The majority-Black districts that became Cancer Alley
14th October 2024 · 0 Comments
By Delaney Dryfoos
The Lens
Residents of St. James Parish are asking a federal court, again, to bar future heavy-industrial construction in the parish’s Black communities, which are beset by high rates of asthma, cancer and maternal-health risks.
On Monday of last week (Oct. 7), members of Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James and Mount Triumph Baptist Church entered the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans seeking a reversal of last year’s court ruling, which dismissed many of their claims on procedural grounds, finding that the complaint was filed too late.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to put an end to longtime land-use discrimination that they say is “rooted in slavery and its afterlife.” They live with the evidence, they say, of almost two dozen massive industrial facilities built within the majority Black 4th and 5th Districts, all approved by the St. James Council and Planning Commission.
The suit claims that parish officials steer hazardous industry into the majority-Black parts of the parish, imperiling residents.
“We are suing because that Civil War ain’t never been over,” said Gail LeBouef, 72, a lifelong resident of St. James Parish and the co-founder of Inclusive Louisiana, a grassroots advocacy group. Industry has been coming into her predominantly Black community of Convent, Louisiana, for 60 years, since she was a child, she said.
The plaintiffs first sued St. James Parish Council for racist land-use practices in March 2023. Eight months later, in November, the Fifth Circuit dismissed the lawsuit alleging environmental racism in St. James Parish’s approval of petrochemical plants, citing a one-year statute of limitations on such actions.
U.S. District Judge Carl J. Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana found that at its core, the lawsuit revolved around the parish’s 2014 adoption of its Land Use Plan – which directed the zoning of industrial plants into predominantly Black areas, designated “Future Industrial” areas – and should have been filed within a year of that ordinance.
But the plaintiffs’ lawyers, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, appealed the ruling in March. The 2014 ordinance, they say, was part of a long line of offending events – it merely codified discriminatory practices that long preceded it and that have since persisted, they say.
“The parish has for generations implemented a racially discriminatory pattern and practice that has transformed majority-Black districts into what is now known as Cancer Alley – it began this practice in the 1950s, and continues to enforce it through to today,” said Astha Sharma Pokharel, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, in a statement. “The statute of limitations simply does not immunize the government for this ongoing violation of law.”
Residents of the majority-Black districts said that the Land Use Plan – and the older, discriminatory practices formalized by the plan – continue to harm them every day.
“I have been in St. James Parish all my life,” said Barbara Washington, 73 and co-founder of Inclusive Louisiana. “We are bombarded by so much pollution and so many people have lost their lives from cancer.”
To illustrate that point, the lawsuit includes a timeline that traces heavy industry’s movement into St. James Parish back to 1958, before the parish had zoning or land use rules. Many of the early facilities were built within one mile of Mount Triumph Baptist Church, a historically Black community in the 5th District.
That pattern became law in the 2014 Land Use Plan, which created buffer zones around plantations and majority-white Catholic churches, but not around the majority-Black Baptist churches. This also is discriminatory, the lawsuit contends, as is the parish’s ongoing practice of approving heavy industry upon the cemeteries of enslaved people – ancestors of plaintiffs in the case.
Since 1958, “the Parish has sited at least 24 industrial facilities, at least 20 of which have been steered into the majority-Black 4th and 5th districts, many of which are in or near historic Black communities,” according to the lawsuit. “By contrast, no facility has been allowed to locate in or near predominately white parts of the Parish in over 46 years.”
Two decades ago, in 2003, the public health risk of the petrochemical plants’ air pollutants was documented, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) commissioned a report on environmental justice issues in land use planning and zoning, which included a study of St. James Parish that found a higher-than-national rate of certain cancer deaths.
The intentional design of the parish’s planning philosophy, dating back decades, influenced today’s zoning laws. The petrochemical industry followed the parish’s direction, flocking to majority-Black districts, LeBouef said. “They’re gonna expand as much as the law allows them to expand.”
While the entire parish reaps revenue from the industry located within St. James Parish, the people who live in the 4th and 5th Districts shoulder a disproportionate burden of the toxic air emissions and pollutants from that industry, along with declining property values.
That burden could become even greater, if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues a wetlands permit to the Formosa Plastics Group, a Taiwanese conglomerate. Formosa plans to build one of the world’s largest plastics plants in the historically Black community of Welcome. The $9.4 billion complex would include 14 petrochemical plants. Recent air modeling found that emissions from the complex would violate federal air pollution protections.
Harry Joseph, vice president of Rural Roots Louisiana and pastor of the 114-year-old Mount Triumph Baptist Church for the last 13 years, has seen too much sickness and death already. “If they keep on building, it’s just going to continue to hurt our communities,” he said.
The suit asks the Fifth Circuit to recognize the history and reverse the district court’s judgment. “After enduring this decades-long harm,” the suit argues, “Plaintiffs should not be denied their day in court by a ruling that would shield ongoing invidious racial and religious discrimination.”
This article originally published in the October 14, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
