St. James Parish residents petition council to revoke land use permit
30th December 2019 · 0 Comments
By Meghan Holmes
Contributing Writer
Residents in St. James Parish are asking council officials to revoke a land use permit for a planned 14-plant chemical complex, asserting that newly discovered information proves that Formosa’s plastics facility will disturb burial sites of enslaved people and release an unsafe and unprecedented amount of toxic chemicals into residential areas.
Rise St. James, a group of residents fighting further industrial development in the parish, presented a series of letters to the council during a December 22 meeting, citing data from a ProPublica / The Advocate investigation published in July examining the plant’s potential emissions and indicating that Formosa’s complex could emit enough toxic chemicals to double emissions parish-wide.
The investigation also analyzed the potential cumulative impacts of another facility in an area with more than half a dozen extant operations, finding that “the air around Formosa’s site is more toxic with cancer-causing chemicals than 99.6% of industrialized areas of the country” already, and that “if the complex emits all the chemicals it proposes in its permit application, it would rank in the top one percent nationwide of major plants in America in terms of the concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals in its vicinity.”
Residents in the parish’s majority African-American 4th and 5th districts, the location of the majority of St. James’ industry and the proposed Formosa site, have long argued that they’re getting sick as a result of toxic emissions in the area.
“So many people here are already sick, and have cancer and respiratory problems. I don’t know what will happen if they add more emissions to what we already get,” said Sharon Lavigne, the president of Rise St. James, who lives in the 5th district.
The parish’s planning commission approved the Formosa’s land use permit prior to the release of the ProPublica/The Advocate investigation into the complex’s potential emissions. Officials were also unaware of emails sent between company representatives and state archaeologists documenting the graves of enslaved people on the proposed site. Rise St. James, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Earthjustice, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, all contributed to the letters sent to the council in the hopes that they will now reconsider the permit decision.
“The parish can approve a land use permit before the state reviews a company’s air permit application,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “It’s a problem with the system, because the parish is making decisions in a vacuum without information about what chemicals a company will emit, and in what quantities. We think this new information should inform the parish’s permitting decision.”
Since the announcement of Formosa’s plans for St. James, some local residents have asserted that they have ancestors buried on the proposed construction site. Parts of the large tract of land used to be two plantations – Acadia and Buena Vista. In June 2019, Formosa confirmed the location of one grave site on the former grounds of Buena Vista, with the remains of four people. Emails between company officials and state archaeologists show that the company had evidence of at least two grave sites as early as June 2018, from a 1877-1878 map of the area.
Residents and attorneys with EarthJustice are arguing that Formosa’s failure to disclose knowledge of these grave sites should mean a rejection of all their pending permits with the state.
“Formosa knew about these graves as early as June 2018, but failed to mention them in a permit application that was approved December 2018,” Rolfes said. “At the same time, they are engaging in a robust community outreach campaign and promising to be a good neighbor. They participated in a Black History Month celebration this February while not letting the African-American community know there were graves of their ancestors on their proposed construction site.”
In a statement to UK-based newspaper The Intercept, FG LA LLC, the subsidiary which will operate Formosa’s plastics facility said, “FG is respectful of the historical burial ground on its property and remains committed to cooperating with the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) to protect it. In regard to the Buena Vista site and the possible Acadia site, FG has worked with the proper state and regulatory authorities every step of the way and will continue to do so.”
Letters to the council also assert that Formosa’s failure to change design plans to accommodate nearby churches and schools should impact the company’s land use permit approval, stating that “there is no evidence that Formosa revised its plot plan and moved units away from churches and schools to satisfy the parish’s concerns,” something the company told the parish it had done in October 2018.
“The parish approved this permit with the understanding that Formosa was relocating their most heavily-polluting units away from a nearby elementary school, and they haven’t done that,” Rolfes said. “They haven’t followed through on their commitments to the parish.”
In addition to this recent push to rescind Formosa’s land use permit, residents and advocacy groups are also pushing the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to deny a pending air permit for the complex. An additional fifteen permits remain before construction can begin.
“We continue to fight for our lives against these toxic industries, and now we are fighting for our ancestors too,” said Lavigne. “They had no choice about where they lived, where they died, or where they were buried, but we are going to fight for the respect that their resting places, and our homes, deserve.”
This article originally published in the December 30, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
