Westwego City Council denies permits for chemical company production and storage
10th February 2020 · 0 Comments
By Meghan Holmes
Contributing Writer
On January 28, the Westwego city council unexpectedly voted to deny any permits to Wanhua Chemical, a Chinese company hoping to produce and store chemicals for plastics production along the Mississippi River in south Louisiana.
The vote, at a meeting intended as solely a question and answer session, came just days before the release of a new report on benzene emissions from refineries, with EPA data showing levels of fenceline benzene emissions at Chalmette Refinery at more than three times the level deemed safe for public health.
Benzene is a component in the production of MDI, methylene diphenyl diisocyanate, the chemical Wanhua hoped to store and distill in Westwego. It’s also released as part of the oil refining process. Long-term exposure to benzene has been shown to increase the risk of cancer, and short-term exposure can weaken immune systems, suppressing white blood cell formation.
At the January 28 meeting, Wanhua U.S. CEO Roberto Do Val told a 150-person audience and the city council that manufacturing MDI was inappropriate for Westwego, but that storing and distilling the chemical was safe. The $500 million Westwego facility would have taken MDI from China and distilled it into a number of component products that go into consumer products like paint, shoe soles, insulation and padding for furniture and automobiles. Do Val called the process “benign.”
When council members, the mayor and emergency officials began questioning Do Val, he was unable to provide detailed responses and pledged to work with them over time. Council members were unsatisfied and called for a vote, ending the meeting early with a unanimous decision to deny the company’s permits.
Residents and advocates in the audience applauded the decision. “We were overjoyed,” said Anne Rolfes with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “We were glad to finally see some serious questions asked of a facility. That’s all we ask,” she said.
Rolfes characterized parts of Do Val’s presentation as “misleading,” specifically when he claimed chemicals in the facility weren’t flammable. “That would make you think it can’t catch fire, but when the fire chief asked, Do Val later said, ‘yeah, it burns,’ and then he couldn’t tell us what it emits when it burns. We need to know what would happen if there was an accident,” she said.
Councilman Glenn Green, who called for the vote, lives two blocks from the proposed Wanhua site, formerly owned by Kinder Morgan. “When we had questions he couldn’t answer, or didn’t want to answer, that got my attention,” he said, “I wasn’t comfortable after that.”
Wanhua officials left the meeting without comment. The Westwego facility marked the company’s third foray into south Louisiana, with the first being a rejected proposal in St. Gabriel in 2015, and a bid to move into St. James Parish that the company pulled in the face of local opposition and decreasing profitability following the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese imports in 2019. The St. James facility would have produced MDI, meaning that the company would have a domestic source rather than continuing to import the chemical from China, as it planned to do for use at the Westwego facility. The manufacturing process is more controversial and involves the release of harmful emissions.
“These companies want to come to Louisiana, where the laws aren’t enforced and it’s cheaper to operate,” Rolfes said. “This is a big battle for our state, and the win in Jefferson Parish shows that we don’t have to accept every bad idea that comes our way. With that said, there are still almost a million people living near refineries in Louisiana, being exposed to pollution day in and day out.”
Rolfes joined panelists from Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Texas and New Mexico to publicize the results of EPA’s fenceline monitoring of benzene emissions at a press conference this week. A study analyzing EPA’s data from the Environmental Integrity Project highlighted the ten refineries across the country with the highest amount of unacceptable emissions. Six were in Texas and one was in Louisiana: the Chalmette Refinery.
Fenceline data was released for the first time in 2019, following EPA’s 2015 decision to better regulate and monitor benzene exposure in communities surrounding petrochemical facilities, following a lawsuit filed by advocacy groups including the Bucket Brigade. The recently released numbers show “disturbingly high concentrations of benzene,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project. “Benzene is like a canary in a coal mine, if you’re getting exposed to that, you’re also being exposed to other harmful toxins, that are especially harmful to children.”
Fenceline monitors measure emissions from plants that aren’t accounted for, as opposed to flares or wastewater systems with known hazardous chemical releases. Emissions come from inadequate seals where pipes connect, or malfunctioning valves, among other things, and waft into nearby communities. Those communities, most often working class people of color, have complained about smells, headaches and cancer for decades. This new monitoring proves that people are at risk.
“This goes back a long time. A judge ruled the Chalmette refinery violated the Clean Air Act for benzene releases because seals on tanks were leaking in 2005. We are still seeing high exposure levels and there have been red flags in Chalmette for 15 years, so it’s clear we need even more robust monitoring and more protection from pollution in these communities,” Rolfes said.
While advocates see the Westwego council’s decision as a victory, it’s too soon to tell if this is part of a larger movement against the petrochemical industry in Louisiana. Formosa’s thirteen-plant chemical complex has been approved by the state and parish, and several other facilities remain in development across the area already known to many as Cancer Alley.
“There was a great public outcry in St. James Parish against Wanhua, and hopefully that informed the leadership in Jefferson Parish, but this is obviously a great challenge for the state. What is our future going to be? Are we going to continue to be a dumping ground, or pivot to better, cleaner, industries?” Rolfes asked.
This article originally published in the February 10, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
