BELLE RIVER, La. — In the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun country, Julie and Lee Hines considered themselves lucky when they purchased a riverfront property. “I have the bayou in my blood,” said Julie Hines, a lifelong resident of the area.

The Hines family values the outdoors, like most of the other members of the 107 households in the tiny town of Belle River. Many in the region are fishermen, making their living on the water, of which there is plenty.

But the Hines’ dream faded quickly after they felt the impact of nearby industrial facilities’ fugitive emissions and increased truck use. They don’t believe the rules to protect them are enforced rigorously enough and found there is little they can do when the rules are broken.

Now plans for a new facility have sparked fears among Belle River residents that they too will have to deal with increased traffic and pollution and that there might be little anyone can do to stop it. It is a situation that has set off a fierce dispute and highlighted a national issue of how Big Business can sidestep rejections of their plans.

One hundred miles west of New Orleans, Belle River is considered the gateway to the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland in the U.S. The area is famous for its plentiful seafood and cypress-tupelo swamps. “This is no place to dispose of toxic chemicals,” said Dean Wilson, the head of the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper grass-roots environmental group.

But that is precisely what FAS Environmental Services has done since the mid-1980s. The company receives industrial waste from processes ranging from conventional oil drilling to hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. The waste can often contain high concentrations of methanol, chloride, sulfates and other substances. “Produced water,” the industry’s name for waste from fracking sites, can also contain toxins like benzene and xylene.

The waste arrives via truck and barge at an FAS transfer station close to the Hines residence, on the flood protection side of the levee. It is then transferred onto a shuttle barge for a 2-mile trip on the Intracoastal Waterway to the company's injection well, where it is pumped at high pressure deep below the surface into rock formations, where it is meant to remain permanently.

Now FAS wants to build a new facility directly across the waterway from the injection well. Its plan requires a pipeline to be built under the Intracoastal, connecting the new facility to the injection well, allowing waste to be moved under the waterway and eliminating the need for the current shuttle barge system. According to FAS, the new station would end the use of shuttle barges, cutting down on the risk of water-borne accidents.