HJBR Nov/Dec 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I NOV / DEC 2022 11 Without air or water permits, the company will have to “go back to the drawing board.” ‘Goliath iswobbling’: LOUISIANA COURT STRIKES BLOW TO FORMOSA’S GIANT PLASTICS PLANT by Lylla Younes, Grist A years-long battle to stop the chemical company Formosa from building a massive petrochemical complex along the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana swung in favor of residents on Wednesday when a state district judge withdrew the air permits that the com- pany needs to operate. The Taiwan-based chemical giant first an- nounced its plans to build the $9.4 billion pet- rochemical complex on a sprawling 2,400- acre site in St. James Parish in April 2018. If approved, the so-called “Sunshine Project” would have been one of the largest and most expensive industrial projects in the state’s history. Governor John Bel Edwards, a Demo- crat, celebrated it as a boon for economic de- velopment that would bring 1,200 new jobs to the region. But the project encountered swift opposi- tion from the local community. St. James is perched on a bend of the lower Mississippi River in a region known as “Can- cer Alley” for its concentration of plants that spew cancer-causing chemicals. Numerous large industrial facilities already operate in the parish. A ProPublica investigation in 2019 found that the air around Formosa’s proposed site already contained more cancer-causing