Speaker 1: Previously on drilled.
Speaker 2: My only regret is that I did not try hard
Speaker 2: enough to keep them out, and they need to try
Speaker 2: everything to keep them up. They do not want Formosa
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 1: That was Diane Wilson in Texas talking about her thirty
Speaker 1: year battle with Taiwanese petrochemical company for Mosa. In Diane's defense,
Speaker 1: she didn't know Formosa was coming to her town. She
Speaker 1: didn't know about them at all until they'd been there
Speaker 1: a while and started planning a massive expansion in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: where the company is hoping to build a nine billion
Speaker 1: dollar complex with fourteen different plants. It's a different story.
Speaker 1: Residents and activists knew about the project almost immediately because
Speaker 1: they were already fighting the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries
Speaker 1: all over the region.
Speaker 3: So I worked with the Bucky Brigade, and we were
Speaker 3: working in Saint James Parish in regard to the Value
Speaker 3: Bridge pipeline.
Speaker 1: So when Formosa came to Saint James Parish, Louisiana, the
Speaker 1: community was ready for them.
Speaker 3: There is a drive to build and expand more petrochemical
Speaker 3: plants all over the country, and certainly Louisiana is ground
Speaker 3: zero for that, and within that, Saint James is in
Speaker 3: the bullseye, and so they built the southern leg of
Speaker 3: the Dakota Access pipeline in Saint James Parish. I was
Speaker 3: already working on that, and then in the midst of that,
Speaker 3: this is this, you know, horrible idea of formost and
Speaker 3: last coup job.
Speaker 4: That's our story today. I I mean Western Love. This
Speaker 4: is drilled season six, the bridge to nowhere. Today the
Speaker 4: continuation of one plastic.
Speaker 5: Pipelines, and we gotta fight for most of them. We
Speaker 5: will not allow them to pick our ancestors out of
Speaker 5: his ground and put them somewhere else. We're gonna stand
Speaker 5: up for Saint James Pear. This is our home. We're
Speaker 5: not going anywhere for Massa have a have a fight
Speaker 5: on their hands.
Speaker 1: The Triumphant music you hear is the soundtrack to a
Speaker 1: twenty three minute promotional video for Most of Plastics posted
Speaker 1: to YouTube in January twenty twenty one. Here's how they
Speaker 1: describe this project in Saint che Parish.
Speaker 6: FPG will continue to build downstream petrochemical plants and also
Speaker 6: plans to invest nine point four billion US dollars to
Speaker 6: build a large petrochemical complex in Louisiana. FPG will also
Speaker 6: evaluate the feasibility of expanding its investments in the future.
Speaker 1: So, like we talked about last episode, Formosa's taking advantage
Speaker 1: of cheap shale gas in the US to fuel its
Speaker 1: buildout of petrochemical plants. Shale gas is another term for
Speaker 1: natural gas, or fract gas or fossil gas. It's the
Speaker 1: stuff a lot of US companies have been drilling out
Speaker 1: of rocks over the past decade. Part of the reason
Speaker 1: for MOSA is expanding so much in the US is
Speaker 1: not just because of all the cheap gas. It's also
Speaker 1: because the government in its home country, Taiwan, refuge to
Speaker 1: give the company permits. It's violated so many environmental regulations
Speaker 1: over the years that it's considered a bad actor. So
Speaker 1: Formosa looked around the world for a place to expand,
Speaker 1: maybe somewhere with weaker environmental regulations, and they found it
Speaker 1: in the American South. But while state officials welcomed them
Speaker 1: with open arms, they may have underestimated local residents.
Speaker 7: And this isn't just any plans, but it's being called
Speaker 7: the largest facility in the States producing products like plastic
Speaker 7: bottles and grocery bags. So what's at stake for people
Speaker 7: like Sharon, who have called Saint James home all our
Speaker 7: life and who really benefits from the petrochemical industry.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately, the community in Saint James Parish started asking
Speaker 1: questions about how exactly this new plant for Moosa was
Speaker 1: planning was going to benefit them. Sharon Levine saw nothing
Speaker 1: good about the plan right from the jump.
