"TCHAFALAYA BASIN, La. — It takes less than a minute to plow down a cypress tree that's been standing in this swamp for decades or longer.

Dean Wilson watched them fall, one after another, when developers began clearing a path earlier this year for the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

"You see that tree line over there," he said while weaving through cypress-lined channels in a small powerboat last week. "That tree line used to be right here. So all the trees from this point here, that way, they've been cleared already. They've been plowed to pieces.""

Ellen M. Gilmer reports for EnergyWire April 30, 2018 (Part one of two). [2]