Another Perspective on Carbon Sequestration: Families in Vernon Parish Who Lost Land to the Government in the 1940s Might Be Asked to Sacrifice Again For the Public Good:  This One Won’t Be An Easy Sell

Imagine it’s 1940. You and your family are living in a rural, southern community. You’ve been living in and with the Great Depression for over a decade now.

The 30s were awful. But you’ve survived—probably barely. Times were hard, but through the grace of God and your elbow grease, things are looking better.   You have a family of 4 children, all have left home and are just down the road, sorting life out as young adults.

War seems to be on the horizon.

Your paper, the Leesville Leader, tells you about the terrible things going on in Europe and in the Pacific. Fascists are on the march, and you sense something is happening. Two years ago, you saw thousands of soldiers up and down the roads in your community, conducting massive wargames from Shreveport to Lake Charles. They called those the “Louisiana Maneuvers.” Rumor has it that George Patton, Omar Bradley and George S. Marshall were here getting our shell of an Army ready to fight if Hitler or Tojo ever cross the line with us.

On a hot Saturday morning in June, you get a knock at your door. A guy wearing a suit and an Army Major are at your door. You gladly answer it because you know they’re our people. You have no idea why they’d be at your door; you think maybe they’re going to tell you about another set of maneuvers.

Your conversation doesn’t go well. The bureaucrat and the officer inform you that the US government needs your land. They need your 40 acres because Washington has decided Vernon Parish would make a great place for an Army post. They tell you that under the 5^th Amendment to the US Constitution, the government has the right to seize property under something called “Eminent Domain.”

Eminent Domain? Yes.

In short, that means the government reserves for itself the right to take land if it is for the public good. The government has to pay you for it, but they have the right to take it. The bureaucrat hands you a piece of paper and lets you know they’re going to offer you the princely sum of $1.25 an acre.

You scratch your eyes and read it again. What?

Scenes like this were repeated all over Vernon Parish in the early 1940s. The US government apparently was so enamored with the area of western Louisiana that they decided they needed to place a large Army installation out there in the middle of nowhere.

Well, it wasn’t nowhere to the people who lived there.  It was their homes.

Over the course of the next 5 years, over 700 families representing over 300 surnames got knocks like these or they received letters. Some families lost small plots of land. Some people lost businesses. Others lost lots of land. Some in the thousands of acres. Between 1940 and 1945 these 700 families had to vacate home places, farms, leases, ranches and land that had been in some families since the 1850s. All in the name of eminent domain and the public good.

Many families had to tear down their homes piece by piece and try to use the same wood in the new locations. Remember—this was at the end of the Great Depression. Nearly everything was scarce, and in truth, things would get more scarce after the US entered the Second World War.

Times were tough, and the “greater good” made them even tougher for the families of Vernon Parish.  Family names like Smart, Fletcher, Jean, Nash, Bolgiano, Craft, West, Haymon, Monk, Tuck, Turner, Morris, Lambright, Polson, Scobee and MANY others are on the historical roll of the members of this diaspora that was created in the name of national security.

But, as good citizens usually do, these people accepted their fate, because they had faith in the government. The Depression was real. Hitler and Tojo were real. They were told the government needed the land so the Army could get ready to defend us. It was awful, but it was necessary. Many of these families remain connected to this day and they gather on an annual basis to commemorate the sacrifice of their parents and grandparents.   They’re called the “Heritage Families” of Fort Polk.

Fast forward to right now.

In the same part of the world, “government” is behind a new effort for the “greater good.” This greater good is not a tangible, visible enemy like Germany or Japan. This enemy is wrapped up in scientific models and predictions that say if people don’t take drastic action right now, then the world will get hotter and our climate will become unhabitable.

This enemy is called “climate change” and powerful people—both in government and in private industry are telling us it’s time again for the people of Vernon Parish to share in the sacrifice for the public good and against this supposed problem.

No one has been asked to leave their homes. No one has been threatened, though it should be noted that in the mid 2010s, also in the name of national security, the federal government seized/bought several thousand NEW acres in the name of national security. A great many of the same families lost land again—for national security and the greater good, or so we were told.

The government wants to use Vernon Parish as one of the places that they store man-made and self-created pollution that originates as simple carbon dioxide and is then merged with water to create a toxin called carbonic acid. Lawmakers in Washington passed legislation over the course of many decades to allow for this to be done and now they have the technology and will to actually undertake this project. The State of Louisiana has followed suit and crafted some laws that make this process very appealing to some business and absent land owners.

