David v. Goliath: The Environmental Justice Movement in Louisiana (1997)

The communities all across the nation will come to realize that government regulators may not always provide environmental protection. In Louisiana, many of those same communities are engaged in what they call life and death struggles. So consequently, they say they are not waiting for governmental agencies to develop a new environmental protection arrangement. There is a new struggle that faces us. This environmental racism has engulfed all of our communities. And I hope you know that it doesn't matter whether you are from the same James or whether you're from the avenues. The same threat is all around. Whatever affects one of us directly affects all of us indirectly. In the last few years, government and industry has had to contend with a growing number of people from all walks of life who are becoming true believers in the environmental movement. Out of sheer desperation, these homegrown activists are learning how to fight back.

We have come together here in the face of a terrible evil. The pollution, contamination, and destruction of the only environment we have. The one that has to sustain us and sustain our children if future generations. A case in point is Pat Malonson of Combat Louisiana, a small river road community in St. James Parish. Malonson is a deeply religious woman and mother of six children. Given her mild manner and quiet demeanor, she might seem unlikely candidate for the role of fiery, white environmental activist, yet that is what she has become. When Malonson was notified last summer by a St. James Parish councilman that the Japanese company Shintech Inc. had plans to build a massive polyvinyl chloride plant in her community, she became fearful of the possibilities. And once I've started researching and studying and talking to different experts and got involved in,

it took a life of its own and naturally when we realized how dangerous a PVC, EDC, VCM, a chlorine facility would be. We were very much against it and we very much knew that we had to stop it. We, being the St. James Parish citizens for jobs in the environment, a group made up mostly of local housewives and volunteers. For years, its members have fought for tight anti-pollution regulations on existing facilities, strict reporting of accidental chemical releases and strong limitations on new industry. We got to do it. You know, I think they have to get in there and do it some time. With Malonson's leadership and the help of an attorney she hired from the Tulane Environmental Lock Clinic, the group plans to exhaust every legal and administrative remedy in their fight to keep Shintech out of their neighborhood. They're hoping that the EPA still has a jurisdiction and the authority to revoke the permit that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality has already issued to Shintech. This is a clear cut case of environmental racism or environmental injustice.

We filed an environmental justice petition on April 2nd. We've also filed a Title VI administrative complaint, which is a civil rights complaint. And there are perhaps more actions that are going to be filed. The racial makeup of St. James Parish is nearly even 49% black and 51% white. But U.S. Census records show that the area where Shintech wants to locate is 87% black. Parish-wide, the high school graduation rate is 75%, but only 50% in the proposed area. And while the parish unemployment rate is roughly 11%, around the proposed Shintech plant, the unemployment rate is 62%. You know, we look at this area. We are one of the most industrialized parishes in the state, if not in the nation. Yet, in the convent area, we have 62% unemployment. If industrialization is supposed to bring economic prosperity in jobs, then why do we in the convent area have 62% unemployment? The community is heavily industrialized with two oil refineries, three chlorine processing plants, and other industries that operate within a three-mile radius of the proposed Shintech site.

Of the 23 million pounds of toxins released into the air annually in the parish, 22 million are released in a four-mile radius in and around the convent area. EPA has designated this community as an environmental justice community based on the demographics of the area and the TRI data. So we know that we are an environmental justice community, the type of community that the president in his executive order was speaking about. President Clinton's 1994 executive order says that federal agencies must ensure that people of color and poor communities are not disproportionately affected by the siding of toxic facilities in their neighborhood. That order has become central to the argument over the Shintech proposal. In March, the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, on behalf of 19 environmental groups in Louisiana, asked the EPA to use Clinton's order to reject the Shintech permit. It was the first time that the environmental agency had been asked to reject a permit on the grounds of environmental justice.

The request was bolstered when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced on May 2 that it had denied a license to Louisiana Energy Services, which had sought to build an $855 million uranium enrichment plant near Homer. The Commission's action was the first time that a federal agency had used Clinton's order on environmental justice to deny a license or permit. On April 3, Samuel Coleman, with the EPA, sent a letter to the E.Q. Secretary Dale Gimmons, and told him he better deal with the environmental justice concerns expressed by the St. James residents, but gave him no other guidance. We have a search time loaf for formal guidance on that. It's really not much in place. There's none that is promulgated as a rule on that thing.