Speaker 8: When I heard that for most was coming into Saint Jane.
Speaker 8: The governor announced it in the spring of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 8: That's when I first heard about it. And then in
Speaker 8: the fall of twenty eighteen, that's when I started righting
Speaker 8: the James. I started in my house. It was about
Speaker 8: almost ten of us in here, and we were all
Speaker 8: roused up because we wanted to do something about it.
Speaker 1: Sharon was born and raised in Saint James. She spent
Speaker 1: most of her life as a school teacher, but today
Speaker 1: she's the leader of the community's opposition to Formosa. I
Speaker 1: reached her by phone on a hot day in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and she told me it was her daughter who first
Speaker 1: told her about the Formosa project. They call it the
Speaker 1: Sunshine Project, and then Sharon saw it on the news
Speaker 1: that night. It was presented like a done deal. The
Speaker 1: parish council, the governor, everyone had signed off on it.
Speaker 1: But within weeks, Sharon had invited her neighbors over to
Speaker 1: her house to talk about what they were going to do.
Speaker 1: That day, she started a faith based activist group to
Speaker 1: fight the project, Riise Saint James, and she's devoted every
Speaker 1: minute of her life to the effort ever since. Rise
Speaker 1: joined up with other groups in the area and they
Speaker 1: started marching, protesting, and looking for legal help. Within a
Speaker 1: few months, Formosa was back on the local news, but
Speaker 1: this time the story was Sharon and her opposition to
Speaker 1: the project. Here she is on WWLTV.
Speaker 5: When they say it for Mosa was coming in looked
Speaker 5: like something inside of me. Just click because it's coming
Speaker 5: right next to me. It's almost two miles from where
Speaker 5: they want to build.
Speaker 1: Sharon lives in Saint James Parish, right in that bullseye
Speaker 1: and Rolfuss was talking about. It's smack in the middle
Speaker 1: of what's called Cancer Alley on the Gulf Coast, a
Speaker 1: stretch of the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New
Speaker 1: Orleans that's currently home to more than two hundred oil refineries,
Speaker 1: petrochemical plants and manufacturing sites, and no surprise, some of
Speaker 1: the highest cancer and asthma rates in the country. Sharon's
Speaker 1: a retired school teacher, and she remembers what life was
Speaker 1: like before her home earned the nickname Cancer Ali. It
Speaker 1: wasn't even that long ago.
Speaker 5: When I was a little girl. We had beautiful trees
Speaker 5: for corn, trees, fruit trees. My daddy raised our foods
Speaker 5: and we lift off the land. Everything was full, vibrant
Speaker 5: and so pretty, the green grass and everything. Then back
Speaker 5: in the sixties, that's when the first industry came down
Speaker 5: in Saint James.
Speaker 1: The bulk of that industry is concentrated in the black
Speaker 1: neighborhoods of Saint James Parish. If you look at the
Speaker 1: demographics of the parish, it seems very mixed, almost exactly
Speaker 1: fifty percent black fifty percent white.
Speaker 9: But those chemical facilities are also concentrated in the districts
Speaker 9: of Saint James Parish that are predominantly black.
Speaker 1: This is Jane Patten. She was born and raised in
Speaker 1: Louisiana and now works as both a campaigner for the
Speaker 1: Center for International Environmental Law and as the director of
Speaker 1: no EAIST Louisiana.
Speaker 9: So the parts of Saint James Parish that are predominantly
Speaker 9: white have significantly fewer and in at least the case
Speaker 9: in the case of at least one district, there are
Speaker 9: no chemical plants in that majority white district. And yet
Speaker 9: the two majority black districts in Saint James have almost
Speaker 9: all of the petrochemical footprint, plastics production capacity, an aluminum plant,
Speaker 9: there are several oil refineries, so this is a very
Speaker 9: significant industrial footprint and it's very visible when you're driving
Speaker 9: around the parish. So as the local community in Saint
Speaker 9: James likes to say, Saint James's full.
