Residents are calling for accountability in St. James Parish zoning change dispute
1st July 2019 · 0 Comments
By Meghan Holmes
Contributing Writer
A recently released report from the Louisiana Bucket Brigade calls on St. James Parish officials to account for zoning changes that allow industry in residential neighborhoods.
Called “A Plan Without People,” the report details a zoning plan the parish council passed in 2014, creating a new designation of “Residential/Future Industrial” in the parish’s majority-African-American Fourth and Fifth districts. Residents say these changes precipitated the closure of post offices, schools and businesses, as corporations purchased land and planned industrial development.
“We were not part of the process at all,” said Myrtle Felton, who lives in the Fourth District. “You look up and they’re building something else, and they say you can’t stop it. I’ve watched businesses, churches, and banks close. You can’t buy groceries, gas, or shoes in this district; you have to go somewhere else. I worked all my life to own a home, to have an asset later in life, so that I could sit back and enjoy what I’ve worked for. It’s not that way here. It’s existing; it’s not living.”
Many of the Fourth and Fifth Districts’ communities sprang up after the end of the Civil War, as African Americans began purchasing land to farm along the Mississippi River. Today, the area is known as Cancer Alley, where a concentration of petrochemical plants routinely emit cancer-causing chemicals. Residents say they’re getting sick, and no new plants should be built. State and local officials largely support the arrival of foreign companies, like Taiwanese-owned Formosa, currently in the permitting process to open a plastic manufacturing plant in the Fifth District.
“If my community had a say, we would not allow this company to bulldoze wetlands and sugar cane fields,” Sharon Lavigne, president of Rise St. James and Fifth District resident, said. “My family has been here for generations, and the government is favoring foreign polluters over families like mine.”
St. James Parish officials say that the Fourth and Fifth Districts have little new residential construction and dwindling populations.
“The land use attorney hired to consult for the parish told me the justification for this zoning change was that there were not any residential permits being issued in this area, so they read that as a stagnant population or population in decline,” said Justin Cray, a New Orleans-based urban planner who co-authored the Bucket Brigade’s report.
“It’s true that the population hasn’t grown as much, but it’s kind of a ‘chicken or the egg’ scenario. Are you actively disinvesting from this area to make it untenable to live there, and destroying property values, or will you support and service people who are already burdened and in desperate need of facilities,” Cray asked.
The parish’s 2014 zoning plan began as a different set of policies proposed in 2011, after a two-year planning process. Initially, the parish used a residential designation for both the Fourth and Fifth districts, but that changed when planning committee officials introduced new regulations in 2014. The Fourth and Fifth districts became “Residential/Future Industrial” in the new land use plan. Residents were also banned from subdividing their property before sale, and buffer zones intended to keep industry from schools and churches were not appropriately in place on maps later used to approve new plants.
“When the council presented the 2014 plan, they stated that it was substantially similar to the 2011 proposal, and they are in fact substantially different,” Cray said. “Someone removed protections for people in the Fourth and Fifth districts. There is no public record(s) of who made these changes, or how they were made.”
Shortly after the parish council passed these zoning changes, they approved a methanol plant. More than half a dozen other plants are slated for construction in the coming months. They are near neighborhoods and schools. As public outcry over new industry increased, the zoning code was amended.
“The Fifth District’s representative, Clyde Cooper, helped dial back the plan and undo the Future Industrial designation in the Welcome neighborhood of the Fifth District,” Cray said. “But the council won’t reconsider permits they approved right after the plan was adopted. There’s a cause for concern there about the evenness of the decision-making, because they’ve shown a willingness to help other majority-white communities downriver, like when they stopped the Wolverine development.”
Advocates also point to the 2016 indictment of parish Director of Operations Blaise Gravois and parish president Timmy Roussel, on charges of fraud for favoring industry. A local judge threw out the five-page indictment against Gravois and an appeals court judge later reinstated it.
“These changes happened during the tenure of two men charged with malfeasance, and they remain in-office and crucial backers of the industry,” Anne Rolfes, executive director of the Bucket Brigade, said. “There’s a lot of money from industry floating around in St. James and this land use plan was a prime opportunity for corruption.”
Residents in the Fourth and Fifth districts want parish officials to reconsider permits they granted near their homes. “We didn’t get a chance to voice our opinion,” Felton said. “Politicians just keep sending plants into this area and people keep getting sick and dying. It’s devastating. You’re killing all these people for a dollar, and it’s getting you nowhere, because you have to die, and you can’t take it with you.”
This article originally published in the July 1, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
