Lawsuit adds to allegations that Cameron Parish LNG terminals are hurting seafood industry

Audio By Carbonatix

A group of commercial fishers, fishing guides and seafood processors in southwest Louisiana is suing liquefied natural gas company Venture Global, claiming that dredging operations in preparation for the construction of a new terminal resulted in a sediment spill that killed millions of oysters and diminished catches of finfish, crabs and shrimp.

Venture Global, which already operates a nearly $10 billion LNG export terminal in Cameron Parish, is currently constructing a second, $30 billion terminal there. As part of the project, the company is enlarging a channel near Calcasieu Lake to allow tankers to access the planned terminal, called CP2.

The suit, filed on July 30 in the 38th Judicial District Court, adds to a growing list of legal actions alleging that the construction of CP2 is hurting the seafood industry in the area.

Anthony “Tad” Theriot, one of the 20 plaintiffs in the suit, estimates his immediate losses at over $450,000, and he doesn’t know when or if his fishing grounds will fully recover. “Best case scenario, they pay you for every year that they mess up and…then you get to go back fishing,” he said.

Dredging began in early June 2025. The following month, a crabber alerted the Cameron Parish government about mud-covered traps in a marsh close to the CP2 site. Then, in August, local fishers and advocates captured footage of muddy water pouring over a small dam, directly into the southern part of Calcasieu Lake.

Venture Global acknowledged the leak into the estuary but initially denied that sediment reached the lake, although at public meetings, fishermen reported turbid lake water and muddy oysters and equipment. But eventually, the company acknowledged that the spill was significant, sending between 9,000 and 18,000 cubic yards of sediment into a channel and marsh that borders Calcasieu Lake.

“If you took a standard-sized dump truck and lined them up, it would be like 5 miles of dump trucks,” said Cooper Fournet, who is representing the plaintiffs in the suit.

The suit alleges that further accidents followed the initial August spill, including a burst sediment pipe earlier this year that resulted in a temporary pause in dredging operations.

A spokesperson for Venture Global did not directly respond to questions about the claims in the lawsuit, instead providing a written statement.

“In August 2025, a discharge that contained a higher volume of sediment than anticipated traveled from the placement area into an offsite channel,” the statement reads in part. “Since this isolated migration event last year, we have worked directly with independent experts, state and federal regulators, community stakeholders, and affected parties to develop and execute mitigation and remediation plans and remain committed to conservation efforts in the area.”

The plaintiffs are seeking damages for dead and diminished catch, equipment losses and continued murky water in their estuaries and fishing grounds. Venture Global’s dredging contractor, Callan Marine Ltd., and its engineering contractor, Providence Engineering and Environmental Group, are also named as defendants. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

The Cameron Port, Harbor and Terminal District, a public agency that oversaw parts of the dredging operation and helped Venture Global obtain permits for the project, is the fourth named defendant. Cameron Port Director Kim Montie declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

The new suit is at least the third filed against Venture Global over CP2. In November, Revival Oyster House, a now-closed restaurant in Lake Charles sued a supplier, Pig and Rooster Oyster Farms, which had 5.3 million oysters near where the channel enters the lake. The restaurant alleged that upon delivery the oysters were “dead, contaminated, discolored, or otherwise unfit for consumption.”

Pig and Rooster then filed a third-party demand against Venture Global, claiming that the sediment spill damaged its oysters. In April, a judge ordered sediment testing — scheduled for later this month — of the dredge material against mud collected from the farm’s cages. David Sorrells, the owner of Pig and Rooster, estimates his losses at over $5 million.

In a third legal dispute, environmental groups and commercial fishermen asked a federal court to overturn the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval of the CP2 project, alleging that the federal agency “downplayed the harm” of the project to the local fishing industry. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. rejected the plaintiffs’ claims last month.

“I’ve got 5.3 million oysters I can do nothing with. I’m out that whole year of business. It’s looking like I’m out of the second year of business…what I want is for them to cover our losses…They need to fix our ecosystem,” said Sorrells.

A former chef, Sorrells became interested in oyster farming after hearing about Jules Melancon, a Grand Isle oyster harvester who started farming in floating cages in 2012 and developed his own brand of oysters. Sourcing wild Gulf oysters was becoming more difficult, as the industry reeled under reef destruction caused by storms, pollution and climate change. Sorrells was intrigued by Alternative Oyster Culture, or growing oysters from seed in off-bottom cages, as a sustainable substitute to wild harvesting. The method shortens market-maturity timetables from 2 to 3 years to less than a year.

