Battle rages on in fight against Formosa plant
9th March 2020 · 0 Comments
By Meghan Holmes
Contributing Writer
On February 14, local residents and environmental groups filed a second lawsuit in the effort to revoke permits for a proposed Formosa Chemicals plant complex in St. James Parish.
The suit alleges that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality used outdated data that fails to account for pollution in the 5th District, where the plant would be built. The majority African-American district has seen the development of several petrochemical facilities in recent years, and some residents near the facilities want to stop the construction of more, arguing that St. James’ Black residents disproportionately bear the burden of pollution from these facilities.
“LDEQ doesn’t care about people’s lives. They should have consulted the citizens of St. James, not the public officials, before approving these permits,” said Sharon Lavigne, founder and president of RISE St. James, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. “It just tells me that people in higher office can do what they want and poison an entire African-American community. RISE is going to fight to save the lives of the people in our community. This approval is making our fight harder, but it’s making us stronger, and we will fight until the end to stop Formosa.”
The proposed Formosa facility would be one of the largest plants in the world, turning fracked gas into plastic pellets. The company was recently fined a record-setting $50 million in the settlement of a Texas case after it polluted waterways with billions of plastic pellets, another reason environmental groups say Formosa shouldn’t be allowed to construct a facility in Louisiana.
“This company is a proven bad actor, but the state gave them the rubber stamp of approval to come here,” said Anne Rolfes with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “Fifteen thousand people spoke up during the comment period for the permit and said they don’t want it, and even Taiwan, where Formosa is from, won’t let it be built there. That’s why we’re filing suit.”
Groups also filed a federal suit against the Army Corps of Engineers in January, asking the Corps to rescind Formosa’s Clean Water Act and Rivers and Harbors Act permits it issued in September and to conduct a full environmental study. The suit contends that the Corps has violated the National Environmental Policy Act by approving the permit without adequately analyzing air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, or downstream impacts.
The state, and the Corps, contend that Formosa’s permit applications met all federal and state laws. Louisiana officials spent years and more than a billion dollars in incentives luring the complex to St. James, which will eventually create about 1,200 jobs.
On February 28, another resident of the Fifth District, Beverly Alexander, filed an intervention in the suit against LDEQ after learning that state officials denied the existence of documented racial disparities in pollution-related health risks among St. James residents.
“The air in my neighborhood is gray and dirty, not fresh and clean like other parts of St. James Parish,” Alexander said. “I can see with my own eyes the pollution that is hurting my community.”
The intervention argues that LDEQ used obsolete data to justify Formosa’s permits, from EPA’s 2011 National Air Toxics Assess-ment. The most recent data set, from 2014, shows that people in the majority African-American communities of Welcome and Friendship in St. James Parish have a greater risk of cancer from air pollution than 86 percent of Louisiana residents.
“LDEQ did this analysis to supposedly show that there isn’t a hot spot for pollution near the proposed facility, but they got it all wrong,” said Lisa Jordan, director of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. One of the clinic’s student attorneys, Lisa Diaz, submitted the intervention. “The 2014 data clearly shows there is a disparity in pollution risk, and that data doesn’t account for several facilities that have been permitted in recent years including South Louisiana Methanol, YCI Methanol, and Formosa itself.”
The proposed Formosa facility will be made up of more than a dozen plants and span 2,500 acres. It would double toxic air emissions in St. James Parish and more than triple levels of cancer-causing chemicals in the region. It would emit pollutants including ethylene oxide, benzene and formaldehyde, which are all known carcinogens, and would also emit more than 13 million tons of carbon pollution each year, the equivalent of emissions from 2.6 million cars.
“We cannot take double the amount of pollution in St. James,” said Sharon Lavigne. “Too many people are already sick and dying.”
Residents in St. James have also asked the parish government to rescind Formosa’s local land use permit, and appeared before the parish council on March 4 with Diane Wilson, lead plaintiff in the $50 million Texas decision against the company.
“Formosa Plastics has been exposed as a serial polluter that has deceived our communities,” Wilson said. “The council needs to protect public health, keep plastic pollution out of the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, and reconsider the damage this project would do. I’ve seen the damage Formosa does to the environment.”
This article originally published in the March 9, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
