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Emily Kask/AFP/Getty Images
This story was first published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has opened a series civil rights investigations into state agencies. Louisiana to examine whether permits granted in the highly polluted industrial corridor, known locally as Cancer Alley, have violated Black citizens’ rights.
The latest, First reported by the New Orleans Advocate, marks additional enforcement action by the federal agency within the region since Michael Regan, the EPA administrator, took place. The area was visited late last year.
The civil rights inquiries will investigate Louisiana’s environment department (LDEQ) over a series of permits approved in both St. John parish and St. James parish and elsewhere in the region, where chronic air pollution in majority Black communities has led to a wave of activism and international attention.
One investigation, targeted at the state’s health department, will examine whether the department violated the rights of Black residents and schoolchildren living near a neoprene facility in St. John “by allegedly failing in its duty to provide parish residents with necessary information about health threats”, and whether the department failed to make recommendations to community members and local government over how to reduce exposure to pollution.
Denka, a Japanese chemicals firm, runs the neoprene factory. It is the only place in America that emits the pollutant chloroprene. This has been listed by the EPA to be a probable human cancergen. Residential locations around the site, including an elementary school near the plant’s fence line, often record levels of chloroprene well above the EPA’s lifetime exposure guidance levels.
The investigations will also include permits for a proposed plastics site in St James’ neighboring parish. It is operated by Formosa of Taiwan, which has been permitted to emit upto 15,400 lbs. Ethylene oxide is a cancer-causing chemical. This project has been Placé on hold during a federal government review.
The investigation will also look at permits for a proposed St. John parish grain terminal.
The agency was praised by environmentalists and researchers for the announcement, which prompted them to push the agency to investigate further. Series of complaints arguing that the permitting processes are racially biased and fail to fully include feedback from community members.
Robert Taylor, the president of the Concerned Citizens of St. John, told the Guardian: “We need this investigation from the perspective of racial injustice. It is so obvious what’s happening is discriminatory.”
Darryl Malek-Wiley, a senior organizer with the Sierra Club, described the investigations as “a groundbreaking case looking at how LDEQ issues permits and doesn’t identify the impact on African American, low-income communities despite placing them a risk”.
Malek-Wiley stated that he hoped that the investigations would be completed in six months. He also suggested that the EPA could financially sanction both agencies after the investigation is complete.
A statement from LDEQ said that its permit process is “impartial and unbiased”.
“LDEQ handles all issues with a fair and equitable approach. LDEQ will work with EPA to resolve this matter,” it said.
The Louisiana health department’s general counsel, Steven Russo, said in a statement reported by the Advocate that the department had received the complaint and was “reviewing it closely”.
A spokesman for Denka, Jim Harris, argued there were “no widespread elevated cancer rates in St John the Baptist compared with the state average”, pointing to Louisiana Tumor registry data over decades. Harris accused “environmental activist groups” of “manipulating data and collecting and analyzing it in non-scientific ways”.
Recent studiesThere have been reports of elevated cancer diagnoses in the vicinity of the plant. EPA data also shows a 50-fold increase in cancer risk in census tracts around the plant.
