HJBR Nov/Dec 2022

GOLIATH IS WOBBLING 12 NOV / DEC 2022 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE  the Center for Biological Diversity, filed suit against the Army Corps of Engineers for issu- ing the company its Clean Water Act permits. The federal agency voluntarily suspended the water permits last year and required its staff to develop a full environmental impact state- ment, citing environmental justice concerns. That review has yet to be released. In her ruling, Judge Trudy White called the state agency’s environmental justice analy- sis “arbitrary and capricious” and said that it “does not comply with the agency’s public trustee duties.” Despite the judge’s ruling, Formosa report- edly said on Thursday that it still intends to build its complex in St. James. But without air or water permits, the com- pany will have to “go back to the drawing board” and rework its permits from scratch, said Corinne Van Dalen, a senior attorney at pollution than 99.6 percent of industrialized areas of the country. If the complex was to be built, the analysis estimated, the level of can- cer-causing industrial pollution in some parts of the parish could more than triple. “Formosa was wrong to even want to come in here and poison us because we’re already being poisoned,” Sharon Lavigne, a lifelong parish resident, told Grist. After Formosa se- lected her hometown for its new chemical complex, Lavigne founded Rise St. James, a faith-based grassroots organization with the explicit goal of stopping Formosa’s plans. That’s when the company’s legal struggles began. In 2019, on behalf of Rise St. James, the environmental watchdog Earthjustice sued the Louisiana Department of Environ- mental Quality for its decision to grant For- mosa its permits to emit air pollution. Around the same time, another environmental group, Earthjustice. The district court’s ruling comes on the heels of another major victory for the resi- dents of St. James. Last week, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality an- nounced that it was withdrawing the permit application for South Louisiana Methanol’s proposed chemical complex. The project site was located between two historic Black neigh- borhoods, including Freetown, a community founded by formerly enslaved people. “These developments mark a new day for the residents of St. James,” Van Dalen told Grist. “This predominantly Black area was once seen as ground zero for new petro- chemical developments. And the residents galvanized this enormous campaign and they fought and they fought and they’re winning. Goliath is wobbling. And now they get to have a new St. James.” n