The Biden administration has dropped investigations into whether Louisiana officials put Black residents living in an industrial stretch of the state at increased cancer risk.
FILE - Myrtle Felton, from left, Sharon Lavigne, Gail LeBoeuf and Rita Cooper, members of RISE St. James, conduct a live stream video on property owned by Formosa on March 11, 2020, in St. James Parish, La.
Louisiana had argued in a recent federal court filing that the administration had improperly “weaponized” a part of civil rights law in pursuing the investigations. Last year, the agency accepted complaints from activists to investigate Louisiana’s regulation of air emissions in an industrial corridor called the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor but colloquially referred to as “cancer alley.” It said there was initial evidence of racial discrimination. The federal government and state officials had been in informal talks to resolve the allegations.“We are disappointed in the EPA,” said Sharon Lavigne, resident and founder of Rise St.
The EPA’s initial findings said it appears that for decades, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality let a Denka polymer plant expose people who live nearby and children at an elementary school to enough chloroprene, a chemical used to make synthetic rubber, to increase their cancer risk. The EPA had said Black residents “along the entire corridor” bear a disproportionate health risk from pollution, including near the proposed Formosa facility.
“The agency has weaponized Title VI as a blanket grant of authority to veto any and all permitting decisions that offend its vision of environment justice and ‘equity,’” Louisiana said in a federal court filing last week, asking a judge to halt the investigation.
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