St. James Parish community groups are calling for a ban on new petrochemical plants to halt what they say is a history of racist land use decisions that have concentrated polluting industries in Black neighborhoods, according to a federal lawsuit.
Filed on Tuesday in the U.S. Eastern District Court in New Orleans, the lawsuit claims that parish officials have “intentionally chosen to locate over a dozen enormous industrial facilities in the majority Black 4th and 5th Districts, while explicitly sparing White residents from the risk of environmental harm.”
The lawsuit calls for what would be the state’s first ban on petrochemical plants, said Pam Spees, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, including Rise St. James, Inclusive Louisiana and Mt. Triumph Baptist Church of Chatman Town
“Over and over, St. James Parish has ignored our cries for basic human rights,” said Shamyra Lavigne of Rise. “Enough is enough.”
Parish officials did not respond to requests for comment.
A joint investigation in 2019 by The Times-Picayune and ProPublica using U.S. Environmental Protection Agency modeling data found industrial activity in St. James and other parts of the Mississippi River corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge have had a disproportionate impact on communities that already have some of the country’s most polluted air.
Many of those areas are also predominantly Black and poor. In St. James’ 5th District, at least three other new plants have been proposed in recent years.
Rise and other groups have repeatedly asked for a halt to new plants in their communities, which include small towns and rural areas with mostly Black residents.
Yet a ban on solar farms was swiftly approved by the parish council last year when the mostly White community of Vacherie objected, citing worries about lower property values and the potential for flying debris during major hurricanes.
Similar concerns were ignored when raised by Black residents about petrochemical plants, the lawsuit says.
“White residents didn’t want solar farms in their backyards because they didn’t like the aesthetics,” Lavigne said. “But we have petrochemical plants in our backyards, and they’re polluting us.”
The parish has granted nearly every request by petrochemical companies to locate their facilities in majority Black areas while rejecting requests to locate them in White areas, the lawsuit says. All but four of the 24 heavy industrial facilities in the parish are located in the majority Black 4th and 5th Districts.
No new facilities have been permitted in the majority White parts of the parish in the last 46 years, the lawsuit says.
Activists have recently had some successes stemming the tide of plants.
Rise and other groups helped block the development of the $1.9 billion Wanhua plastics complex and put a temporary halt on the $9.4 billion Formosa plastics complex planned near the Sunshine Bridge.
While the plants are often touted as job creators, the communities along their fence lines rarely see the benefit, community activists say. Automation has reduced the number of plant workers, leaving some facilities with a small, specialized workforce that often commute from towns and cities outside the shadow of massive storage tanks and smokestacks.
“They always promise jobs and economic opportunity, but our neighborhoods don’t see any of that,” said Barbara Washington, a member of Inclusive Louisiana. “All we see is smoke and smog and smell the pollution.”
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