A Community In America's 'Cancer Alley' Fights For Its Life Against A Plastics Plant

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

On a recent summer evening, about 40 people sat in Freetown Hall in St. James Parish, Louisiana, passing around plastic objects: a water bottle, a pump moisturizer bottle and a tall food container.

Holding the food container in one hand, Beverley Alexander, a St. James Parish resident, approached Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist who drove in from Lafayette for the meeting.

“This is the plastic they are going to make at the plant?” she asked. Subra nodded yes. “Should I stop using these?” The scientist answered quietly, “That’s up to you.”

St. James is a rural community of just over 21,000 on the Mississippi River, better known for its plantations than its plastics. Some of its residents, as well as activists from around the state, had come to the hall to strategize how to stop the construction of a $9.4 billion chemical plant proposed by Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics. The facility, to cover 2,400 acres about 2 miles upriver from the meeting, would be the largest in the parish, which already hosts a fertilizer plant, a polystyrene plant and several oil and gas terminals and pipelines. It would also be one of the largest plastic producers in the nation.

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St. James lies in the middle of Louisiana’s petrochemical corridor, called “Cancer Alley” by many people in the state because of the emissions and pollutants released by the many industrial plants in the region.

Anyone you speak to here has had cancer or knows multiple people who have died from cancer. One resident told HuffPost she personally knows 70 people in the area who have died from cancer. Parents say their children have trouble breathing and suffer from skin rashes and nose bleeds. Last month, Lavigne and her group participated in a three-day march through Cancer Alley to talk with residents and local and state representatives about stopping construction of new plants in the state and asking for stronger regulations on existing plants.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/plasticfreejuly/a-community-in-americas-cancer-alley-fights-for-its-life-against-a-plastics-plant/ar-AAE4Gxk?li=BBnb7Kz

[KT2000]

1. this is also a fail

on the part of their senators. There use to be an ombudsman for the EPA who would assist people in this situation but no longer. There also used to be an environmental justice department at EPA but no longer.