HJNO Mar/Apr 2020

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAR / APR 2020 21 by ProPublic a, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate found. And the burden is not being shared evenly. Many of the new plants planned in Louisiana’s petrochemical heart are being built in or near communities that EPAmod- els estimate already have some of the most dangerous air in America. Our analysis shows the problems are especially acute in predominantly black and poor communi- ties, like St. Gabriel, but whiter and more affluent sections — like neighboring Ascen- sion Parish — are hardly immune. All told, seven large new petrochemi- cal facilities and expansions have been approved for places in the river corridor since 2015, according to air-permit files from the Louisiana Department of Environ- mental Quality. Five more major projects — including the Formosa megacomplex in St. James — are awaiting approval. Some of the heaviest polluters will be just outside St. Gabriel, which already has some of Louisiana’s most toxic air. Just across the river in Plaquemine, for instance, the Shin- tech ethylene plant recently got the green light for a $1.5 billion, 300-acre expansion, which will intensify pollution in an area where an EPAmodel estimates the toxic lev- els of cancer-causing chemicals to be dou- ble the already high Iberville Parish aver- age. The new plant is expected to increase those levels by up to 16% in nearby areas, our analysis estimates. Shintech officials said the company has a long history of safe operations at its exist- ing plant. And they said they do not believe the expansion will have “significant adverse impacts”on the environment — while alter- native sites the company considered would make less economic sense. As a result, “it is believed that the social and economic ben- efits of the facility outweigh environmental impacts.” Formosa officials made similar argu- ments, saying they picked the site on St. James’ rural West Bank in part because of its remoteness. Spokespeople for both com- panies emphasized that their new facili- ties will comply with all state and federal requirements with regard to air pollution. The Mississippi River corridor offers built-in advantages for manufacturers — easy access to some of the continent’s bus- iest shipping lanes; plenty of cheap land for large facilities; and government officials that equate industrial investment with progress. A lax regulatory regime helps ease the path. Louisiana prides itself on having standards for toxic chemical concentrations in the air around plants, but it does not regularly monitor air near major polluters like other states, including neighboring Texas, does. While the EPAconsiders the effect of a vari- ety of chemicals, taken together, Louisiana only looks at one chemical at a time, poten- tially undercounting the true effect on air quality. Some of the heaviest polluters will be just outside St. Gabriel, which already has some of Louisiana’s most toxic air. Just across the river in Plaquemine, for instance, the Shin- tech ethylene plant recently got the green light for a $1.5 billion, 300-acre expansion, which will intensify pollution in an area where an EPAmodel estimates the toxic lev- els of cancer-causing chemicals to be dou- ble the already high Iberville Parish aver- age. The new plant is expected to increase those levels by up to 16% in nearby areas, our analysis estimates. Shintech officials said the company has a long history of safe operations at its exist- ing plant. And they said they do not believe the expansion will have “significant adverse impacts”on the environment — while alter- native sites the company considered would make less economic sense. As a result, “it is believed that the social and economic ben- efits of the facility outweigh environmental impacts.” Formosa officials made similar argu- ments, saying they picked the site on St. James’rural West Bank in part because of its remoteness. Spokespeople for both compa- nies emphasized that their new facilities will comply with all state and federal require- ments with regard to air pollution. The Mississippi River corridor offers built-in advantages for manufacturers — easy access to some of the continent’s busiest shipping lanes; plenty of cheap land for large facilities; and government officials that equate industrial investment with prog- ress. A lax regulatory regime helps ease the path. Louisiana prides itself on having stan- dards for toxic chemical concentrations in the air around plants, but it does not regu- larly monitor air near major polluters like other states, including neighboring Texas, does. While the EPA considers the effect of a variety of chemicals, taken together, Loui- siana only looks at one chemical at a time, potentially undercounting the true effect on air quality. From Cornfields to Cancer Alley St. Gabriel occupies a series of hairpin bends in the Mississippi River as it zigzags southeast from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico. With the river on three sides and the Spanish Lake swamp to the east, the town is almost an island. Suburban sprawl from the capital isn’t far away, but St. Gabriel feels a world apart. St. Gabriel has long been a place to tuck away undesirables. A leper colony, once the largest on the continent, operated here for more than a century. The state stuck a prison in St. Gabriel in 1961, a second one in 1979, and added a military-style boot camp for at-risk teens in 1999. In 2005, the bodies of hundreds of Hurricane Katrina victims were trucked to a hastily built morgue here. St. Gabriel has no downtown, no com- mercial center. Within its city limits is a discordant patchwork of large steel petro- chemical complexes, farm fields and small neighborhoods — Sunshine, Carville and Old St. Gabriel. About two-thirds of St. Gabriel’s 7,300 residents are black. Many families have been rooted here for centuries, brought as slaves and forced to cut and process sugar cane on the vast plantations that once dom- inated the river parishes. After the Civil War, many stayed on as sharecroppers, free but