There are environmentalists who believe that carbon dioxide is harming the earth’s atmosphere, and thus creating radical changes in the weather patterns around the world. To solve this, some group of purportedly smart people think the United States should go about capturing carbon emissions coming off of oil and gas wells and other oil industry-related installations, and then sequestering that product into the ground to keep it from getting into the atmosphere.

Whether or not this is a good idea is a debate unto itself.

Scientists believe they have models to prove this theory. These are probably some of the same scientists who told us in the 1970s an ice age would be upon shortly if we didn’t stop using oil and gas. What they’re doing now is saying that the earth’s weather patterns are unpredictable and thus we are the victims of man-made “climate change.”

If you wish to believe man is capable of changing the environment, that’s your business. A Google search will certainly tell you we are because Google is part of the larger effort to shift political dynamics around the globe. I recommend your research go a little deeper. Try something alongside Google to compare results. Maybe consider some scientific journals. Regardless of any of those discussions, the sequestration of carbon dioxide below the ground in a handful of places in the United States is a fool’s errand from an environmental standpoint.

The earth is full of countries that produce oil and gas. Russia, India, China and others produce massive amounts of pollutants and yes, carbon dioxide in their production processes. Those countries have made no discernible effort to capture their carbon and shove it under their soil.    You might find a few places that have tried it, but rest assured those countries are not in on this effort. Only the United States, and only in a few places right now.

Interestingly enough, Israel is shrinking the Negev Desert because increasing levels of carbon dioxide make trees and other plants more resistant to drought. It turns out that with more CO2 to process from the air, plants need less water to grow.

Back to the people of Vernon Parish: Since word started circulating about this process possibly becoming a reality and an action in our parish, citizens have raised concerns. As they should. People don’t really know what this is about and the more they find out, the less they like it.   Some feel that they are being forced into absorbing this—-for a greater good.

The citizens in Vernon Parish have done their part in recent decades for a greater good. This doesn’t feel like a greater good. At this writing, our good friends at what used to be Fort Polk (now Fort Johnson) occupy 200,000 acres in the center of our parish. We moved out and moved on because we were told it was a greater good. Now, we are hearing that someone wants to come and place toxic waste sites below our feet and through our water table. We’re also finding out that though the government might benevolently allow us to “keep” our land if they give a well permit to someone adjacent to us; however, our property rights might be affected if this carbonic acid or any of its byproducts permeate and leak below adjacent landowners.

No one in government or industry can say they really know where these deposits will go.

We’re also told our water table could be affected. You can live without a lot of things, you but can’t live without water. We sit on one of the purest aquifers in Louisiana and we need to guard it and protect it. Everything dies without water.

Finally, we’re being told that if someone puts the carbonic acid below our feet then our ability to retrieve oil and gas from that location might be affected. A sizable deposit of oil and gas called the Austin Chalk is directly under Vernon (and other parishes). If a citizen loses his rights to get his or her oil and gas under his or her feet because of carbon sequestration, we have lost an actual opportunity for actual economic development. Geologists and experts in the oil and gas industry have pursued the Austin Chalk for decades. Everyone knows it’s there, but technology hasn’t allowed us to go get it at a profitable cost. We all know that will change as oil and gas extraction technology exponentially expands.

To date, no one has offered up any justification or reason that carbon sequestration should become a part of our lives in Vernon Parish. The only thing we’re told is that this might be good for the oil and gas industry and, of course, the greater good via standing up against climate change. I’ve not met a single citizen who is for this happening.

We are skeptical.

We have given plenty already. Anyone wishing to force this on the people of western Louisiana—especially in Vernon Parish—should be prepared for deep skepticism. Bring your arguments, bring your facts. If the State or Federal government or oil industry insists on burying these materials below the ground in Louisiana, you may want to find another parish.

FOOTNOTE: A grandchild of one of those forced out, Mr. Stanley Fletcher, has a number of self-published documents on the events related to the loss of land in the 1940s; these documents can be found at the Vernon Parish Library.  

Author:  Charles Owen, Fifth Generation Resident of Vernon Parish, also a retired Lieutenant Colonel (USAF), also a State Legislator (District 30).  Also a life Member of the Sons of the American Revolution.