In ‘Cancer Alley,’ Judge Blocks Huge Petrochemical Plant.
Lisa Friedman | September 15, 2022 | The New York Times
Louisiana activists battling to block an enormous plastics plant in a corridor so dense with industrial refineries it is known as Cancer Alley won a legal victory this week when a judge canceled the company’s air permits.
In a sharply worded opinion released Wednesday, Judge Trudy White of Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District in Baton Rouge noted that the residents in the tiny town of Welcome, where the $9.4 billion petrochemical plant would have been built, are descendants of enslaved Africans.
“The blood, sweat and tears of their ancestors is tied to the land,” Judge White wrote. “Their ancestors worked the land with the hope and dream of passing down productive agricultural untainted land along the Mississippi to their families.”
She said that when Louisiana state regulators granted 14 permits to FG LA L.L.C., an affiliate of the Taiwan-based giant Formosa Plastics, they had used “selective” and “inconsistent” data and had failed to consider the pollution effects on the predominantly Black community.
The decision is the latest in a string of blows to the proposed petrochemical plant. Those who have been fighting the plant said they hoped it would be the death knell.
“People said you couldn’t do it, that the government approved it and I was wasting my time,” said Sharon Lavigne, founder and president of Rise St. James, a local advocacy group that led the suit against the plant.
The judge’s ruling cited Ms. Lavigne’s remarks to the court that the land where the plant would be built is “sacred.”
Janile Parks, a spokeswoman for FG LA L.L.C., a member of the Formosa Plastics Group, said in a statement that the company still planned to build the complex, which it calls the Sunshine Project.
The company “intends to explore all legal options in light of Judge White’s ruling as the project continues to pursue successful permitting,” Ms. Parks wrote. She argued the permits issued by the state were “sound” and that the project had met state and federal standards.
Greg Langley, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said that “we are reading the judge’s ruling and looking at our options.”
Ms. Lavigne, who lives in Welcome and whose grandmother is buried near the spot where the petrochemical complex would have been located, noted that St. James Parish was already home to 12 petrochemical facilities in a 10-mile radius.
“The air is toxic; you can’t drink the water; you can’t plant a garden,” Ms. Lavigne said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “I felt like these plants are cutting our life short.”
