Environmental Justice
Court halts rezoning for massive St. John grain elevator project
Opponents of a major industrial project in the River Parishes have scored a win in court. A state judge on Monday ordered the St. John the Baptist Planning Commission to halt any rezoning of residential land where a company is trying to build a massive grain terminal. Judge Nghana Lewis of the 40th Judicial District […]
Louisiana’s new governor is one of the fossil fuel industry’s biggest defenders
Climate change looms larger in Louisiana than it does almost anywhere else in the United States. The state is facing down monster hurricanes as well as sea-level rise, and it still relies on a fossil fuel industry that pollutes the state’s air and erodes its wetlands. But the state’s incoming governor, Republican Jeff Landry, doesn’t […]
Oil and gas job promises out of reach for people of color
There’s an unspoken promise when an industry moves into any community: We will disrupt your lives, but in exchange we will provide good-paying jobs. Except, according to new research shared exclusively with Floodlight, in Louisiana’s majority Black communities in the area known as “Cancer Alley,” because of its high concentration of polluting industries, the majority […]
Proposed grain terminal would harm historic slave sites in St. John Parish, review finds
A proposed grain terminal would harm the setting, characteristics and economies of three historic Mississippi River plantations and a cemetery in the nearly all-Black community of Wallace in St. John the Baptist Parish, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined. The findings are part of an environmental review the Corps conducted on the proposed […]
St. John grain export facility opponents score win in court
Advocates working to block the development of a more than $200 million grain export terminal in St. John the Baptist Parish got another legal win recently when a state judge blocked the property rezoning needed to move the project forward. Last’s week ruling from 40th Judicial District Judge Nghana Lewis prohibits St. John’s Parish Council […]
Shuttered EPA investigation offered ‘meaningful reform’ in Cancer Alley, documents reveal
As industrial plants have overtaken historic Black communities and burdened neighborhoods with toxic air pollution, environmental advocates and residents of Louisiana’s chemical corridor have spent decades calling for change. So when the country’s top environmental regulator opened a high-profile civil rights investigation into Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality last year, it felt like a watershed […]
Colfax group sues LDEQ over ‘unlawful and arbitrary’ defining of hazardous waste incinerator
Colfax Clean Harbors has spent decades burning hazardous waste and detonating mines into open air. Residents, who say the Grant Parish facility is responsible for giving them cancer and making them sick, are suing the state to block its latest permit approval. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) denied the facility’s request to continue […]
Federal tax incentives create gold rush for nascent carbon capture projects in Louisiana
Millions of dollars of investments in new carbon capture projects in Louisiana — with more announced this past week — are unwelcome developments to some environmental activists in the state. “We’ve been trying to fix the oil and gas damage while at the same time trying to push the transition away from it,” said Monique […]
Sediment diversion breaks ground, promising to stave back land loss on Louisiana’s coast
Humans have long tried to tame the Mississippi River with levees. In the process, they starved many of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands of the sediment that sustains them. The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, billed as the first project of its kind, seeks to remedy that by replicating those natural land-building processes by reconnecting the basin to the […]
If successful, Landry’s EPA suit could be ‘a significant setback’ for the Civil Rights Act
Robert “Bobby” Taylor has been living in the shadow of a chemical plant for nearly 50 years. He first became aware of the potential connection between the plant’s emissions and cancer in 2016, after a community meeting near his home in Reserve, Louisiana. Reserve is in St. John the Baptist Parish, part of the seven-parish […]
Feds snub LNG export hub standards request from environmental groups
The U.S. Department of Energy this week denied the request from several environmental advocacy groups demanding the agency issue regulations that more clearly define whether proposed liquified natural gas export facilities respect the well-being of the general public. The Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Environmental America and Friends of the Earth […]
How an Idaho couple’s fight to build a home near a lake might affect Louisiana’s wetlands
In 2007, an Idaho couple wanted to build a home near a lake; the Environmental Protection Agency stopped them. Fifteen years later and 2,300 miles away, the ensuing legal battle has launched the protection of some Louisiana wetlands into uncertainty. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the couple in May and curtailed the EPA’s authority […]