kind of conflicts did you have because of that?

00:17:11.000 Well, I had many conflicts at the beginning.

00:17:13.000 What we did in the year 2005 is start flying with volunteer pilots over the logging sites.

00:17:18.000 Many of the logging sites, they were illegal logging operations because you need permits to make roads to bring heavy equipment through the Netherlands.

00:17:25.000 So with the flights, we were able to document The illegal roads.

00:17:30.000 And then we will share those pictures with Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps of Engineers.

00:17:35.000 And they start using these pictures to stop the logging.

00:17:38.000 Not everywhere, but there's places like the Morapa swamp with these people that have a lot of money, they have mansions, and they have political influence.

00:17:45.000 And the mansions are there because the beautiful swamp.

00:17:47.000 So when they log in the swamp behind the back, in the backyard, they didn't like that too much.

00:17:51.000 So in those places, the Corps and EPA will actually stop the logging using our pictures.

00:17:57.000 In other places, they refuse to enforce.

00:17:59.000 We have to do the enforcement ourselves.

00:18:00.000 But the first threat came, you know, before the media told the story, there was a meeting with somewhere around the Morapa swamp with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Corps of Engineers, and the Luciana Forest Terrorization, the Department of Agriculture and Forestry, and landowners and timber companies.

00:18:22.000 And they asked, and I can mention the name now because he was one of my heroes.

00:18:27.000 He was the head enforcer of the Corps of Engineers at the time.

00:18:30.000 And he helped build our battle plans for how to stop the surface logging.

00:18:37.000 He was an amazing human being.

00:18:39.000 And they asked him, you know, well, where are you getting these pictures?

00:18:44.000 And he said, well, I cannot tell you.

00:18:46.000 I said, well, we know who is doing it.

00:18:48.000 We're going to take care of him.

00:18:49.000 So he called me and warned me.

00:18:51.000 And then, I don't know, it was like two weeks after they came at night, and my dog started barking like crazy.

00:18:59.000 I turned off the lights at the house so they couldn't see me.

00:19:01.000 Got my gun, walked through my living room.

00:19:04.000 My laptop was open.

00:19:05.000 So every time you have a light inside the house, they can see you from the outside.

00:19:09.000 So at that point, they saw me, and they left.

00:19:13.000 And within, I think it was 10 days or two weeks, they poisoned my dog.

00:19:19.000 After that, it was a big story on Mother Jones magazine called Malt's Madness.

00:19:24.000 That's probably when you put immediate attention on those kind of threats, then to kill somebody may cause a backlash.

00:19:33.000 They will hurt the industry more than what I was doing at the time.

00:19:37.000 And I believe that's what saved my life.

00:19:39.000 I have several situations like that along the way.

00:19:42.000 I have death threats. 0.79

00:19:42.000 You know, they call me and say they're going to kill me. 0.79

00:19:44.000 I got another company waiting for me at the landing.

00:19:47.000 Say they're going to find me floating in the water.

00:19:50.000 I got attacks.

00:19:51.000 Another thing they do is lie to the public to put people against basin keepers or the When we flooded last year, they're telling people that the reason everybody flooded is because it was a levy that was going to protect us from flooding and Dean Wilson Basin Keeper stopped the levy.

00:20:07.000 They're telling all workers that Obama was paying me to shut down the oil industry in the Chapala Basin.

00:20:12.000 People believe it, and they came to my house, tore my mailbox, pulled my garbage all over the road.

00:20:18.000 So they tried different things.

00:20:20.000 They tried to buy me out.

00:20:21.000 They offered me up to $350,000 per year if I will stop all litigation in the basin.

00:20:26.000 Zappers campaign and support projects to fill wetlands in the Chefalaha Basin.

00:20:31.000 So they try everything on the book.

00:20:33.000 The latest one was a story they did in Channel 2, saying that Chefalaha Basin keepers dumping rust switch in the Chefalaha Basin.

00:20:41.000 That was not the case.

00:20:42.000 Matter of fact, the pipes that they show in, it wasn't even my pipes, it was somebody else's pipes.

00:20:47.000 So, I mean, they're trying desperately to do anything they can to destroy a tough player, basically.

00:20:52.000 Does your family support you?

00:20:54.000 Oh, yes.

00:20:56.000 Because my son Connor really enjoyed the summer that he spent with you down there.

00:21:05.000 But he came at a time when, you know, there was still a real potential for violence against you.

00:21:11.000 And he was very aware of that at the time.

00:21:14.000 Yeah, he became friends with my son.

00:21:16.000 They were the same.

00:21:18.000 What are the big threats?

00:21:21.000 Let's finish what happened.

00:21:23.000 What happened to the mulch industry?

00:21:25.000 Because ultimately you shut them down.

00:21:27.000 Yes.

00:21:27.000 Okay, well...