Speaker 1: Over the past few years, local resistance has been mounting
Speaker 1: and the region has attracted national attention from environmental law
Speaker 1: groups too. Here's Julie Teal Simmons with the Center for
Speaker 1: Biological Diversity.
Speaker 10: You were at a meeting in Texas about the oil
Speaker 10: and gas industry and the petrochemical build out, and I
Speaker 10: met with Anne Rolfuss of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and
Speaker 10: was just astounded to hear about this new plastics plant
Speaker 10: proposed for Saint James Parish, Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Anne Rolfus is the founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade,
Speaker 1: an environmental justice nonprofit in Louisiana. She's the woman we
Speaker 1: heard from at the top of the episode talking about
Speaker 1: the fight against Bayou Bridge, that southern leg of the
Speaker 1: Dakota Access pipeline that was built through Saint James. So
Speaker 1: Anne and Julie were talking and it didn't take long
Speaker 1: for all of them and Julie, Sharon and Jane to
Speaker 1: start working together. At the time, in twenty eighteen, several
Speaker 1: nonprofit organizations and community groups had started fighting new permits
Speaker 1: for facilities in Cancer Alley and tax breaks that the
Speaker 1: oil industry was looking for in the area too. More
Speaker 1: on that. After the break.
Speaker 9: In twenty sixteen, the governor, in response to a lot
Speaker 9: of organizing and advocacy, the Louisiana Governor John Bell Edwards
Speaker 9: issued an executive order changing the way that the exemptions
Speaker 9: for local property taxes were granted. So instead of having
Speaker 9: a state board do it and they always got a
Speaker 9: rubber stamp, they then had to get approval from each
Speaker 9: local permitting authority, and the industry didn't like that so much.
Speaker 1: This is Jane Patten again.
Speaker 9: And so since that executive order has been put in place.
Speaker 9: They've been trying to push legislation through the state legislature
Speaker 9: to centralize the decision making, to try to actually put
Speaker 9: the original terms of the taxi emption program back in place.
Speaker 9: There was a whole constitutional amendment that was voted on
Speaker 9: last year that tried to put the actually a more
Speaker 9: generous version of the pre existing taxes emption program in place,
Speaker 9: and they lost, and that again was due to really
Speaker 9: significant local organizing. It was actually really tied in by
Speaker 9: that time with the campaign against Formosa because the Formosa
Speaker 9: plant is within its first ten years of existence supposed
Speaker 9: to get approximately a billion dollars in local tax breaks.
Speaker 1: A petrochemical plant that the community doesn't want that will
Speaker 1: be a significant source of income for the company and
Speaker 1: of pollution for the region is getting a one billion
Speaker 1: dollar tax break over its first decade of operating. That's
Speaker 1: after tightening the laws around tax breaks to industry.
Speaker 9: And they're going to be building in a parish that
Speaker 9: is really strapped for cash, a parish that is having
Speaker 9: to fire thirty of its public school teaching staff this
Speaker 9: school year because they don't have enough funds to pay them.
Speaker 9: And Formosa is actively trying to not have to pay
Speaker 9: their local property taxes, and of course they're not more
Speaker 9: guilty of that than any other industry actor. They all
Speaker 9: don't want to pay their property taxes, but that doesn't
Speaker 9: help a local community.
Speaker 1: Julie Teel Simmons organization had been working on various issues
Speaker 1: in the Gulf Coast ever since the deep water oil
Speaker 1: spilled back in twenty ten, but it hadn't gotten involved
Speaker 1: in any of the Cancer Alley fights until the FOREMOSTA
Speaker 1: proposal came along.
