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Total Petrochemicals USA sits just inside the city limits of St. Gabriel. According to the company fact sheet, it's the largest polystyrene facility in the world. The plant was built by the company in 1984. 

In a speech this week unveiling a series of executive orders targeting climate change and industrial pollution, President Joe Biden said two words rarely uttered from such a high federal office, or even state-level ones in Louisiana: “Cancer Alley.”

“With this executive order, environmental justice will be at the center of all we do addressing the disproportionate health and environmental and economic impacts on communities of color – so-called fenceline communities - especially ... the hard-hit areas like Cancer Alley in Louisiana or the Route 9 corridor in the state of Delaware,” Biden said Wednesday.

The mere mention of the freighted nickname for the industrial corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge gives some residents and local environmental groups hope that Biden’s administration will address their longstanding concerns about pollution and environmental racism.

Biden

President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“It feels so positive, so wonderful that we now have a president who cares about the lives of the people here,” said Sharon Lavigne, director of Rise St. James, a group opposing the $9.2 billion Formosa Plastics plant near the Sunshine Bridge and the $2.2 billion South Louisiana Methanol plant near Welcome. “We want jobs here, but clean ones – not jobs that harm us and poison us.”

Cancer Alley is a label that some health and environment advocates apply to the region. Industry advocates say the state's tumor registry doesn’t show any clear cluster of cancer in the corridor, and state officials tout that as evidence that the plants pose no unusual health risk.

But toxic air pollution in the state’s petrochemical belt is indeed rising, and the burden isn’t being shared evenly. Many new plants are planned in predominantly Black and poor communities that the U.S. Environment Protection Agency estimates already have some of the most dangerous air in the country, a recent analysis by ProPublica, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate found.

St. Gabriel smokestacks

Smokestacks are visible on the horizon behind a Friday night football game between East Iberville High School and Varnado High School.

In a radical shift from Donald Trump’s administration, Biden’s orders aim to slash the use of fossil fuels and the climate-altering emissions they produce. The orders pause oil and gas leasing in federal lands and waters, cut fossil fuel subsidies and shift the federal fleet of vehicles to electric power. It will now be federal policy to “improve air and water quality” and create "well-paying jobs for women and people of color" in areas affected by polluting industries, one of the orders says.

“We’re going to work to make sure that they receive 40 percent of the benefits of key federal investments in clean energy, clean water and wastewater infrastructure,” Biden said. “Lifting up these communities makes us all stronger as a nation and increases the health of everybody.”

The orders don’t directly address the petrochemical industry or communities in Louisiana, however. The lack of detail in Biden’s orders makes Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a bit skeptical about their effect on the state’s chemical industry.

St. Gabriel Eastman plant

A "Now Leasing" sign is posted at the St. Gabriel Apartments, with the Eastman plant looming behind. 

“We’ll see if things trickle down and we actually do get some action here,” she said.

But the president clearly knows and cares about the issues, said Robert Taylor, executive director of Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish, a group fighting the Denka neoprene plant near Reserve.

“That speech wasn’t the first time he blew my mind by mentioning Cancer Alley,” Taylor said. “He’s repeatedly mentioned us in his campaign. Before him, I’d never heard anybody at his level refer to us or that term."

Robert Taylor

Robert Taylor, head of Concerned Citizens of St. John, speaks after the presentation of a long-waited chemical industry health study at Tchoupitoulas Chapel in Reserve, La., Wednesday, July 24, 2019. 

Rolfes said Louisiana’s leaders rarely broach the subject. Biden "talks about Cancer Alley more than our government or our own elected officials do,” she said.

She noted this week’s announcement from Gov. John Bel Edwards about major expansions of Shintech plastics manufacturing sites in Iberville and West Baton Rouge parishes. Edwards celebrated the 30 new jobs the expansions might bring but made no mention of likely environmental effects in communities already saturated with petrochemical facilities.

“What repeatedly happens is our officials only talk about the benefits of these projects and never the costs,” Rolfes said.

Holy Rosary Cemetery

The Union Carbide Plant, near the Holy Rosary Cemetery in St. Charles Parish, photographed Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018. The plant produces ethylene oxide, a chemical the EPA says is carcinogenic to humans in certain amounts, over a lifetime of exposure.

Edwards and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association warned that Biden's restrictions on oil leasing could cause serious harm to the state's economy. 

“It is abundantly clear that limiting energy development will stifle Louisiana’s economic growth and threaten thousands of jobs," association President Tyler Gray said.

Until recently taking the role of senior adviser in the Biden administration, New Orleans Democrat Cedric Richmond held the U.S. House seat for the communities generally referred to as Cancer Alley. But environmental groups doubt Richmond steered Biden’s attention to pollution in Louisiana.

“He’s absolutely been missing in action on the subject,” Rolfes said, echoing longstanding frustration with Richmond’s unwillingness to meet with residents about air quality issues.

Rather, Biden’s own personal experience with industrial pollution is likely what makes him sympathetic, Lavigne said. Biden has often spoken about growing up near an oil refinery in Delaware and his mother having to wipe oil off her windshield before driving him to school.

“He knows this stuff because he's lived it,” Lavigne said. “And he has a heart for the people living it today.”

Tristan Baurick: tbaurick@theadvocate.com; on Twitter: @tristanbaurick.

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