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Formosa Plastics Group “FPG’s overseas expansion has focused primarily on the United States and mainland China.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formosa_Plastics_Group Why does Taiwan, Japan, and the USA do so much business with China, who they call an enemy?

Is the US EPA investigation going to include allegations of corruption-bribery related to Formosa and/or other companies?

What about the endangered Louisiana French speaking population? The French speaking population includes Blacks, Whites and Native Americans (e,g. Houma).


“Sunset on Louisianne (Zachary Richard)” https://youtu.be/WKxm9q3sKfw

Legal Complaint to US EPA filed in January 2022:
“Concerned Citizens of St. John (“CCSJ”) and Sierra Club respectfully submit this complaint against the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (“LDEQ”) and the Louisiana Department of Health (“LDH”) for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) implementing regulations, 40 C.F.R. Part 7. Title VI prohibits entities receiving federal financial assistance from engaging in activities that subject individuals to discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. 42 U.S.C. § 2000d. As entities receiving financial assistance from EPA, LDEQ and LDH are subject to Title VI’s prohibition against discrimination. LDEQ and LDH have violated that prohibition by subjecting Black residents of St. John the Baptist Parish to disproportionate air pollution and related harms from various facilities, including ethylene oxide from various sources and chloroprene from a neoprene production facility. St. John the Baptist Parish is a majority Black parish, and, due to LDEQ’s and LDH’s failures, its residents face the highest cancer risk from air pollution in the nation…

St. John the Baptist Parish is located in Cancer Alley, an 85-mile-long corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with over 150 industrial polluting facilities that have contributed to numerous environmental harms that disproportionately affect communities of color.29

Environmental racism in Cancer Alley is a longstanding issue.30 St. John the Baptist Parish has 42,477 residents, and 58.4% of them are African American.31 St. John the Baptist residents are surrounded by petrochemical plants and oil refineries, including Denka, Evonik Materials’ plant, Union Carbide Corporation’s Taft/Star operation, and Marathon Petroleum’s oil refinery….

At the international level, CCSJ has attempted to meet with representatives of Denka at the company’s headquarters in Japan. In October 2019, two members of CCSJ traveled from St. John to Tokyo to present evidence that the company’s neoprene facility was responsible for unusually high rates of cancer and other illnesses in the parish.3 Denka did not meet with them.4 In May 2021, CCSJ filed an emergency request for Precautionary Measures at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights seeking protective measures to protect the human rights of St. John residents.5 …” https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/22.01.20_ccsj_sc_title_vi_complaint_w_attachments.pdf

“Sierra Club Files Lawsuit Against EPA to Hold Louisiana Accountable for Air Pollution” Thursday, April 14, 2022 https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2022/04/sierra-club-files-lawsuit-against-epa-hold-louisiana-accountable-for-air

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evonik_Industries

From The Guardian:
“EPA opens civil rights investigations over pollution in Cancer Alley
Agency will look at whether Black citizens’ rights were violated in polluted industrial corridor in Louisiana By Oliver Laughland [1] in New Orleans, Thu 14 Apr 2022 13.54 BST https://www.theguardian.com

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has opened a series of civil rights investigations into state agencies in Louisiana [2] to examine whether permits granted in the highly polluted industrial corridor, known locally as Cancer Alley, have violated Black citizens rights.

The news, first reported by the New Orleans Advocate [3], marks further enforcement action taken by the federal agency in the region since the EPA administrator, Michael Regan, visited the area late last year [4].

The civil rights inquiries will investigate Louisiana’s environment department (LDEQ) over a series of permits approved in both St John parish and St James parish and elsewhere in the region, where chronic air pollution in majority Black communities have led to a wave of activism and international attention.

One investigation, targeted at the state’s health department, will examine whether the department violated the rights of Black residents and schoolchildren living near a neoprene facility in St John “by allegedly failing in its duty to provide parish residents with necessary information about health threats”, and whether the department failed to make recommendations to community members and local government over how to reduce exposure to pollution.

The neoprene facility, operated by the Japanese chemicals firm Denka, is the only location in America to emit the pollutant chloroprene, listed by the EPA as a likely human carcinogen.

Residential locations around the site, including an elementary school near the plant’s fence line, often record levels of chloroprene well above the EPA’s lifetime exposure guidance levels.

The investigations will also examine permits related to a proposed gargantuan plastics site in the neighboring parish of St James, operated by the Taiwanese company Formosa, permitted to emit up to 15,400lb of the cancer-causing chemical ethylene oxide[5]. That project has been placed on hold [6] during a federal government review.

The investigation will also examine permits for a proposed grain terminal in St John parish.

The announcement prompted praise from environmental advocates and researchers who pushed the agency to investigate in a series[7] of complaints arguing that the permitting processes are racially biased and fail to fully include feedback from community members…

A statement from LDEQ said that its permit process is “impartial and unbiased”…

A spokesman for Denka, Jim Harris, argued there were “no widespread elevated cancer rates in St John the Baptist compared with the state average”, pointing to Louisiana Tumor registry data over decades…

Recent studies [8] have pointed to elevated cancer diagnosesin areas around the plant, and EPA data points to a cancer risk rate 50 times the national average in census tracts near the plant.”

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/profile/laughland-oliver
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/louisiana
[3] https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_080b2ee6-b6a1-11ec-853a-47ef79c6ad53.html
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/17/michael-regan-epa-louisiana-cancer-alley-visit
[5] https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_c30d4620-a1be-11e9-837c-13f09466bb79.html
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/18/louisiana-plastics-plant-toxic-emissions-cancer-alley
[7] https://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/22.01.20_ccsj_sc_title_vi_complaint_w_attachments.pdf
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/24/reserve-louisiana-cancer-highly-unusual-rates-study
Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd. The Guardian allows up to 500 words for personal blogs. See the article in its entirety here https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/14/cancer-alley-louisiana-civil-rights-investigations-epa-pollution