Speaker 10: This foremost a plastics plant proposed for Saint James Parish,
Speaker 10: is on a twenty four hundred acre site and the
Speaker 10: build out of the facilities it will have fourteen different plants.
Speaker 10: It literally is bigger than some many Louisiana towns and
Speaker 10: it really is an industrial city that we're.
Speaker 1: Talking about over in Texas. Diane Wilson heard about it too,
Speaker 1: and she was worried.
Speaker 2: Those people in Louisiana, in Saint James Parish, in that
Speaker 2: little that's what they got to look for.
Speaker 3: They got no idea.
Speaker 2: It will destroy everything.
Speaker 1: They got everything. Sharon Levigne has already seen her community
Speaker 1: emptied out as industry has come in and with Formosa,
Speaker 1: enough was enough. Sharon's deeply religious, and she says God
Speaker 1: told her to fight this one. I feel like you
Speaker 1: guys have been a lot more successful than many other
Speaker 1: communities fighting these things. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 8: I think because he's God's combined.
Speaker 1: It's a little hard to hear Sharon in this recording,
Speaker 1: but she says Rise has been successful because they've been
Speaker 1: clued to God and what they're doing. Early on, the
Speaker 1: community groups opposing FORMOSA linked up with environmental law groups
Speaker 1: like Julie Peel Simmons group, the Center for Biological Diversity.
Speaker 10: We started looking into it, and we've worked with golf
Speaker 10: groups a lot, for example on the BP oil spill.
Speaker 10: And this facility, though, just presented such an intersection of
Speaker 10: all the issues that we care about. So this facility
Speaker 10: would not only be built on top of wetlands and
Speaker 10: adjacent to the Mississippi River and adjacent to really important
Speaker 10: national estuary, but it also would create a massive amount
Speaker 10: of air pollution. It's going to be it's the single
Speaker 10: largest proposed source that we've been tracking of greenhouse gas
Speaker 10: emissions in the country. It's going to be permitted to
Speaker 10: it has been permitted to emit thirteen point six million
Speaker 10: metric tons of CO two every year. It's the equivalent
Speaker 10: of three and a half coal fired power plants. Just
Speaker 10: to give you some context.
Speaker 1: Today, there are several different lawyers fighting FORMOSA on multiple fronts. Simmons'
Speaker 1: group is focused on a federal complaint against the Army
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers, which was in charge of issuing Formosa
Speaker 1: permits to build on wetlands in Saint James.
Speaker 10: Obviously, this project sits right on the Mississippi River, right
Speaker 10: next to the levee, and there are wetlands on site
Speaker 10: and adjacent to the property that connect to this national estuary,
Speaker 10: and fishing grounds and recreational grounds that folks like to use,
Speaker 10: and obviously will also impact the Mississippi River, and they
Speaker 10: want to build a dock and do a lot of
Speaker 10: work that will impact waters and wetlands. So the Army
Speaker 10: Corps still has jurisdiction over that that is not delegated
Speaker 10: to the States. So we commented on the proposed permit,
Speaker 10: obviously opposing it for a whole host of reasons.
Speaker 1: Then there were the local permits that Louisiana's Department of
Speaker 1: Environmental Quality had to issue for the project.
Speaker 11: So we were approached by a local resident who has
Speaker 11: lived in Saint James all her life and was concerned
Speaker 11: about particularly the environmental justice aspect of Formosa's proposed plan
Speaker 11: because her community, which is predominantly African American, has been
Speaker 11: overburdened with industrial pollution.
Speaker 1: This is Kimberly Terrell with the Tulane University Law Clinic.
Speaker 1: The woman she's talking about there isn't Sharon Levin, but
Speaker 1: she is a member of Sharon's group Rise Saint James.
Speaker 1: The first chance the public got to formally voice their
Speaker 1: opposition to the project came when Formosa applied for its
Speaker 1: air permit.
