After three years of the Roemer administration, Louisiana has finally realized how unimportant the environment is, at least that’s what most of our gubernatorial candidates suggest.
Almost everyone is saying it is time to lower our standards, or at least cut the deals with industry, go back to bed with the fat cats and make lots of jobs as well as a bigger mess.
Buddy Roemer’s opponents, with one curious exception, as well as the governor himself, seem to promote a new era of environmental compromise. 
In 1987, Roemer told the state’s voters that he would shut down businesses that polluted in Louisiana, that he expected industry to be responsible and clean or leave the state.
While he hasn’t reversed himself completely, the governor is now more prepared to deal with industry. It’s a mixed message.
“To the big companies of Louisiana: We want you. We need you. We’ll work with you, but by golly, we’re going to make sure the air-toxin emissions are low and we’re going to check what you do the water,” Roemer told the Louisiana Sheriff’s Association Friday night.
Obviously, the governor is not abandoning his pro-environment rhetoric, but he is more flexible, seeking to “honor” the state’s businesses.
Like Roemer, the other candidates aren’t saying, “Let’s pollute.” It’s a more subtle message: We must be fair.
To be “fair,” they propose relaxing our current ecological standards in many ways.
Fred Dent, the state’s former Commissioner of Financial Institutions, wants to recombine the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Environmental Quality and cut the number of regulators.
Kathleen Blanco, the Public Service Commissioner from Lafayette, U.S. Representative Clyde Holloway and former governor Edwin Edwards, along with Dent, want to reduce the wait for drilling and manufacturing permits in the state and make existing codes more flexible for major employers.
It seems that they want our state to be more than fair to industry. The only way to create enough jobs is to be friendly to polluters.
The exception is State Rep. David Duke, R-Metairie. The former KKK Grand Wizard calls himself an ecologist.
He says Roemer has not been hard enough on polluters in Louisiana. The representative, however, is vague about how he will get tough on industry.
Duke does say that he would be tougher on the “real” polluters in Louisiana. The underlying assumption is that the governor has been lax with his political friends.
Most of the candidates disagree with Duke. They say Roemer has been too hard on business. They blame the state’s economic problems on the governor’s perceived lack of flexibility.
The candidates are right, the state needs new jobs, but not at the expense of the state’s land, water, animals and air. We just can’t be too tough on the issue. Our water will never be too clean.
The deaths of nearly 750,000 fish so far this year are evidence of the state’s lack of respect for the environment.
Animals are dying, possibly because of the pesticide used by the sugar cane industry, but the state’s environmental official don’t have enough information to really know for sure.
When the agriculture department temporarily banned the pesticide last week, they were criticized for jumping to conclusions and falsely blaming on the state’s farmers.
The environment just doesn’t matter. Industry and money is the everything.
Another example: During the debate on a bill that would have lowered air quality standards, State Sen. Ben Bagert, R-New Orleans, suggested that industry has known for years that Louisiana is “easy” and that they could “have their way with us.”
Bagert was right, but we’re probably only going to get easier, looser, more flexible.
Instead of lowering our air quality standards, cutting the number of state-employed environmental watchdogs, allowing more leeway to businesses and giving tax incentives to those same polluters to attract business, our leaders should work on making fundamental changes to clean up our state – its land and image.
We need better schools, a stronger vocational education network, more skill, statewide.
We need cleaner streams, fish that actually swim, animals with a pulse, more tourism. We can capitalize on our natural beauty.
Roemer emphasizes these points but his message is mixed. If he plans to truly help the state, he needs to be friendly to business, but not easy.
The next governor needs to sell the state, not sell out our environment.

This 1990 article has been digitized by The Reveille’s Digital Staff in honor of Dean Martin Johnson, who graduated from the Manship School of Mass Communication in 1991 and was an editor for The Reveille during his time at LSU.