00:21:28.000 Like I said before, the court refused to enforce, like in Pleasant and the Chaffala Basin.

00:21:32.000 In Pleasant and the Chaffala Basin, the companies that were doing it, they had a lot of political influence.

00:21:37.000 So they refused to do that.

00:21:38.000 So when, finally in the year 2008, Home Depot lost a Walmart for a moratorium on the logging.

00:21:45.000 And that shut down the market.

00:21:48.000 And that's when we shut down, you know, all the moats plants.

00:21:50.000 But the logging didn't stop there.

00:21:52.000 We stopped most of the logging in Costa Luciana was stopped in 2008.

00:21:55.000 It was a logging operation that kept going in the Chaffala Basin that we managed to stop in the year 2012 after we threatened the company to go to court.

00:22:04.000 And we met with the company, and the company pretty much said that they cannot afford the attorneys to keep logging.

00:22:12.000 So we stopped that.

00:22:13.000 And then the Corps of Engineers and EPA intervened because the politicians started complaining about that, and they gave that company an after-fact permit to resume logging.

00:22:24.000 When they were waiting for the permit, the contract was only 10 years contract.

00:22:30.000 The contract was about to expire.

00:22:31.000 So they went, they couldn't wait for the permit, so they went back again, logging without a permit, with a system, the system, the names, and log on how water, which is forbidden under, you know, best marginal practices that they had to follow.

00:22:45.000 So we call them again doing that.

00:22:47.000 So they finally give up and left the basin.

00:22:50.000 And at the same time, they already didn't have any market.

00:22:52.000 So they found a new market.

00:22:54.000 The second market was for wood pellets.

00:22:56.000 I don't know if anybody in the audience knows what wood pellets are, but what they do is they put the trees down, they pulverize the wood, and they compress the wood in little pellets, little like rabbit feet, and they can use that for stoves, or in the European Union, they use it for power, as a biofuel.

00:23:11.000 So it was a company from Canada that was going to cut down all the forest in Costa Louisiana, Or most of them, to make wood pellets.

00:23:20.000 A company from England called Drax was going to buy them to burn in a power plant.

00:23:25.000 And they were going to get the permits, so there was no way we could stop that.

00:23:30.000 And so Drax, we contacted Drax, and they sent a couple people here to the basin.

00:23:37.000 We took them into the swamp, and they said, oh my God, what a treasure to humanity, and they refused to do it.

00:23:43.000 So we saved the swamps a second time, you know, but it took a foreign company to do that when our own estate is lobbying and pushing to get these trappistries cut out. 0.99

00:23:53.000 And that's where we are today.

00:23:54.000 We are in a situation where deeper companies, it's very hard to log in these wetlands.

00:23:59.000 It takes a lot of effort and they just don't want the stress of having to lead litigation.

00:24:05.000 So We're the only thing standing right now between the loggers and the cypresses.

00:24:10.000 What are the other big threats?

00:24:12.000 Well, the biggest one, when we started, it was everywhere.

00:24:16.000 I mean, the Champella Basin is like the Wild West.

00:24:19.000 It was nothing guessing port.

00:24:21.000 And what makes it worse is, like, the Corps, you're a little guy, they put a little deck in the water, something minor.

00:24:28.000 They have no consequences to the college whatsoever.

00:24:30.000 I mean, they crucify you.

00:24:31.000 But these corporations, they can put dams, you know, build roads, and do whatever they want, and there's no consequences.

00:24:37.000 You know, they couldn't find a single enforcement action against a pipeline company, an old company in the Tampala Basin, in all the time I've been working here.

00:24:44.000 We got FOIA's request, you know, to get that information, and there is nothing out there.

00:24:50.000 So it was pretty much Wallace, you know.

00:24:52.000 It was illegal dams, illegal roads.

00:24:55.000 They were all companies dumping, produced waters, all the waste water from the wells into this bay, polluted water into the swamps, killing all the trees.

00:25:04.000 I mean, we pretty much stopped all that.

00:25:06.000 It was an attempt to bring all the frack waste from Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and all that down with barges. 0.59

00:25:14.000 Disposed in the injection well in the Chapala Basin, in Bell River, which Bell River, half of the area of the basin is the most pristine part of the Chapala Basin.

00:25:21.000 We're going to do like an industrial complex in there.

00:25:24.000 The state gave them a permit to build that.

00:25:27.000 We sued the state.

00:25:29.000 The George was on our side.

00:25:30.000 We blocked the permit.

00:25:31.000 So we...

00:25:32.000 It's a massive amount of work that we have done in the last few years.

00:25:35.000 Well, more than a few years.

00:25:37.000 It's been a few years to me.

00:25:38.000 It's been like 16 years now.

00:25:40.000 But the biggest threat to the Chapel Island Basin is sedimentation.

00:25:44.000 Like, if you build land on wetlands, there are no wetlands anymore.