Speaker 11: So the first thing we did was the attorneys at
Speaker 11: the clinic submitted comments on Beverly's behalf regarding environmental justice
Speaker 11: concerns for Formosa's air permit. You know, that was important
Speaker 11: to raise those issues before DEQ made its decision in
Speaker 11: order to be able to challenge that decision.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Terrell and her colleagues argued
Speaker 1: was that Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality ld EQ had
Speaker 1: looked at outdated information to determine the environmental justice impact
Speaker 1: of the Formosa plant. Here'sterrell's colleague Devin Lowell.
Speaker 12: This petition just challenges deq's environmental justice analysis that they
Speaker 12: did and put in analysis there in air quotes. DQ
Speaker 12: in this decision used outdated cancer risk information to the
Speaker 12: claim that there was no evidence that the nearby community
Speaker 12: already faced a disproportionate burden from air pollution, but that
Speaker 12: information was outdated when they made the decision. There was
Speaker 12: updated information that showed that in fact, the community of Welcome,
Speaker 12: which is closest to the proposed facility, actually faces cancer
Speaker 12: risk in the eighty six percentile from air toxics, which
Speaker 12: is much higher than the state average.
Speaker 1: And Rolfus is involved in that suit too, as is Simmons,
Speaker 1: who's working on both the state and federal fights. Despite
Speaker 1: a lot of opposition, the Army Corps approved Formosa's permit
Speaker 1: to build on those wetlands in September twenty nineteen.
Speaker 10: This decision was one of the worst I've seen. They
Speaker 10: issued a very very short decision document that just had
Speaker 10: so many holes in it. And so in January of
Speaker 10: twenty twenty, we went to federal court. We actually filed
Speaker 10: in the District of d C where the headquarters for
Speaker 10: the Army Corps is, and we filed a lawsuit challenging
Speaker 10: the Army corps issuance of this permit on many many grounds,
Speaker 10: and there are violations of law under the Clean Water Act,
Speaker 10: but also the National Environmental Policy Act and the National
Speaker 10: Historic Preservation Act.
Speaker 1: Both the federal and state cases are ongoing, but Formosa's
Speaker 1: opponents have stacked up some wins. A judge just ruled
Speaker 1: in the state case that Luisiana de Eq has to
Speaker 1: go back and look at current information to make a
Speaker 1: decision on the environmental justice impact of the plant, and
Speaker 1: the Army Corps has put a halt to building on
Speaker 1: those wetlands because the facility wasn't just planned for wetlands,
Speaker 1: it was planned for old plantation sites.
Speaker 10: There was a discovery that there are at least two
Speaker 10: cemeteries of former slaves unmarked burial sites on that site,
Speaker 10: and there are several other anomalies on the property, which
Speaker 10: is the word archaeologists used to define areas that can't
Speaker 10: be ruled out as significant historic properties. So we also
Speaker 10: had a claim in our lawsuit stating that the Army
Speaker 10: Corps violated the National Preservation Act by failing to adequately
Speaker 10: assess and protect those sites.
Speaker 1: That made this a constitutional case too, and the Center
Speaker 1: for Constitutional Rights came on board to help.
Speaker 13: And so we've been assisting Rise Saint James in other
Speaker 13: ways or helping them unnurse the information about the burial
Speaker 13: site on the property make sure that they can have
Speaker 13: access to those sites.
Speaker 1: This is Pam Speace, senior staff attorney with the Center
Speaker 1: for Constitutional Rights. She filed a public records request to
Speaker 1: see if she could figure out if Formosa knew about
Speaker 1: the graveyard before it submitted its plan.
Speaker 13: What we know from the public records request is that
Speaker 13: the company was actually wanting to remove cemetery if they
Speaker 13: found it on the Acadia plantation, because where that site
Speaker 13: was located is where they wanted to place a utility
Speaker 13: plant that would power the because this complex is so massive, right,
Speaker 13: it's going to need its own utility plant, and that's
Speaker 13: exactly where it was going to be located.
