Activists' ally snared in security net
Students' photos of refinery cost man his state job

By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer Times-Picayune

For 27 years, Willie Fontenot has had a unique job in the office of the Louisiana attorney general.

As a community liaison officer, he has helped residents living next to polluting industries learn more about the environmental problems plaguing them, helped them set up numerous nonprofit environmental groups, and helped them maneuver their way through the paperwork necessary to complain to public officials.

He's also helped reporters and various groups from across the nation find the right people and places in Louisiana to explain its environmental problems.

Two weeks ago, while accompanying one of those groups, this one of 15 university students from New England, on a tour of a Baton Rouge neighborhood being bought out by the ExxonMobil refinery, the group was stopped and questioned by law enforcement concerned about homeland security after taking pictures of the plant.

Fontenot was asked to collect the student's driver's licenses and refused, saying he wasn't leading the trip. On Monday, Fontenot, 62, said he was told to retire or face a disciplinary hearing that would end in his firing. Concerned about the loss of his pension and health insurance, he chose to retire.

Kris Wartelle, spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles Foti, denied Fontenot was forced to retire, but could confirm that he was retiring.
She also suggested that Fontenot had not informed his superiors he would be accompanying the trip.

Students tour state
The students from Antioch New England Graduate School in New Hampshire were touring the state to learn about environmental racism, and the photographs were to be used in PowerPoint presentations required for their class, said Abigail Abrash Walton, a professor who led the trip.

"We had just met with (Baton Rouge) Mayor Kip Holden and went out to drive around and look at the industry in the area," she said. "We came to a house directly across from the facility and Willie let us know that the woman who lived there had decided not to relocate.

"So we pulled the van over on a side street and the students got out and took photos," she said.

"Two or three minutes later, two security vehicles showed up," she said, and off-duty Baton Rouge police and East Baton Rouge sheriff's deputies pulled the van over and demanded the licenses of those inside.

At one point, one of the officials asked Fontenot to collect the licenses from the students.

The security officers then contacted the attorney general's office by phone, Fontenot said. He was told later that a complaint was filed by the Sheriff's Office with the attorney general's office about his refusal to cooperate.

Fontenot said he was told by one officer during the stop that the Sheriff's Office contends that three students walked into a parking lot that was marked no trespassing.

But Walton said a videotape taken by one of the students shows that the students did not trespass. And Steve Chase, director of the school's environmental advocacy program, who also was in the van, said he later learned from a Coast Guard investigator following up on the incident that there is nothing illegal about taking photographs from outside the company's property.

Memo submitted
Wartelle suggested that Fontenot should be asked whether he had accompanied the students on behalf of an outside employer.

Fontenot said he was employed by no one but the attorney general's office, although he is a member of the boards of many of the environmental organizations he has helped start.

In the case of the Antioch students, he said, he had submitted a detailed memo more than a month before to his supervisors at the attorney general's office explaining that he would be traveling to the school to give the students an advance look at what they'd be visiting in Louisiana.

The air fare for that trip was paid for by the school, he said.

"I stayed at the house of one of the students and they bought me a sandwich, but other than that, no," he said. "These sorts of tours are strictly voluntary stuff. In fact, it costs me money."

Fontenot said that on the day of the incident, he followed his routine practice of informing an office secretary where he would be.

Fontenot was asked to join the attorney general's office in 1978 by former Attorney General Billy Guste Jr.

He was unemployed at the time, but earlier had been executive director of the Louisiana Wildlife Federation for two years.

"My job title is community liaison officer," Fontenot said. "When I started, it was part of the citizen's access unit. Attorney General Guste said, 'The citizens need some help dealing with environmental problems, how to file a complaint, how to figure out what their problems are, how to work with public officials and the news media.' "

It's a role he has performed through 13 years with Guste, eight years with former Attorney General Richard Ieyoub, and until Monday with Foti.
Environment activist

During that time, he assisted in the formation of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, the state's largest environmental organization, which today represents more than 70 separate environmental groups, many assisted in their formation by Fontenot.

He also helped form RESTORE and the Calcasieu League for Environmental Action Now, two major environmental organizations in the Lake Charles area, and the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation in New Orleans.

Fontenot's retirement comes as he battles the latest in a string of health problems. He's been legally blind for 13 years, the result of a hereditary problem that causes the loss of the vision in the center of each eye.

Less than a year ago, he had a mild stroke that forced him to go through a rehabilitation process before returning to work.

And he just finished a course of radiation treatments for prostate cancer on Friday.

But Fontenot said he was not yet ready to retire.
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Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3327. Tuesday, April 05, 2005