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louisiana bucket brigade
'Death Sentence': Reports Call for End to Big Oil's US Sacrifice Zones
"People's lives and the environment are being devastated at the hands of big business," one human rights researcher said.
Jan 25, 2024
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both published reports on Thursday detailing how the fossil fuel industry has harmed the health and environment of communities in Texas and Louisiana, and how state and federal regulators have failed to protect them.
The Amnesty report, The Cost of Doing Business? The Petrochemical Industry's Toxic Pollution in the USA, focused on the Houston Ship Channel, which has some of the worst air pollution measurements in the U.S. The HRW report, "We're Dying Here": The Fight for Life in a Louisiana Fossil Fuel Sacrifice Zone, looked at the state's Cancer Alley, an 85-mile zone along the Mississippi that reportedly has the highest concentration of fossil fuel and petrochemical plants in the Western Hemisphere.
"We're dying from inhaling the industries' pollution," 71-year-old Sharon Lavigne, who lives in the town of Welcome in Louisiana's St. James Parish and started the environmental justice group RISE St. James, told HRW. "I feel like it's a death sentence. Like we are getting cremated, but not getting burnt."
'Death Row'
In its report, HRW noted that Lavigne and other Cancer Alley residents put up yard signs reading, "We live on death row."
Cancer Alley—which extends from Baton Rouge to New Orleans—has around 200 petrochemical and fossil fuel plants. HRW observed many near to homes, schools, senior centers, playgrounds, and workplaces that would regularly release flares, smoke, or foul smells.
HRW interviewed 70 people between September 2022 and January 2024, including 37 residents as well as regulatory officials, health experts, and nonprofit workers. It spoke to people who had been diagnosed with cancers and various respiratory ailments. One census tract, in St. John Parish, has a cancer risk from air pollution that is more than seven times the national average, the highest in the nation.
"What's happening in Louisiana's Cancer Alley is indeed like a sacrifice, a daily human sacrifice on the altar of our global fossil fuel cult."
"People are getting cancer diagnoses as a result of industry being so close to our homes," 31-year-old Kaitlyn Joshua, who lives in Ascension Parish, told HRW.
The report also reveals new research on reproductive health that is currently under review for publication in Environmental Research Health. Scientists from Tulane University found that there were rates of low birth weight and preterm birth as much as triple the national average, and that the highest rates were found in areas with the highest pollution levels.
The ongoing public health crisis disproportionately impacts Black and low-income communities. For example, nearly 90% of the residents in Welcome are Black as well as 60% of the residents of St. John, compared to 33% of the state population and 13.6% of the national population.
The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the environment listed Cancer Alley in 2022 as one of the most toxic places on Earth, termed "sacrifice zones."
"What's happening in Louisiana's Cancer Alley is indeed like a sacrifice," HRW European media and editorial director Andrew Stroehlein wrote in his daily brief Thursday, "a daily human sacrifice on the altar of our global fossil fuel cult."
'Environmental Racism'
The Houston Ship Channel in southeast Texas is another "sacrifice zone" where the fossil fuel industry disproportionately harms the health of low-income communities of color, according to Amnesty.
"People's lives and the environment are being devastated at the hands of big business," Alysha Khambay, Amnesty International's researcher on business and human rights, said in a statement. "Affected communities are predominantly Latinx/Hispanic and Black, low income, often lack access to healthcare they need, and face almost insurmountable barriers to justice. It is environmental racism."
"The doctor can't tell you, 'You got this cancer because you live next to this plant.' But there's no way living right next to them is good. It isn't."
The report focused on four plants owned by major oil and gas companies: ExxonMobil's Baytown Complex, LyondellBasell's Channelview Complex, Shell's Deer Park Chemicals, and Intercontinental Terminals Company's (ITC) Deer Park. Amnesty International interviewed dozens of people and looked at documents, data, and videos and images of the plants between January and December of 2023. It found that the four plants had often released more air pollution than their permits allowed over the past two decades, and three of them had experienced a fire or explosion in the last five years.
As in Louisiana, the plants harm residents' health. They release carcinogenic chemicals including the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) benzene, toluene, 1-3 butadiene, and ethylene oxide. One study found higher rates of childhood leukemia in parts of Houston with higher levels of benzene and 1,3-butadiene. Life expectancy is as much as 20 years lower in some polluted areas when compared to majority white communities 15 miles away.
