Citizens take to streets in protest of Formosa plant
1st April 2019 · 0 Comments
By Meghan Holmes
Contributing Writer
More than a dozen advocacy groups have formed a new coalition to fight industrial development and pollution along the Mississippi River in south Louisiana.
Called Citizens Against Death Alley, the new group includes environmental organizations like the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and 350 New Orleans as well as concerned residents from parishes including St. James and St. John the Baptist. Beginning April 3, the groups will march together from Reserve to Baton Rouge over the course of five days, highlighting plants with a history of toxic air emissions along the way and culminating at the steps of the governor’s mansion.
“We are marching to raise awareness of the environmental issues here, because we have some real problems,” said Robert Taylor, who founded Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish. “We are also calling on all of our government officials, including the governor, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, and the Louisiana Department of Health, to act. The EPA told us we have the highest rates of cancer in the nation and no one is doing anything. They want to bring more plants to these parishes.”
Taylor lives in Reserve, a small African-American community in St. John the Baptist Parish. The area is also home to the Denka Performance Elastomer plant, formerly DuPont, which manufactures neoprene. For the past 50 years, the plant has been emitting a chemical called chloroprene as part of that production process. In 2010, the EPA tightened regulations on chloroprene after finding that certain exposure levels could cause liver and lung cancers.
Around the same time, the EPA was also studying potentially harmful air emissions in south Louisiana. They released their findings in 2015, stating that residents of St. John Parish were more likely than anyone in the nation to develop cancer from air emissions. The organization traced part of that risk to the Denka plant, and insisted the company lower chlorepene emissions. A retrofitting plan reduced releases by 85 percent, but the amount remains above levels that the EPA deems safe.
“I started this organization in the fall of 2016 after the EPA told us what this plant was doing to us,” Taylor said. “There is an elementary school with 400 children about 1,500 feet from that plant. They came and put in air monitors and told us those children were being exposed to chloroprene at levels hundreds of times what had been deemed safe. We went to the school board and they did nothing. Those children are still there. Almost all of them are Black, and it was the Black people of Louisiana who elected Jon Bel Edwards. I want to know why the governor has not given us an audience after begging to speak with him for three years. We are suffering, and it seems like no one in the government cares.”
In nearby St. James Parish, residents of majority African-American communities in the 5th District express similar frustrations.
“The people in the government that vote for these plants don’t live here and breathe what we breathe,” said Sharon Lavigne, executive director of RISE St. James. “They act like there aren’t people here, or churches, or schools.”
Several new plants are slated to be built in St. James, including a multi-billion dollar Formosa facility that will employ 1,200 workers in plastics production and bring the parish billions of dollars in tax revenue (after a decade-long tax exemption expires). The state government, and many local officials, praised Formosa’s decision to locate in St. James.
“The parish government had a big party celebrating Formosa and all the billions they were going to get,” Lavigne said. “They don’t want us to fight, but we are going to keep fighting.”
St. James residents also fear a disaster at the nearby Mosaic fertilizer plant, where toxic waste water threatens to spill from a containment area. Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality has been working with the company to prevent any leaks or spills.
“We have all these emissions and spills and so many plants up and down the river, and more are on the drawing board,” Taylor said. “The people are already suffering and they want to build more. To me, that says we are expendable. I want someone to explain to me why we can go to Syria to protect children from gas while our own Black children are being gassed and no one cares.”
Taylor and Lavigne will tell their stories next week during the march to Baton Rouge, hoping to stop further industrial development in their communities. They also hope to meet with Jon Bel Edwards and pressure the governor to do more for the African-American communities who propelled him into office.
“This is an election year, so we hope that he listens,” says Anne Rolfes, executive director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “He says he cares about the African-American community, so why is he leading their destruction?”
The Coalition Against Death Alley’s march begins with a church rally in Reserve on April 3 at Tchoupitoulas Chapel where singers, musicians, poets, church leaders and community members will speak about their experiences in what Taylor describes as “one of the deadliest places to live in the United States.” Marchers will walk down River Road, crossing back and forth from east to west bank to highlight different polluters before making their way to Baton Rouge.
“The pollution in these parishes has been bad for a while, but we have reached the point where the situation is incredibly urgent,” Rolfes said. “Construction is planned for six facilities in St. James alone. So, as organizations, I think we all felt the need to come together and act, because people’s lives are on the line.”
This article originally published in the April 1, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
