September 15, 2022: Yesterday, Sierra Club, together with our environmental justice partners in Louisiana, secured a court order invalidating the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s (LDEQ) decision to issue Clean Air Act permits allowing Formosa Plastics to build a massive petrochemical facility in a predominately Black community in St. James Parish. The permits would have allowed Formosa Plastics to construct and operate one of the largest plastics and petrochemical facilities in the world, which would emit thousands of tons per year of harmful or toxic pollution in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” a region which has already been harmed by years of environmental racism. The chemical complex would also have emitted approximately 13.6 million tons per year of greenhouse gases—the equivalent of approximately 2.86 million cars on the road or 3.5 large coal-fired power plants—for making plastic pellets, most of which would be shipped internationally to manufacture plastic goods and then shipped back to the United States for sale. The decision throws out the air permits and sends Formosa Plastics back to the drawing board.
Formosa Plastics’ massive proposed petrochemical complex would include 10 chemical manufacturing plants spanning 2,400 acres, located just one mile from an elementary school in St. James Parish. It would have doubled to tripled the levels of cancer-causing pollutants currently harming the community from existing industrial plants. The company’s own modeling shows that, with the operation of the enormous petrochemical facility, air quality in St. James Parish would violate the Environmental Protection Act’s national, health-based limits for harmful particulate matter and ozone-forming nitrogen dioxide. Breathing elevated levels of particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, even for short periods, can cause respiratory illness, like asthma, hospitalization, and even death.
In 2020, despite 15,500 public comments from allies opposing the permits, LDEQ approved Formosa Plastics’ application for 14 air permits, with essentially no changes to make the permits more protective for public health. Sierra Club and allies, represented by Earthjustice, filed a lawsuit challenging LDEQ’s issuance of the permit. Yesterday, Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court vacated the permit because it violated the Clean Air Act’s mandate that LDEQ refuse any permit that would cause or contribute to air quality violations. The District Court also agreed with Sierra Club and its allies’ arguments that LDEQ failed to mitigate environmental and public health harms to the maximum extent possible, failed to adequately consider harms to historically disadvantaged communities, failed to properly evaluate alternatives, and failed to consider climate impacts from the facility.
The petitioners in the case are RISE St. James, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, No Waste Louisiana, Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, and the Sierra Club. Earthjustice represented the petitioners in the appeal.
Sierra Club Environmental Law Program secured expert testimony for the coalition, and assisted in developing legal and technical comments on the permit and on the briefs to the District Court.