"My mom, she recently had uterine cancer," one resident told Amnesty. "A lot of people have cancer, breathing difficulties… The doctor can't tell you, 'You got this cancer because you live next to this plant.' But there's no way living right next to them is good. It isn't."
Respiratory illnesses are another major health issue, with 15 of 29 interviewees saying either they or a close relative had been diagnosed with one or experienced chronic symptoms like a persistent cough.
"It pretty much affects me and my family every single day," Channelview-area resident Alondra Torres told Amnesty. "There's always smells in the air, every time you step outside for a little while."
'Reluctant Regulators'
Both reports detailed how government agencies had failed to protect people living near polluting plants.
"The failure of state and federal authorities to properly regulate the industry has dire consequences for residents of Cancer Alley," Antonia Juhasz, HRW senior researcher on fossil fuels, said in a statement.
Resident Brenda Bryant told HRW that making a complaint to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) was like "going up against a brick wall."
"The current system is stacked in favor of the companies and against the people they harm."
A 2021 state audit found that the department did not thoroughly examine facilities' emissions reports, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Inspector General found in 2011 that LDEQ had the lowest level of enforcement in its region for the Clean Air Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and Clean Water Act.
"DEQ has been actively hostile to communities in Cancer Alley for a long, long time," law professor and University for Human Rights co-founder Ruhan Nagra told HRW.
Louisiana state Sen. Cleo Fields (D-14) said LDEQ was "like partners" with the fossil fuel industry.
"My experience of the last 20 years is that state officials consistently cover for the petroleum industry and the polluters," Louisiana Bucket Brigade director Anne Rolfes told HRW.
Yet the U.S. EPA has not adequately fulfilled its mandate to make sure federal laws are enforced, though HRW noted the agency was hampered by underfunding and hostile court rulings. While the Biden administration has made more of an emphasis on environmental justice, its EPA dropped an investigation into whether or not LDEQ and the Louisiana Department of Health had violated Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act by disproportionately exposing Black residents to pollution.
In an example of the difficulties facing Cancer Alley residents, a Louisiana appeals court on Friday upheld air permits for a proposed Formosa Plastics plant in the area, which would be the largest of its kind in the U.S., as The Guardian reported. Then, on Tuesday, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the EPA from enforcing Title VI requirements going forward.
In Texas, meanwhile, Amnesty found that, in the past few years, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) penalized less than 3% of incidents in which a plant had exceeded its permitted level of pollution and that the fines it does issue are under the maximum amount and usually not high enough to dissuade the companies from reoffending.
"A company gets fined less than one person who's affected by it would spend on medical bills… it's very unfair," resident Carolyn Stone told Amnesty.
A 2022-23 review of the agency said its commissioners were "reluctant regulators" who largely allowed the industry to monitor itself.
"There is no effective regulatory deterrent to prevent these firms harming people, which they are doing with near impunity," Khambay said in a statement. "The current system is stacked in favor of the companies and against the people they harm. The human rights abuses related to the petrochemicals industry worldwide are often staggeringly harmful. This must and can change."
'The End of Fossil Fuels'
Both reports point out that the pollutants harming the residents of Cancer Alley and the Houston Ship Channel are also helping to destabilize the global climate and expose people around the world to extreme weather and other impacts. Around 150 plants in Cancer Alley were responsible for 66% of Louisiana's 2020 greenhouse gas emissions and released the equivalent of what 140 coal plants would release in a year between 2016 and 2021.
Petrochemical plants also produce plastics, a major environmental pollutant and health hazard. Yet their production is set to double by 2040, Amnesty said.
"It's long past time for governments to uphold their human rights obligations and for these sacrifices to end."
Both HRW and Amnesty said that regulators should stop approving new fossil fuel facilities in polluted areas and instead focus on a just transition to cleaner industries. HRW called for a Federal Fossil Fuel and Petrochemical Remediation and Relocation Plan, whereby companies in Louisiana would work with communities to provide jobs, decommission plants, remediate polluted areas, and offer to pay the moving expenses of residents who wished to relocate. Amnesty pointed out that renewable energy has the potential to employ more than 1.1 million people in Texas in the next quarter-century.
"I would like to see the end of fossil fuels," Lavigne told HRW. "If that's going to make me live a longer life, breathe clean air, drink clean water, they should shut them down."
HRW also said that Louisiana regulators should stop issuing permits in communities with high levels of pollution and that the EPA should use its Clean Air Act authority to shut down facilities until they can operate without breaking the law. In Texas, Amnesty said that local agencies should increase monitoring and enforcement, and also that the EPA should step in more frequently to enforce federal standards.
"It's long past time for governments to uphold their human rights obligations and for these sacrifices to end," Juhasz said in a statement.
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'A Pause Isn't Enough': Biden to Reportedly Halt LNG Buildout
"Biden is afraid that his climate hypocrisy will cost him the election if he doesn't make real progress on fossil fuels," one campaigner said.
Jan 24, 2024
The Biden administration has paused the approval of the controversial Calcasieu Pass 2 liquefied natural gas export terminal and is asking the Department of Energy to consider how the project would impact the economy, national security, and the climate emergency, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The news comes as climate advocates and Louisiana residents have been mobilizing against the buildout of LNG infrastructure, with a sit-in planned at the DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C. for February. If approved, activists have noted, CP2 would emit 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions than the controversial Willow oil drilling project, and the more than 20 LNG export facilities planned for the U.S. Gulf Coast would release more climate pollution each year than the European Union.
"Biden's action shows two things," Oil Change International's U.S. Program Manager Allie Rosenbluth said in a statement about the reported delay. "One, the marches, petitions, and grassroots organizing from frontline communities and their allies are working. And two, Biden is afraid that his climate hypocrisy will cost him the election if he doesn't make real progress on fossil fuels."
"Remember, none of us are free until we're all free, until we can halt these permits and get them to sop being approved permanently, until we can kick polluters out of our communities, the fight must continue."
According to The New York Times, the DOE's decision on CP2 could be postponed until after the November election. In addition to determining whether the project is in the "public interest," three sources familiar with the situation told the Times that the administration had ordered the department to also consider its climate impacts.
Climate advocates greeted the news with cautious optimism.
"Um, I think we all just won," Bill McKibben, who brought the LNG fight to national attention with an article in The New Yorker last year, wrote on his Substack.
"If it's true, and I think it is, this is the biggest thing a U.S. president has ever done to stand up to the fossil fuel industry," McKibben said.
Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, told Common Dreams that "if this reporting is correct, it's a major win in the fight against fossil fuels."
"This decision would stop nearly 20 new LNG facilities, representing 675 coal-fired power plants of emissions, dead in their tracks," Henn said.
Jean Su, director of the the Center for Biological Diversity's Energy Justice program said, "We would welcome the Biden administration pausing the monstrous, climate-killing CP2 project, but a pause isn't enough."
"Growing national pressure from youth and frontline communities to end fossil fuel expansion got us here. Now the administration needs to go the full nine yards and reject CP2 and all new oil and gas projects. To preserve a livable planet, we need a public interest test that denies any new project that would drive us further into climate catastrophe and violate U.S. commitments to transition away from fossil fuels."
The Louisiana Bucket Brigade called the move "a huge potential victory for Louisiana" on social media.
"If enacted, this will be a first step toward phasing out gas exports from Louisiana completely," the group wrote. "This industry is already destroying our coast and fishing communities. It should not be allowed to expand, it should not be allowed to continue. Gas exports don't belong here. We do."
In a video posted on social media, frontline environmental justice activist and Vessel Project founder Roishetta Ozane said: "This will be a win for all of us. So many have been fighting so hard to get to this moment."
However, Ozane said that the fight was not over.
"Remember, none of us are free until we're all free, until we can halt these permits and get them to stop being approved permanently, until we can kick polluters out of our communities, the fight must continue."
Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said that the DOE would have to follow through with actually making an environmentally just and climate-friendly decision following the extended review process. The New York Times pointed out that the department has never declined a gas project on environmental grounds.
"We don't need new criteria if they only serve to arrive at the original conclusion, and increased exports are eventually approved," Hauter said in a statement. "President Biden should permanently halt new and existing oil and gas exports, and aggressively ramp down the fossil fuel industry once and for all."
The news came the same day that a new study from Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, and BailoutWatch found that the main beneficiary of new LNG facilities would be oil and gas companies and financial speculators, not U.S. or European consumers. At the same time, just eight facilities considered in the report would emit as much each year as 113 coal plants.
The Times news suggests that the administration is beginning to take heed of the drawbacks of the LNG buildout, yet existing infrastructure such as Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass has already polluted Gulf Coast communities and seriously impacted the livelihoods of shrimpers and fishers in the area.
Travis Dardar, founder of Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage (FISH), told Common Dreams that fishing in the area had already decreased by 50%.
"They said they were going to pause it, they didn't say they were going to stop it," Dardar said. "There's a big difference there."
