HJNO Mar/Apr 2020

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAR / APR 2020 25 a formality. That is not the case,” Johnston said. “Sometimes it’s not easy to secure an air permit in Louisiana.” Johnston explained that getting permits in some areas of the state is difficult because — owing to existing emissions — companies cannot demonstrate that nearby air quality will meet national standards. Even so, more than a dozen chemical plants are being built and expanded in the already-busy river cor- ridor. Johnston said he does not recall the DEQ ever denying a permit, although he says companies do not always get permis- sion to release exactly what they request. Johnston’s boss, DEQ Secretary Chuck Carr Brown, said in an interview this week that during his four years in office, he has turned away some industry proposals to build in certain locations because those communities had already “borne their burden.” He declined to name the communities or the companies in question, saying, “I don’t want to pick one over the other.” In Louisi- ana, the new controls allowed the state to reach a goal in 1997 of cutting emissions by more than half. Still, the state has made less progress than most, our analysis reveals. “I just kind of want to let you know that there are some that we looked at,” he said. “And there have been, in four years, no new permits issued there, because these com- munities have borne their share.” Johnston also pointed out that Louisi- ana is one of the only states that has its own set of air quality standards that dictate, for eachmonitored toxic chemical, a maximum allowable concentration. But Flatt’s paper indicates that Louisi- ana’s air safeguards are based on a relatively lenient risk standard — that is, the level of toxic exposure and cancer risk that remains after chemical companies install emission controls. While the EPAhas dictated a range of risk levels it deems “acceptable,” it is up to states to set their own standards. Loui- siana’s standards are at the loosest end of that spectrum. “Just by changing that standard changes what you would call risky and not risky,” Flatt said. “If the standard is loosened, you can have the best modeling, you can have great analysis and great enforcement, but you have just placed more people in danger.” Comparing maximum allowable chemi- cal exposures in different states confirms Flatt’s claim. Louisiana’s benzene standard is more than twice as lenient as the Texas standard, which is over 30 times looser than that of Massachusetts. (States enforce their standards in different ways.) “We’d Had Enough” By the early 1990s, with the required pub- lication of toxic emissions data, something that had been obvious to river communities became apparent to everyone else: The bur- den of industry wasn’t being shared. In 1993, about 105 pounds of air pollution and other hazardous materials were being released in Louisiana for every person in the state. But in St. Gabriel, the rate was three times as high, according to EPA data. The rest of Iberville Parish had managed to avoid the pile-on of industry. The par- ish seat, where decisions about land use in St. Gabriel were made, was in Plaquemine, nearly an hour’s drive away. Many St. Gabriel residents felt parish officials from the more prosperous West Bank gave the petrochemical industry free rein on the mostly black and poor East Bank. Meanwhile, St. Gabriel’s sidewalks, roads and other amenities provided by the par- ish deteriorated — even though St. Gabriel, thanks to the industrial activity, was gen- erating a large share of the parish’s taxes. A 1994 parish analysis found St. Gabriel was supporting 40% of the Iberville Parish bud- get but getting only 6% of the spending. Community leaders began stumping for incorporation in the early 1990s. They promised a government run by St. Gabriel residents would finally build long-prom- ised sidewalks and streetlights, patch up the roads and install a sewerage system to replace leaky septic tanks. A 1993 proposal by Supplemental Fuels Inc. for a hazardous waste facility in St. Gabriel was the catalyst the movement needed. It pushed Schexnayder, then a member of the Iberville Parish School Board, into environmental activism. “It wasn’t that SFI was particularly bad; it was that we’d had enough,” Schexnayder said. “That got us together. We had to show them we mean business.” The new city’s footprint was unusu- ally expansive. At 30 square miles, it’s the state’s sixth-largest city by area but 52nd by population. The result is that St. Gabriel has control over an area well beyond its neighborhoods. No large plants have been approved within St. Gabriel’s border since incorpora- tion, but at least one facility that had already applied for a permit was built after 1994. “When companies come in here with a new plant, all we have to do is go to meet- ings and say, ‘We don’t want that here,’” Schexnayder said. “If we fill a room, they “When companies come in here with a new plant, all we have to do is go to meetings and say, ‘We don’t want that here,’” Schexnayder said. “If we fill a room, they know we can vote them out. They have to listen to us.” — Hazel Schexnayder