INDReporter

Busted: Multi-Chem flack stymies opposition

by Walter Pierce

Residents in north Vermilion and south Lafayette parishes who banded together to fight construction of a Multi-Chem chemical plant in the area are getting a taste of corporate guerilla warfare.

Residents in north Vermilion and south Lafayette parishes who banded together to fight construction of a Multi-Chem chemical plant in the area are getting a taste of corporate guerilla warfare.

Marcella Manuel, founder of Citizens Against Multi-Chem, tried recently to start a website for the group, but when she attempted to register the name CitizensAgainstMultiChem she found that virtually every variation of the web name had already been registered including on multiple domains such as .com, .org and .net. In effect, the straight-forward CitizensAgainstMultiChem (and CitizensAgainstMulti-Chem with a hyphen) web name is all booked up. No soup for you, Citizens Against Multi-Chem!

So Manuel did a little cyber-sleuthing and made a quick discovery at NetworkSolutions.com, a site that tracks domain name registrations: the telephone number listed with the registrations for the various CitizensAgainstMultiChem.com names is the direct line to Amy Griffin Reese's office. Reese is the Texas-based marketing director for Multi-Chem, a Halliburton subsidiary. We called the number and got Reese's voicemail. Further, the physical address listed with those CitizensAgainst registrations belongs, based on exhaustive documentation Maneul provided in an email to The Ind, to Reese's parents.

Although the Vermilion Parish Police Jury has granted Multi-Chem a permit to construct the plant, Citizens Against Multi-Chem continues its fight to prevent construction. The plant is a replacement operation for the Multi-Chem plant that exploded last year in New Iberia, just sayin'.

So, Citizens Against Multi-Chem doesn't have a website tied to its name, but it does have a Facebook page. Good old Facebook.

Read more about the group's fight here.