Speaker 8: So if they found.
Speaker 13: Graves on that site, they were in the position of
Speaker 13: having to either reconfigure all of the site plans or
Speaker 13: seek permission to remove those remains, which would have been
Speaker 13: a really big deal. So I would imagine it's because
Speaker 13: either they just didn't think about it and didn't think
Speaker 13: it's worth reporting out and nobody would care, or they
Speaker 13: realized that people would care a whole lot and didn't
Speaker 13: want to call too much attention to it.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened, it was good enough to pause the project
Speaker 1: at least a bit that the Army Corps permitted until
Speaker 1: next year. But it was more than just a delay.
Speaker 1: This news also brought a lot of negative attention and
Speaker 1: national press to the project. When Sharon Levine wanted to
Speaker 1: have a Juneteenth celebration at the site of the graveyard,
Speaker 1: her petition was initially denied, but she fought that decision
Speaker 1: and she won. She and her group had that celebration
Speaker 1: first in twenty twenty and again this June.
Speaker 8: Oh, we're saying we had a whole agenda insane and
Speaker 8: opening prayer and like to turn.
Speaker 6: This into sacred ground by a blessing with holy water.
Speaker 8: The minister's just the grave site. Some people give some
Speaker 8: accountability of what they experience in Saint Change, and some
Speaker 8: are little history of different things in Saint James.
Speaker 1: For Spees, it's sent a powerful message.
Speaker 13: Well, I think the graves have done something very profound.
Speaker 13: They have really erased what was an imaginary line between
Speaker 13: the past and present.
Speaker 7: M I.
Speaker 13: You know, I think it made it. It's all, it's
Speaker 13: all very present right now. That's the you know. And
Speaker 13: I certainly think for folks and Rhymes and in the community,
Speaker 13: the rediscovered connection to these graves is so profound and
Speaker 13: it it gives them more strength and courage and commitments
Speaker 13: to the struggle, and they certainly I don't think there's
Speaker 13: any way you can divorce what's happening now in terms
Speaker 13: of the sighting of these facilities and who's burying the
Speaker 13: biggest burdens from the history of slavery in that area.
Speaker 8: It's all.
Speaker 13: There's a straight line connecting at all.
Speaker 1: Next time on drilled what happened when the pandemic made
Speaker 1: plastic a little more appealing.
Speaker 14: There's a remarkable instance of this where you have an
Speaker 14: industry representative actually fantasizing, and I'm using this word very advisedly,
Speaker 14: fantasizing that they'll be able to get the public to
Speaker 14: rep bananas and apples in plastic packaging in the name
Speaker 14: of hygiene and finding the COVID canda and if there's
Speaker 14: any And I think that that is a testament to
Speaker 14: how oh, really optimistic the industry is about how it's
Speaker 14: going to be able to exploit COVID nineteen to fill
Speaker 14: that gap in plastic demand.
Speaker 1: Drilled as an original production of the Critical Frequency Podcast Network.
Speaker 1: The show is reported, written, and hosted by me Amy Westerveldt.
Speaker 1: Additional reporting this episode from Sarah Dern in Louisiana. Our
Speaker 1: producer this season is Juliana Bradley. Our editor is Julia Ritchie.
Speaker 1: Our theme song this season is Death Song by b Beamon.
Speaker 1: Additional music for the season composed by Elliott Peltzman. Our
Speaker 1: artwork for the season is done by Matthew Fleming. Our
Speaker 1: First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton at the First Amendment Project.
Speaker 1: You can find additional reporting and photos for this season
Speaker 1: on our Twitter feed at we Are Drilled or online
Speaker 1: at drillednews dot com. If you're a fan of the show,
Speaker 1: please consider supporting us in two ways. One, if you
Speaker 1: want to spend some money and get some extra bonus
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