DeSmog
From Pollution to the Pandemic, Racial Equity Eludes Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Community
Higher rates of COVID-19 infection and death have been found in people living in a stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge lined with over a hundred refineries and petrochemical plants.
Mary Hampton, president of the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish, a community group in Louisiana fighting for clean air, opted to do everything in her power to avoid getting the coronavirus after Robert Taylor, the group’s founder, was hospitalized with COVID-19 earlier this year. So she got vaccinated as soon as she could. “Either the vaccine is going to make me sick,” Hampton reasoned, “or the virus is going to kill me.”
DeSmog
The disproportionate toll that COVID-19 is taking on the Black community brought environmental justice issues to the forefront during 2020. Calls for dealing with climate change and environmental justice were elevated by president-elect Biden, who spoke about endangered communities in the last presidential debate and on his campaign website, calling for environmental justice and “rooting out the systemic racism in our laws, policies, institutions, and hearts.”
That toll is apparent in Louisiana where I continued to document the struggle for environmental justice for DeSmog throughout 2020. These photos are part of an ongoing DeSmog series on the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as ‘Cancer Alley’ which hosts more than 100 petrochemical plants and refineries. Environmental racism and pollution have left fenceline communities especially vulnerable to COVID-19.
Monday night, March 15, 2021, Louisiana State Police Troop D and the Emergency Services Unit assisted the Sulphur Police and Fire Departments at the scene of an overturned tractor trailer
March 12, 2021 By Frank McCormack
The public comment period is underway for permits related to a project that would develop a new grain elevator and terminal on a 248-acre site on the right descending bank of the Lower Mississippi River in St. John the Baptist Parish, La., near the town of Wallace.
Greenfield Louisiana LLC has applied for permits with both the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The Corps permits are related to Section 10 of the Rivers & Harbors Act and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. With the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, Greenfield Louisiana has applied for a Water Quality Certification (WQC).
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EJSCREEN: The Environmental Litigation Tool of the Future?
President Joseph Biden Jr. has committed to making major improvements in environmental justice communities (EJCs) by pledging to invest 40% of his $2 trillion clean energy plan into these communities.
petrmalinak / Shutterstock.com
The question for industry is what this will look like and how it will impact business.
A judicial order in a Louisiana district court case late last year could provide some clues. The EPA’s EJSCREEN mapping tool, used to identify pollution risks in minority and low-income communities, provided pivotal information for the judge.
In November 2020,
Rise St. James et. al. v. Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) was heard before Judge Trudy White in the 19th Judicial District Court of Louisiana. The hearing resulted in the judge ordering the LDEQ back to the drawing board to conduct stronger analysis on environmental justice impacts when issuing air permits for Formosa Pla