His experience with oil and gas companies like Venture Global has taught him to be wary and to continue to fight.
"They've taken so much from us down there," he said. "That's how I know how relentless they can be."
National organizations also emphasized the importance of maintaining pressure.
"Big Oil and Gas knows it is up against the ropes and will put up a fight to continue putting its profits over our collective future," Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous said in a statement. "But despite industry fearmongering, it's undeniable that LNG export projects are simply not in the public interest."
"These facilities pollute our communities, make energy more expensive for American families, and exacerbate the climate crisis all for the sake of more gas the world does not need," Jealous continued. "Our movement will not give up, and we will keep working to ensure that this reported groundbreaking step will lead to meaningful change."
Henn said that February's sit-in would go forward unless the administration officially announced the pause in writing.
"Our work is never over, but this will be a win to celebrate and use to stop other projects to come," Henn told Common Dreams.
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Frontline Fishers Force Early End to New Orleans Gas Conference
"We want our oystering back. We want our shrimp back. We want our dredges back. We want LNG to leave us alone," one participating fisherman said.
Jan 19, 2024
Frontline fishers and environmental justice advocates forced the meeting of the Americas Energy Summit in New Orleans to end two hours early on Friday, as they protested what the buildout of liquefied natural gas infrastructure is doing to Gulf Coast ecosystems and livelihoods.
Fishers and shrimpers from southwest Louisiana say that new LNG export terminals are destroying habitat for marine life while the tankers make it unsafe for them to take their boats out in the areas where fishing is still possible. The destruction is taking place in the port of Cameron, which once saw the biggest catch of any fishing area in the U.S.
"We want our oystering back. We want our shrimp back. We want our dredges back. We want LNG to leave us alone," Cameron fisherman Solomon Williams Jr. said in a statement. "With all the oil and all the stuff they're dumping in the water, it's just killing every oyster we can get. Makes it so we can't sell our shrimp."
The protest was part of the growing movement against LNG export infrastructure, which is both harming the health and environment of Gulf Coast residents and risks worsening the climate crisis: Just one of the more than 20 proposed new LNG terminals, Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2, would release 20 times the lifetime emissions of the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. Activists have also planned a sit-in at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., from February 6-8 to demand the agency stop approving new LNG export terminals.
The Americas Energy Summit is one of the largest international meetings of executives involved in the exporting of natural gas. More than 40 impacted fishers brought their boats to New Orleans to park them outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where the meeting was being held. After a march from Jackson Square, the fishers revved their engines to disrupt the meeting. One attendee said the disruption forced the meeting to conclude at 11 am ET, two hours earlier than scheduled.
"Wen you're here on the ground, seeing it with your own eyes and talking to the people... it feels like looking into the devil's eyes."
"They going to run us out of the channel and if they run us out of the channel then it's over," Phillip Dyson Sr., a fisherman who attended the protest with his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, said in a statement. "We fight for them. We fight for my grandson. Been a fighter all my life. I ain't going to stop now. So long as I got breathe I'm going to fight for my kids. They are the future. Fishing industry been here hundreds of years and now they're trying to stop us. I don't think it's right."
The fishers were joined by other local and national climate advocates, including Sunrise New Orleans, Permian Gulf Coast Coalition, Habitat Recovery Project, the Vessel Project, For a Better Bayou, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and actress and activist Jane Fonda.
"I thought I understood. I read the articles, I read the science, I've seen the photographs. But when you're here on the ground, seeing it with your own eyes and talking to the people... it feels like looking into the devil's eyes," Fonda said at the protest. "I've talked to people who have lost what was theirs over generations and are losing their livelihoods, the fishing, the oystering, the shrimping…"
Fonda called on the Biden administration to take action: "If President [Joe] Biden declared a climate emergency he could take money from the Pentagon and he could reinstate the crude oil export [ban]. Once the export ends, the drilling will end. They're only drilling because they can export it."
The successful action came despite interference from police, who threatened to issue tickets and tow away the six boats the fishers had originally parked in front of the convention center. Some participants agreed to move their boats, but the group was able to park two boats in front of the center and persevere in their protest.
"We're standing in the fire down there. And these people over here, the decisions that they make, for which our fishermen are paying the price. That's bullshit," Travis Dardar, who organized the fishers' trip and founded the group Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage (FISH), said in a statement."The police got us blocked here, they got us blocked there. But know that the fishermen are here and we're still going to try and give them hell."
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