04/13/05

For the past 30 years, the people living amid the chemical plants and oil refineries along the Mississippi River in the blighted area of Louisiana known as Cancer Alley have had one steadfast ally in the halls of a state government which has set the high bar for official corruption: Willie Fontenot. ... Down here in Cancer Alley, the weapons inspectors -- environmentalists, lawyers, scientists, ministers -- are regularly bullied, threatened and run out of town. Down here, both parties do the bidding of the oil and chemical industry -- witness Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu's recent vote to open ANWR to drilling. Down here, it's the rare brave bureaucrat who comes along with the courage to stand up and help people fight the corruption corroding Louisiana's political system from the inside out. Yet, that's what Willie Fontenot has done his entire career...

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair04132005.html

from CounterPunch, by Jeffrey St. Clair


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp