Louisiana: The State We're In; No. 2039; A Test for Justice

It is the proposed site for a controversial $700 million chemical plant in the world. Tonight, a story from Convent, Louisiana, in this small river road computing located in the heart of St. James Parish, a controversy is brewing that has caught the attention of the federal government. It is the proposed site for a controversial $700 million chemical plant destined to be the second largest of its kind in the world. The Japanese chemical company Shintech has set its sights on this 3700 acres of sugar cane fields to produce polyvinyl chlorides. But the company has hit some opposition. Several residents here worry about the plant's emissions and the threat of an industrial accident. But plant officials promise economic opportunity and 165 permanent jobs. The controversy, however, is more complicated than the typical arguments pitting jobs against the environment. Environmentalist and government regulators alike, so it could become a test case for environmental justice.

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. We have a small group of people who stay up here that we want a few states in the country that has a group that's detailed primarily to working with this subject.

We don't call it environmental justice anymore. We call it community and industrial relations, because that's exactly what it is. It's trying to balance the information between both sides so that the people understand what's going on. We did our own community relations and independently interviewed the people caught in the middle of this controversy, the residents living near and around the proposed plant site. While look like a fool going to talk about stop men at plan, what can I do one person? You don't think you can do anything about it? I would even bother to try. I wouldn't even bother to try to do nothing. They asked us for the mother plants come up yet and ask us nothing. What can get if that plant wasn't the ones they already got? How many schools you need to head out? You live in a dangerous library and we eat dinner with the killing the drugs anyway. You think you can get a job there?

Can they come out here and tell you that you might get a job at the plant? No. We have to be locked in the house and we don't know what going to happen to us. How do you feel about shintech coming out here? I don't know what going to happen with that. If you could tell the people at shintech something what would you tell them?

I tell them that's what I'm telling you. Do you got to come around and talk to us? I figured he wouldn't have to do that. I know that much. I never come around like your talk nurse and not him. A woman they say has spoken with them is 66-year-old Gladys Maddie. She's been communicating frequently with the DEQ Community Industry Relations staff and shintech officials. But Maddie says the DEQ and shintech came to see her after she wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper denouncing the opposition. In particular, Pat Malansan for quote, using race as a tool to intimidate federal and state regulators into cow-towing to their demands not to permit shintech. She called Malansan and her group Modern Day Abolitionist for quote, anointing themselves are champions and protectors.

She didn't even know when Pat Malansan and all of them stepped in and emailed the West and all the rest saying that we were delivered. It couldn't even speak for ourselves. So they were speaking and I saw all of this. I written a letter to Mr. Mason telling that I want to play real interest in the play. So that's why they start coming to see me. DEQ Community Relations Specialist Janice Dickerson, who was alleged to have written the letter for Maddie, also denounced Malansan's group at this NAACP Environmental Justice Rally. Well, what justice is all about is allowing people an opportunity to speak for themselves. And anybody got a problem with that, they don't like justice. And they don't like environmental justice. So apparently you got a problem. I think everybody have a right to speak for themselves. And that's what justice is all about. Now, when you get to the point that you want to be little hitlers and little dictators, then you're not about justice, you're about suppression. So maybe you ought to look at what your real object is all about.

Also protesting Malansan's efforts as Governor Mike Foster, who was supportive of Shintech, he is very upset that the company has been put on hold until this issue is resolved. You've got to understand that major companies have timetables. They don't have eight years to build a plant. The market moves if they've gone through the hooks they're supposed to and they've done the right thing. And we hold them up just to give them up. What they were trying to do is hold this plant up to the point where it's economic diffeasible not to come here. And they're going somewhere else. And Louisiana's going to lose a bunch of jobs. The Tulane Environmental Law Clinic's work on behalf of the residents also angered Foster. After hearing that the EPA wrote a letter to DEQ asking the secretary to look into the environmental justice issue, he phoned Tulane President Eamon Kelly complaining about the clinic. The truth is, why should alumnus of Tulane encourage their universe? In fact, I've got to tell you, the majority of the alumnus I've talked to if they don't like this either. There's nobody like this, but the Tulane Law Clinic, they're all on to themselves.

They have decided that they will decide who comes to Louisiana and decide under what rules. I mean, we have rules, we have regulations, and this administration is going to make sure they're lived up to. The permits are going to be done right. They're not going to get any breaks. They're not going to get any special treatment. But then again, this group decides they're going to be the law themselves. It's almost like they are the vigilantes out there doing this on their own. And I don't think it's right. And I'm going to encourage anybody from Tulane to do what they can to put a stop to it. And I can tell you this. I'm going to look differently at Tulane from a perspective of having major tax breaks. If what they're going to do is support a bunch of vigilantes out there, they can make their own law. This is not the first time the clinic has angered a Louisiana governor. In 1993, Edwards threw a fit when the clinic's director, Professor Robert Kuhn, denounced his plans to reduce the hazardous waste disposal tax. As for the Shintech case, Kuhn says they got involved only after the citizens had gone to tremendous effort to try to find assistance somewhere else.

There's surely no way they can hire and pay lawyers and there's really little chance that they can raise enough money to even hire decent scientists. And yet the other side has a team of lawyers working on this. A very large engineering firm working on it. They have a public relations firm that has been putting out press releases on it. And I think from the perspective of the citizens, they also have the entire state government working on their side because the Department of Environmental Quality has not, in this particular case, been representing the interest of the citizens nearby who are concerned. If anything, the Department of Environmental Quality seems to think that its role is to assist and represent Shintech and make sure that Shintech gets the permits it needs when it needs them. So in some respects, it's a David and Goliath struggle. With the only thing that the citizens have, the only rocks they have to throw are some student attorneys at Tulane and some a few volunteer scientists that are helping out. They say that you're a failure to appreciate the people's need for representation is going to backfire because it makes you look like a bully.

I'm just quoting. And that you don't respect the right of the citizens to speak out on a matter that affects their health and welfare. Tell them to spend their own money and do it. Quit spending two layers. How's that? Who's the bully? The big fat professors are drawing the big salaries, trying to run people out of the state to Texas. Or me who's saying, please come to Louisiana, give us some jobs, jump through the hoops and do it right. I don't see that as a bully. They're trying to bully me by saying, well, you can't ever criticize us. We're perfect. We're academia. We can hide behind this type of thing. We do anything we want. It doesn't have to have anything to do with a law. We'll make up reasons to run people out of the state. I don't see that being a bully. What about, I'm for the people of the state having some jobs here and not letting them much professors on big salaries sit there and run people out of the state. Now the people in St. James' parish, they believe that the jobs that Shintech is going to bring are not enough and that they're concerned for health and welfare. Can I ask you a question?

Sure. Who represents the people of St. James? The governing bodies over there that are elected. Do they want Shintech or not? I suspect that they do. So again, you're not talking about the will of the people. You're talking about the will of a few people who have been encouraged by a bunch of people on big salaries that just don't like it. Like those guys would like to see the whole state trees, but the problem is they got to be some jobs in this state. These guys are going to get their big fat salaries, whether there's any jobs in the state or not. So it's easy for them. Do you go looking for clients? I think there's either an enormous misunderstanding about how environmental law clinics or any law clinic operates or in fact there's being misinformation distributed. We at Tulane made a decision when we started this clinic that we would not take on any case where the client group was seeking to recover money for some injury either to their person or their property. In other words, we don't do tort cases. We are not ambulance chasers to the extent that some lawyers might be considered ambulance chasers. We're not out there trying to get money either for our self or someone else. The only thing we do and the only kinds of cases we address are cases that seek to enforce public laws.

Laws that exist on the books, laws that the legislature passes, laws that the Constitution provides just to ensure that people obey the law. Under the Louisiana Student Practice Rule, students in their last year of law school are allowed to represent either poor persons or community organizations that otherwise cannot afford an attorney. And the way that happens is they're allowed to go and appear before courts under the supervision of a member of the faculty as a way of getting the kind of lawyering skills they need when they graduate from school. So they're saying- So they're saying- So they're saying- So both the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic and Aucklandics in Louisiana are programs that law schools run under the supervision of faculties with student attorneys, in which as much as possible, the student attorneys do the work as a way of getting experience and giving something back to the community for free. And once a lawyer agrees to represent a client, that lawyer has an ethical obligation to zealously represent that client's interest, whether the lawyer agrees with the position of the client or not. And that is all the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic is doing, and that is all the students are doing.

The decision is made that these citizens are surely worthy in this proceeding that will involve putting literally millions of pounds of toxic chemicals into their community to having some legal representation to make sure their voice is heard. Once that decision is made by law, we have to zealously represent our client's interest, and we surely will continue to do that until the final decision is rendered. So despite what's happened, you're not backing off. I can't back off without violating my obligation and ethical responsibilities as a lawyer, and I wouldn't back off anyway, because without us they have nothing. And they are plowing forward to Lane Environmental Law Clinic attorney Lisa LaVee in Pat Melonson are on their way to the St. James Parish Courthouse to file another lawsuit challenging the parish president and the St. James Parish Council's issuance of a coastal use permit. We're asking the judge to remove St. James Parish, the president and the council from the decision making process altogether, to invalidate the permit because they indicated a bias in favor of Shintech and against the St. James Parish, the St. James Citizen for Jobs and the Environment.

At the heart of the bias issue, or three documents prepared by the parish and sent to Shintech officials, profiling the Coastal Zone Management Advisory Committee and Planning Commission by their race, sex and attitude toward industry. That's indicates a serious problem and a bias in favor of Shintech to give them this information. But Dale E-mail, the president of St. James Parish, doesn't see it as a serious problem. On a sport issue, like if you were playing a football or baseball game, you'd want a recruiting reporter or a scouting report, let's say, on a opposing team or whatever team you're playing on. And we sent that, whether you call it Darcy or whatever, we sent it on everyone that's on our boards and commissions.

And basically what we put was, you know, what type of individuals on the board were to make up a board where they employed, whether they retired, whether they're like outdoorsmen or, you know, so basically there's no more than a scouting report at Shintech, so they know who the players are. Maybe you would give anyone any unfair advantage, whether or not to give the permit or not. There was also some flyer that was sent out by the parish president's office, or actually by the Office of Economic Development, which is under the parish president, sent to people in the parish, asking them to send letters to DEQ, supporting Shintech, before the whole decision making process was over with. And basically my clients just want a fair decision, an objective decision maker, somebody who's, you know, going to look at the facts and make the right decision and not have an interest beforehand. They say that they want someone who can make a fair decision.

Do you think you can make a fair decision based on this, based on what their view is fair is? Because I don't think you ever satisfy, you know, I think they're in this thing for long, all, and there's no middle ground here. The only, the only thing they'll settle for is for Shintech, not the located St. James Parish. As the group understands it, the South Louisiana Port Commission in conjunction with the parish is marketing all of the available properties and river frontage for chemical and plastics manufacturing plants. So they've already zoned unofficially, only unofficially because there haven't been any public hearings on it to have public input. They've zoned our area industrial development. They could care less that they're squeezing people in between all of these major, massive chemical facilities, that the people who are here cannot get out. The majority are too poor or too old to move out, and the young people are choosing not to stay here. So our community is not being built up, our community is being destroyed, we are not going to survive as a community.

The climate community, as we know it, knew it no longer exist. A few reminders still exist of what the community was like more than a hundred years ago. This is the site of the former College of Jefferson, chartered in 1831, to offer a proper education to the sons of area planters so that they would not have to go to the north, to France or to the College of Orleans down the river. Its founders were leading French Louisianaians of the area, including Governor Andre Roman. Almost a hundred years later, in 1931, the Jesuit Fathers of New Orleans purchased the beautiful campus and dedicated it as the man-rese house of retreats. A spiritual sanctuary from the outside world for both Catholic and non-Catholic laymen. Some of the live oaks on the property are nearly 150 years old. Upriver is the Gothic Revival St. Michael Church, dedicated in 1833.

The brick cathedral was built because residents grew tired of crossing the river to the town of St. James for church services. The interior of the church is ornate and colorful, but perhaps the biggest attraction is the replica of the art lady of Lord's Grotto hidden behind the main altar. It was added in 1876 and is thought to be the first such creation in the United States. Only 45 years ago, Louisiana was a simple, beautiful place, a sportsman's paradise boasting clean air and water. The landscape was flat, subtropical, marked by huge sugar cane plantations. The people along the river lived off fish, plucked from its water, game trapped in the bayou's and vast gardens. In the 1930s Louisiana first offered tax exemptions to entice petrochemical companies and oil refineries to locate along the Mississippi river. They came, lured by the states of vast natural resources of oil, gas, brine and surface water. By the 1970s, a stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans was home to more than 100 chemical makers and refineries and became known as the chemical corridor.

Today, it is better known by environmentalists as cancerally, with the highest concentration of manufacturers, users and disposers of toxic chemicals in the United States. As a result, the air is a gumbo of man-made chemicals that mix and react in ways scientists can see they don't fully understand. Millions of pounds of toxic chemicals go directly into the Mississippi each year. People are affected too. The green index published by the Institute for Southern Studies ranks Louisiana last among all states in environmental health. And perishes along the river rank among the highest in the nation in deaths caused by cancer. Former Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality and Current Chair of the LSU Institute for Environmental Studies, since if you look at the data Louisiana is acting more like a developing country than a developed one. We've got a bad setup here. Essentially, the way I look at it is that it's subsidies.

Louisiana grants huge subsidies to these big corporations. They're subsidies because they get very cheap energy, the cheapest of the 48 states. They're allowed to pollute more than any other state, and I have measures to show that. And we have a tax structure. It's very regressive. So we tend to tax the people of Louisiana, but not the big major corporations. So there's these big subsidies. And we add them up for the just those three areas I've mentioned. It's over $900 per person per year for Louisiana. That's a lot of money. That's over $4 billion a year, which is close to what we collect in taxes. And to show how much the state wants industry here last summer, the Louisiana Department of Economic Development placed an ad in the Wall Street Journal and other national and regional publications. The ad features a businessman literally bending over backwards and the question, what have we done for business lately? In order to attract new businesses to Louisiana, the ad draws attention to the fact that Governor Mike Foster is the first businessman to run the state in recent history.

But first and foremost, it focuses on the favorable business climate. I look at it this way. You remember King Lear, he said, when Ronald asked him a re-asser or what he had, what she had to give to him. She said, nothing my Lord. And he said, nothing out of nothing comes nothing. Well, if you don't have the plant, then out of nothing comes nothing. So to get the plant here, we have to compete with other areas. We have to compete with other places where they could locate, not just in the United States, by the way. All over the world. We are indeed, as the President says, we're in a global economy and we better face it. So we need these incentives because we do have a very skewed tax pace. That's the way it was done in many parts of the U.S. in the 1950s. It's not done that way anymore across the U.S. You only see the southern states doing this, and you see it in Louisiana granting these huge subsidies. Because we think we have to do that to get them to come here.

We don't. They've gone to come here. You couldn't keep them out with a stick, and I've had people in economic development tell me that. And about those same words. They're coming from Mississippi River. They're coming for the oil and gas. They're coming for the fact that the pipelines are here. They're coming for the fact that the other industries are here, and they feed off each other. They're going to come. We don't need to give them these huge subsidies. And many of these subsidies are hidden. People don't even know about them, but they're there. Because of those subsidies, we're getting poorer over time, so it doesn't help us to bring in another big industry, especially a smoke stack belching industry of the type that we tend to bring in. We should be concentrating on small businesses, on homegrown products, develop our local people, and their skills start small businesses. That's where the jobs are. Nevertheless, state and local officials have taken very strong positions in favor of the Shintech proposal. Even before the plant had chosen the site for construction, both Governor Mike Foster and Parrish President Dale Email had written letters to the Shintech President pledging their full support. But before choosing Louisiana, Shintech officials say they considered 35 sites along the Gulf Coast before settling on the St. James Parish location. Shintech Controller Richard Mason says the St. James Parish location is attractive because of physical criteria, not because of the race and economic status of the citizens of the community.