In 2018, when the Grand Isle Port established the first AOC park in the state, Sorrells tried unsuccessfully to lease some of the plots. So he called then-Cameron Parish Port Director Clair Marceaux and told her he was the owner of Lake Charles’ Restaurant Calla, and that he wanted to start an AOC park at the port. The port worked with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to secure funding. (Marceaux declined an interview request.)

Cameron Parish’s AOC Park started accepting applications from farmers in 2022, with the first cages hitting the water in 2023. Sorrells’ Pig and Rooster Oyster Farms and three other tenants leased all 24 of the 2-acre plots in the southern part of Calcasieu Lake. Sorells promoted the park in press interviews, and Montie, the current port director, sometimes asked him to give tours. According to Sorrells, she wanted to expand the park and for it to feature in local eco-tourism. Per the Port website, “The park aims to become a public destination, offering educational tours and immersive tastings.”

Park tenants scaled their operations quickly. Pig and Rooster started with 180,000 oysters, and Theriot started with 250,000. In the months just before the sediment spill, they both invested significant sums on equipment – Theriot spent $100,000, and Sorrells spent $600,000. When the spill occurred, Theriot had 750,000 oysters at the AOC, and Sorrells had 5.3 million. Theriot also helped care for 5.5 million oysters in plots leased by Chris McCall with The Oyster Ranch.

Last August, when the dredge material that Venture Global spilled in the neighboring marsh reached the park, Theriot and Sorrells began pulling mud-caked oysters from the cages. Many of them were already dead. Theriot, McCall, and other Oyster Ranch employees spent weeks hauling oysters from the lake and trying to wash away the mud. They returned any that were still alive to the water. But when it was time to harvest, none were sellable due to mud blisters.

Combined, the leaseholders at the AOC lost roughly 13 million oysters — which represents anywhere from $7 million to 13 million in lost sales, per pricing reports from the farmers themselves and a 2023 AOC economic analysis by Louisiana Sea Grant.

Sorrells thought he was going to be offered a settlement. A Venture Global representative asked him to come up with a “fair” number but then Sorrells never heard back. “I think that number was a lot higher than what he was anticipating,” he said.

Theriot was offered a six-figure settlement – more than the $20,000 that some non-park fishers were offered – but less than half the value of his 750,000 destroyed oysters.

Theriot has spent three decades shrimping and harvesting wild oysters. But in recent years, he’d noticed a sharp drop in the inland shrimp catch that was once prolific enough to put his kids through college. In 2020, he had an income of over $300,000, primarily from shrimping. That dropped to $57,000 in 2025.

“That’s how much difference this plant being in my town has made,” he said.

Other shrimpers also attribute dwindling catches to the activities of Venture Global, even before the sediment spill. They say that the disturbance caused by a single large ship can send shrimp into hiding for the rest of the day. Meanwhile, yields were dropping in the area. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries told Inside Climate News that in 2024, the shrimp harvest from the Calcasieu Basin dropped to half of its 10-year average.

In addition to oyster seed, the AOC farmers purchased floating cages and other equipment. An investor in The Oyster Ranch said at a Cameron Parish Police Jury meeting a month after the spill that they had spent $1.5 million on farm “infrastructure.” Next month, Theriot will owe the Cameron Parish Port $8,000 and Sorrells will owe $14,000, for the leases on their still-murky plots of lake.

Even before the sediment spill last summer, local fishers were concerned about the dredging plan, which called for the mud from the channel to be moved to wetlands in two wildlife refuges, Sabine and Cameron Prairie National – areas that fishers say serve as key breeding grounds for aquatic life. The material, per the company’s permit, will be used to “restore” 260 acres of marsh in the refuges.

But local fishers say the material is not restoring wetlands – it’s being piled too high and therefore, creating new land.

“They’re diking in large swaths of what used to be marsh land and filling in it with mud, making it solid land, which will remove habitat for the growing crabs,” said Scott Spicer, a third-generation crabber and plaintiff in the July suit. “So that is one of the primary concerns.”

