“Listen, I’m a conservative Republican. I got beat up when I gave a lot of money to Barbara Boxer, Mary Landrieu, and a lot of other people whose political ways I don’t believe in. I did it to get their ear—to ask them to do the right thing. Because when I came into office, I was in an uphill battle to get funding for levees in Plaquemines. I went to Washington, week after week. Does that sound like a guy who doesn’t care about the people of Ironton?”

He had been going on for nearly thirty minutes. I tried to change the subject. Nungesser lives in an estate built on a man-made hill in front of a man-made lake just south of Myrtle Grove and the IMT coal terminal. Did he have problems with coal dust?

“I get a film on my car,” he said. “Is that coal dust? I don’t know. I don’t identify it as coal dust. I don’t know if that’s pollution in the air, dust, or whatever.”

Then he was back on the subject of his “enemies,” for another hour.

“Shame on them,” he said. “They’re going to have to answer to God one day. Mr. Turner calls himself a holy man? I call him the Devil.”

7. Bait

Nungesser and his critics are not as far apart as it might seem. Plaquemines Parish has made an unholy bargain with the energy industry. But nobody makes such a bargain without a reason; you only do so if you believe you’ve been forsaken. This is the situation in which Plaquemines found itself in 2006. When the White House announced its plan to rebuild the levee system after Katrina, it excluded the lower part of Plaquemines; a Bush administration representative questioned whether including the parish would be “economically justifiable,” given that its total population stood at just 15,000 before the storm. The unsubtle implication of this statement, and others like it in the months that followed, was that much of southern Louisiana would be abandoned to the Gulf of Mexico, cut off from the rest of the country like a gangrenous digit.

The Sierra Club’s Devin Martin believes Nungesser is luring industry to Plaquemines in order to extort the federal government into paying for flood protection. “They can’t justify getting federal funding if it’s just to save poor people in a flood zone,” Martin told me. “They need industry, in at-risk places.” Under Nungesser, said Martin, “the parish has made an art out of how to acquire FEMA dollars.”

It’s true. Since Hurricane Katrina, Plaquemines Parish, with the support of Baton Rouge, has done everything possible to entice fossil-fuel corporations—the very same corporations that have imperiled the existence of the fragile coast—to expand their business on the lower Mississippi. Once situated, the energy plants serve as a blackmail note. When you have industry, in at-risk places, you need insurance. You need levees. And, most importantly, the federal government needs you.

Nungesser, while placing his emphasis differently, doesn’t disagree with this interpretation. “If I had my choice, would I choose this kind of industry?” he asked. “Maybe not. I don’t know. But I do know that we’re going to have another hurricane. I know people don’t want to leave, but it’s coming. With industry there, we have a fighting chance to save these communities.”

Cynical as it may be, Nungesser’s logic has been vindicated. After the rapid buildup of industrial plants along the lower Mississippi during his administration, the federal government had a change of heart about Plaquemines. In 2012, the Army Corps announced a $1.4 billion plan to improve the levees between New Orleans and the southern tip of Plaquemines, raising them to four times their current height. Additional levee projects have since been authorized.

Those levees, of course, will be of little long-term value if the marsh continues to erode and the diversions and other land-building initiatives listed in the Master Plan never get funded. But if enough energy facilities move into harm’s way, the strategy goes, then perhaps the federal government will agree to cover the full tab. It is hard to believe that Nungesser, or whomever succeeds him as parish president, would oppose the Mid-Barataria diversion then.

8. Forecast

Warren Lawrence is now busier than ever, as he and his allies expand their fight against industrial development along the lower Mississippi. After two years spent gathering signatures, commissioning scientific studies, and consulting with lawyers from Tulane University’s Environmental Law Clinic, Lawrence and the residents of Myrtle Grove won a class-action suit against the coal terminal that had been blackening his house. The judge gave the facility, which now operates under the name International Marine Terminal (IMT), four years to install sprinkler systems called “rainbirds,” cannons that spray water to wet the coal and keep it from floating away. (Rainbirds are required by law in many other states.) Four years passed and the coal terminal had done nothing. The only relief for the Lawrences was that, as a penalty for failing to honor the terms of the settlement, IMT annually sent a team of cleaners to spray their house with power washers. But IMT’s workers refused to clean the floor of the Lawrences’ swimming pool, or their Toyota, or the party barge. IMT finally installed the rainbirds in January of this year, though Lawrence can’t tell if it has made a difference. In the meantime, IMT has completed a $190 million expansion, doubling its capacity from ten to 20 million tons of coal.

Lawrence’s coalition still hopes to convince the Army Corps of Engineers to block RAM’s coal terminal, though they are pessimistic about their chances. They are pinning their hopes on a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Natural Resources, claiming that it shouldn’t have granted a permit to RAM because the terminal’s operation will be inconsistent with the Master Plan.

There are other battles underway, including a lawsuit against the United Bulk coal terminal across the river, which is alleged to discharge coal regularly into the Mississippi River. Two additional lawsuits have been filed in protest of the five-million-barrel NOLA oil tank farm that is rising directly across the road from Myrtle Grove.

“They’re in the one spot in this parish that is guaranteed to flood in every storm,” said one of Lawrence’s Myrtle Grove neighbors. “Every storm. That’s the amazing part.”

It did not seem to occur to this resident that those five million barrels of oil might have been placed in the direct path of future hurricanes on purpose. Nor did it occur to him that the presence of the tank farm might be the only thing that will protect his home from the Mississippi River and the rising ocean beyond. And that, really, is the amazing part.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Billy Nungesser's father, William Nungesser Sr., was the state's first Republican congressman since the Reconstruction, and the state's leading Republican kingmaker. Nungesser Sr. was not a congressman, but did serve as the GOP state chairman.