February 24, 2020: Together with a diverse coalition of environmental and community organizations—including RISE St. James, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Earthworks, Center for Biological Diversity, Healthy Gulf, 350 New Orleans, No Waste Louisiana, and Earthjustice—Sierra Club has filed a Clean Air Act lawsuit challenging Formosa Plastics’ construction of a sprawling 2,600-acre petrochemical plastics manufacturing complex in a predominantly African-American community in St. James Parish, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River. If built, the complex would be one of the largest of its kind in the world, consisting of 14 separate chemical plants that would use fracked gas to manufacture plastic pellets primarily for shipment to China, where the pellets would be converted into various plastic products, which would then be shipped back to the United States for sale. The facility will emit more than 13.6 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year, roughly equivalent to the emissions from approximately 2.89 million passenger vehicles or 3.5 coal-burning power plants annually. The permits would also allow the Company to emit more than 800 tons per year of toxic air pollutants—doubling current toxic air emissions parish-wide.The project’s massive air pollution would add to the environmental and health burden that African American communities in and around St. James already bear from the existing petrochemical facilities and refineries. Indeed, the area is known as “Cancer Alley” because it has one of the highest rates of cancer in the nation, due to the dozens of chemical and industrial facilities located along the River.
Aside from the direct human health and environmental impacts, the proposed facility threatens to exacerbate the region’s already-extreme vulnerability to storm-and climate-related flooding. The facility would be located in a high-risk flood zone, which creates a heightened risk of chemical spills or fires due to flammable gases at the proposed facility. As the Texas Gulf Coast experienced in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, flood and storm surges can inundate similarly-situated petrochemical facilities and cause explosions, gases, and spills affecting the surrounding environment, carrying harmful contaminants including toxic pollutants and heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury.
Represented by Earthjustice, and together with a coalition of environmental and community organizations, Sierra Club will challenge the facility’s air permit on two grounds. First, we will argue that the air permit violates the Clean Air Act because the Company’s own modeling shows that the existing pollution in the area already violates the Clean Air Act National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone and particulate matter. Second, we have alleged that, in issuing the facility’s air permit, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality violated its public trustee duty in several ways. Significantly, the agency failed to consider the adverse cumulative effects of Formosa’s cancer-causing emissions along with the other permitted toxic emissions in the area; failed to consider the project’s harmful greenhouse gas emission impacts on the environment—especially in coastal Louisiana, which has the most to lose from rising seas; and failed to fulfill its duty to consider the environmental justice implications of the project, including measures that could reduce the effects of toxic emissions on overburdened communities.
If successful, the lawsuit would result in an order vacating and nullifying the air permit, or remanding the matter to the agency with instructions for further proceedings to cure the deficiencies in Louisiana’s final decision. The proposed appeal is also part of Sierra Club’s organization-wide effort to stop a massive petrochemical buildout along the Gulf Coast. Over the past several years, the Environmental Law Program, Dirty Fuels Campaign, the Healthy Communities Campaign, and the Delta Chapter have filed numerous sets of comments objecting to inadequate air permits in Louisiana and Texas. Given the significant greenhouse gas and toxic air pollution from the proposed project, the disproportionate impacts to historically vulnerable communities, and the diverse coalition dedicated to challenging this facility, this case is critical to fighting the petrochemical buildout in Louisiana and expanding an important grassroots coalition.