“They have dredged…for a long time, and they built these spoil banks… and it’s supposed to end up settling, but what ends up happening is, it’s dry land at the end of it. They pump too much mud in there. It never actually holds water like a marsh should,” said James Hiatt, the founder of For a Better Bayou, based in neighboring Calcasieu Parish.

“Our shrimp come in and they go into the marsh. That’s where they grow at, you know, that’s like the nursery…and then once they grow up, they come out and that’s where we catch them,” Theriot said. But, he wonders, how are they going to come out “when it’s all bank now?”

Eddie Lejuine, 62, a drum-fisher and petitioner in the suit, doesn’t think the impacted marshes will “hold marine life again, not in my lifetime.”

According to Patrick Courreges with Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy, the agency that issued the dredge permit, Venture Global must create “the same amount in value of wetland replaced that would be lost,” and LDCE does inspections to ensure that this is happening. He was not able to provide the date of the most recent inspection before press.

Lejuine is also frustrated by the increase in big ship traffic and the erosion he attributes to the waves they create. “They don’t have the respect to slow down anymore,” he said.

Spicer has lost thousands of dollars worth of crab pots to this traffic. “Basically anything in their path, they’ve torn up.”

Lejuine used to set his fishing lines over the oyster reefs in Calcasieu Lake, since drum feed on the small fish and shrimp that live in the reefs. But he said he hasn’t caught any fish there since the spill, though he occasionally sets a line just to check. Now he drives 2.5 hours twice a day to Sabine Lake — in the morning to clear the lines, and at night to bait them. He has to set out twice as many lines to get the same number of fish that he used to get in Calcasieu.

In July, the LDCE approved a modified permit that would allow Venture Global to dredge another 2.5 million cubic yards of material and fill in another 518 acres of open water and marsh in the Cameron Prairie Refuge.

According to Lejuine, losing access isn’t about “how big of an area we could fish,” as much as it is about “the important areas that we were able to fish.” These days oysters are only harvestable in the southern part of the lake due to longtime seafood advisories resulting from industrial pollution in the upper part of the basin.

Lejuine mentions how, when Venture Global built Calcasieu Pass, the company filled in a shallow fishing area near the Gulf jetties that had been used by shrimpers and fin-fishers. He said it had been one of the few areas that was protected enough for smaller vessels to work. (Venture Global did not respond to a request for comment on this matter.)

Despite coming from families generations-deep in the fishing industry, some locals have encouraged younger relatives to find other jobs. And some fishermen, including Spicer, have worked for oil and gas companies.

In 1985, Cameron Port was number one nationally in terms of volume of seafood. “When I was a kid, there were 200 shrimp boats in Cameron. Now there’s about 15,” said Theriot, now 51.

Just after the spill, Venture Global used a small dredge to clear sediment from the impacted marsh–work the company reports as completed, although LDCE has yet to sign off. Fishers say the lake water remains turbid, even as dredging for CP2 is continuing.

Currently the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality is considering a wastewater permit that would allow Venture Global to discharge into the Calcasieu Ship Channel, not far from where the spill occurred. At a public hearing, Venture Global refused to answer questions, which disappointed those hoping to gain clarity on what would be in the wastewater.

Initially Fournet thought of filing his clients’ lawsuit in federal court. But the public sentiment at police jury meetings convinced him to file locally, after hearing fishers raise concerns about dying oysters and crabs, shrimp that seem to have vanished, potential toxins in the dredge spoils being intentionally dumped in fish nurseries, and wholesale seafood buyers leaving town.

“We want the people who live down there to be able to make the decision about what went wrong and what the result of that would be,” he said.

Hiatt sent a letter, signed by 40 stakeholders, to permitting agencies a few weeks after the spill: “Fishing and shrimping are not just hobbies here, they are our heritage and livelihoods. …To lose them is to lose who we are. Promises of jobs and prosperity have not come true – and even if they did – are no replacement for the harm caused to the estuary. While restoring marsh is a good thing, not doing it the right way causes more harm to an already fragile ecosystem,” he wrote.

Theriot and Sorrells are each raising 50,000 oyster seeds to plant in the AOC Park this year.

“We started back little again. …We’re going to see what they do,” Theriot said. But he’s not optimistic. The water “just doesn’t look nothing like it used to.”

___

This story was originally published by Verite News and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.