00:25:48.000 That's the end of the cypress forest.

00:25:50.000 But also, it's even worth the cypress logging.

00:25:53.000 Because you lost, part of the habitat is the cypress trees themselves, and you cut the trees down, you lose that, and you lose the beauty and the ecological benefits they provide, which is many, into the basin.

00:26:03.000 But if you build land in there, you lose, normally you lose the cypress, you don't have a wetland anymore.

00:26:08.000 Even you cut the trees down, you still have crawfish, you still have the birds can feed on crawfish, you still have something, you know.

00:26:14.000 But building those swamps is the end, that's the end for those wetlands.

00:26:19.000 So what the federal government, through the Corps of Engineers, and the state of Louisiana is doing is, you know, doing projects, the river diversions, in the name of water quality.

00:26:30.000 The way they do is they make cuts from a sediment source straight into the wells.

00:26:37.000 And once they do that, you can build land very, very fast.

00:26:41.000 You know, they did one project, the Buffalo Corp project, and Close to the cuts, we're talking about six, seven feet of sand in one single year, the build-up.

00:26:51.000 You know, you go like 3,000 feet away from the cuts, and we found crafty straps, they were four foot tall, like Almost to the top full of sand, so three feet plus of sand in those areas.

00:27:04.000 So they can build land very, very quick.

00:27:07.000 And not only are they destroying the wetlands and the ecological, you know, treasure that we have there, but also they put it in jeopardy to the safety of the entire economy of the country and the safety of millions of people.

00:27:18.000 I mean, it is criminal.

00:27:20.000 Because every time you get a square yard, square foot of sand, it's a square foot, square yard of water that you cannot put in there.

00:27:27.000 So we're fighting those projects to thumbnail.

00:27:29.000 Dean, how can people support you?

00:27:32.000 Other than supporting Waterkeeper Alliance, how can they specifically support the Atchipalaya Basin Keeper?

00:27:38.000 Well, there's many, many different ways.

00:27:40.000 Funding is extremely limited.

00:27:42.000 You know, we don't have any major foundation that litigate here in Louisiana.

00:27:47.000 So that's one of the problems.

00:27:49.000 We only have two employees and a part-time attorney.

00:27:52.000 And you go to the website.

00:27:53.000 We don't have anything within the website because we don't have the time to put it there.

00:27:57.000 But it's a massive amount of work with only two full-time employees and volunteers, of course.

00:28:03.000 We depend very heavily on volunteers.

00:28:05.000 So funding is very important for us.

00:28:07.000 Having members is very important for us because also, well, if they're in Louisiana, they keep standing in lawsuits.

00:28:13.000 And also, you know what's going on, then it may be something you can do about it.

00:28:17.000 Maybe you know a senator, a politician, or somebody from a company.

00:28:21.000 So getting engaged by becoming a member is very, very important for us.

00:28:25.000 We rely very heavily on volunteers, so it may be an opportunity that people can volunteer for a Chapalaya Basin Keeper.

00:28:32.000 They can go to the website, it's basinkeeper.org, very easy to remember, basinkeeper.org, and there's some information on how you can become a member, how you can volunteer, and you can actually look at some of the things that we did and we're doing in the Chapalaya Basin.

00:28:49.000 We also have some very good films.

00:28:51.000 We have If you want to learn about the Atchafalaya Basin, we have a mini-series of three films that talks about the importance of the Atchafalaya Basin, talks about sedimentation, and talks about the importance for birds.

00:29:01.000 They're like two, two and a half minutes long.

00:29:04.000 It don't take a lot of time.

00:29:05.000 They are not in the front page.

00:29:06.000 You've got to go Atchafalaya Basin, And Basin Keeper, ABK in action, and then videos.

00:29:12.000 And then you click on videos, and the videos are there.

00:29:14.000 So it's a lot of information you can get on the website.

00:29:17.000 Dean Wilson, Nigel Delaya, Basin Keeper.

00:29:20.000 Thank you very much.

00:29:21.000 Thank you, Bobby.

00:29:22.000 It was so nice to see you again.

00:29:24.000 Yeah, you do.

00:29:25.000 You still have to send me those nutria.

00:29:28.000 Well, we found one for you.

00:29:29.000 My kids are waiting for them.

00:29:31.000 I don't know what happened, but they found one for you, and I don't know if they tried to get in touch with you, and I don't know what happened because I was out of that one, but we found one.

00:29:40.000 You still want one?

00:29:41.000 Yeah, I still want one, of course.

00:29:43.000 The next one, I'll let you know.

00:29:46.000 I'll talk to you soon, Dave.

00:29:48.000 Bye, Bobby.

00:29:48.000 Thank you.

00:29:49.000 Thank you, Dean.

RFK Jr. The Defender - April 21, 2022

Defending American Wetlands with Dean Wilson

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