We want to be sure that people understand what we're doing, that people understand the risks associated with what we're doing, that they understand our process, and that they also understand our company. One of the things that we have offered to do to virtually anybody we meet over here is get, either myself or David Wise or our Vice President of Manufacturing, Mr. Earth, Schrader, over here, virtually on 24-hour notice to talk to anybody who wants to find out more about our company, find out more about what we do, find out how we treat our people, find out how we treat our neighbors. Mason promises a safe plant. He says the plant would combine a number of chemicals including vinyl chloride monomer, which is highly flammable to create a granular resin used to make everything from vinyl siding to pipes for homes.

The vinyl chloride monomer, the primary dangerous chemical, is undetectable with the fence line. You can't find it. It's not present in quantities that can harm anybody, even with prolonged exposure over a lifetime. So what we feel is that as people better understand what we do, how we do it, what the inherent dangers are that they're going to be a lot more comfortable with our process and with us. And certainly there are those who welcome Shintech, those who dream of a better future for themselves and for their families. At a land-based plant where I know at least I have a future and one day when I do decide on having a family raising kids and everything, I know I'll see them every day. A lot of us young guys mine here cannot get hired into none of these chemical plants.

Right now in these plants, it's all about who you know, it's not about what you know. And if they're going to hold up and do what they say to, sure, a lot of us will have the opportunity to get a good job and provide financially for our family and have some kind of retirement to fall back on. But as a stand-up, we don't have that, we have to go out and scratch and scrap for everything we want to provide a somewhat good life for our family. We want a good plan job just like the next person. What we've told people is that we're going to guarantee people equal opportunity. Obviously this is a two-way street. People have to be trainable, they have to be able to read and write and do basic math, have maybe some computer skills. However, our type of industry, we're looking at employing approximately 250 employees, 165 for the company and approximately 90 permanent contractors. We feel like this type of economic activity is vital for the prosperity of state Louisiana and the prosperity of St. James Parish.

Conditions going to improve for the communities around here. I want to address that at a couple of different levels. First of all, we are a business, a profit-making corporation. My responsibility is to the owners of our business, my primary responsibility is. But I feel very, very strongly that the best way for us to be successful is the way we've been successful in free-poor Texas, which is to be part of a community that's got a good school system that's got a good tank space, got low unemployment, where everybody has an opportunity to succeed. If Shintek is allowed to locate in St. James Parish, the company will get close to $120 million in tax exemptions. That includes property tax and enterprise-zone benefits. The Secretary of Department of Economic Development, however, says the plant would pay $5.6 million in sales tax while constructing the project, and an additional $1.5 million in cash.

$5 million in tax revenue would accrue to the school board in indirect sources. Well, that community improve with Shintek coming out there. Well, I guess you just have to look at communities like Geysmer and up and down the river that the industry has been established for quite a while. By the way, St. James is not that well-developed at the present time. But I think with this addition and with some of the other plants that we have going in there, for example, the Coby Steel, Georgetown Steel, some of those DRI project companies, I think that the standard of living the quality of life, the per capita income, all those statistics are up. The statistics may be up, but for long-time parish residents, things haven't changed much. How was it a long time ago?

Well, somewhere like this is now. Well, the community may be divided between jobs and protecting the environment. Many citizens in St. James Parish have made it clear that more chemical industry is not the kind of economic development they desire. We are sitting on a time bomb. What we have in St. James Parish, especially in District 4, in the Conven area, is a bullpaw on the Mississippi. What is it going to take for our officials to wake up and to realize that the $700 million of capital investment, you cannot bring back a human life. The $700 million, you cannot bring back hundreds of lives, so they need to wake up and to realize that they have to put people first and quit putting profits first. Environmental justice issues are now being raised in this country and around the world. The sighting of the Propulsion Tech plant in St. James Parish is significant because it is on the verge of becoming a national test case for determining what an environmental justice community is.

The Environmental Protection Agency hasn't quite defined what that is yet, so everyone is waiting to see what will happen in Louisiana. The EPA will decide by July 21st whether to object to the St. James Parish Council's issuance of the Coastal Use permit based on the environmental justice and the other grounds that were raised in the lawsuit. That's our report for tonight. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.