Louisiana Voice

Cancer Alley.

Jobs.

One is supposed to be a trade-off for the other, albeit a less-than-attractive trade-off.

You’ve read the myriad stories over the years. The Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans has the fifth-highest cancer rate in the nation. Or the second-highest. Or the highest, depending on your source.

Whatever, Louisiana’s cancer rate has consistently outpaced the national rate for at least the past two decades, according to The American Cancer Society.

Environmental activists generally attribute the high rate to the existence of more than 100 petrochemical plants scattered along the 80-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

There are several reasons for this: relative cheap land, easy access to the river for exporting the products to international markets, and Louisiana’s generous (some say too generous) tax breaks for plants because they provide jobs for Louisiana residents.

Those generous tax breaks are supposedly awarded because the locations and expansions of these industries provide hundreds—sometimes thousands—of jobs. But they’re given to industries that have a history of violating environmental regulations that endanger the environment and human lives.

One of those is Taiwanese-run Formosa Plastics, which paid a $50 million SETTLEMENT in a water pollution LAWSUIT in Lavaca, Texas.

Formosa has been subjected to fines totaling more than $4.4 million in Louisiana alone for environmental violations.

Aside from the $50 million settlement in Texas, Formosa has been fined 70 times a total of more than $24 million for environmental, workplace, and safety violations.

Formosa applied and was approved for a hefty $9.4 billion permit earlier this year to build a major complex in St. James Parish, upriver from New Orleans.

The project is anticipated to generate 1,200 permanent jobs, which translates to 10-year property tax exemptions on some $7.8 million per job created. It would take far more than 10 years to produce payroll to justify that kind of tax incentive. (Even if each of the 1,200 new employees was paid $75,000 per year, it would take a very long time to make up for tax exemptions on a $9.4 billion industrial investment.)

Formosa held GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONIES at the site in March of this year.

That application prompted a lawsuit from local residents and environmental groups seeking to halt the project.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit were objecting to the plant which would add 12 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year and triple residents’ exposure to already high levels of carcinogens.

That $50 million Texas settlement? That was for dumping plastic pellets into Texas waterways.

In June two protesters to the St. James facility, Anne Rolfes and Kate McIntosh, were arrested for terrorizing, an offense that could net them up to 15 years in jail. Their offense? The left a box of those plastic pellets (called nurdles) on the doorstep of Greg Bowser, a lobbyist for the chemical industry in Louisiana.

The legal definition of terrorizing, according to THE NEW ORLEANS ADVOCATE, which first published the story of the pair’s arrest, is “intentionally causing fear to the general public, causing evacuation of a building or other serious disruption to the general public.”

We’re sure that Bowser was trembling in his boots at the sight of a box of plastic pellets on his door stoop. He was Probably so terrorized that he wet his pants as he suffered an anxiety attack but not nearly severe enough to cause him to withdraw as a lobbyist.

But what the arrests do demonstrate is that Formosa is a formidable opponent and not to be taken lightly. It plays dirty—dirty enough to arrest two women who had the temerity to place a box of plastic pellets on a lobbyist’s doorstep. God help you if you are a picketer or protester who should accidentally wander off the public road shoulder onto Formosa property.

Formosa even attempted to halt a recent JUNETEENTH OBSERVANCE at a gravesite for former slaves on which Formosa is building its complex in St. James Parish.

That should tell the State of Louisiana, i.e. the Louisiana Department of Economic Development (LED), that Formosa is not a good neighbor, that it does not have the welfare of Louisiana’s residents foremost in its plans for expansion. It’s a foreign corporation concerned only with extracting maximum profits from a state desperate enough to make concessions that benefit only one party (hint: it ain’t Louisiana’s citizenry).

So, why did LED approve another application from Formosa earlier this year for approval of tax exemptions, breaks and/or incentives on $332 million in construction that will produce only 15 additional permanent jobs? That’s $22 million in exemptions/breaks for each job. It’s very doubtful if those jobs are going to generate $22 million in salaries.

The reason is that Louisiana, like most other states, is desperate for industry that provides jobs. But unlike most other states, Louisiana has chosen to pursue dirty industry rather and to remain reliant on the oil and gas and chemical industry while clean industry, white collar jobs continue to leave the state in droves.

The state’s leaders, it seems, are satisfied with the status quo that has kept Louisiana at the bottom rankings of income, health, obesity, education, jobs, crime, and corruption. Bring in the jobs that pay enough for a family to afford a house, a boat, and a couple of cars, and they won’t notice what goes on the House and Senate floors or in those committee rooms down in the basement of that 24-story State Capitol.