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Law360 (July 14, 2020, 8:08 PM EDT ) Environmental groups on Tuesday asked a D.C. federal court to block construction on a Louisiana plastics facility that they say skirted proper environmental reviews and poses a deadly threat to the predominantly Black community in which it would operate.
Arguing that the COVID-19 pandemic has only served to highlight the dangers that pollution poses to public health, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, RISE St. James and Healthy Gulf asked the court for a preliminary injunction that would halt construction on a Formosa Plastics Corp. petrochemical facility in a heavily industrialized region of Louisiana known as "Cancer Alley."
The groups said the company has already brought heavy machinery onto the site and is prepared to begin construction imminently. That construction would damage wetlands and disrupt a slave burial site, and a preliminary injunction is necessary to stop irreversible damages, the groups said.
"We're confident we're going to win on these claims but if they already have done the damage, then it really damages the court decision," Julie Teel Simmonds, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said during a news conference Tuesday. "That's why this preliminary injunction is really critical right now."
In their request for a preliminary injunction, the groups said the Army Corps of Engineers failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, National Historic Preservation Act, Clean Water Act and the Rivers and Harbors Act when it approved permits for the facility, which would be one of the largest plastics facilities in the world. And they blasted the company as a "serial offender" of environmental protection laws.
The groups said the facilities, which would turn fracked gas into pellets for single-use packaging and other products, would increase environmental toxins at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is already wreaking havoc on communities with high levels of pollution.
"If they don't stop this project, we won't be able to live. We won't be able to breathe the air without getting sick," Sharon Lavigne, president of RISE St. James, said in a statement. "If the court cares about this community and wants to save our lives, it will stop this polluting chemical plant."
The petrochemical complex would include 14 plants across 2,500 acres that run along the St. James Canal and Mississippi River, where the environmental groups said toxic pollutants would be discharged. The construction would occur in a low-income neighborhood that is 95% Black in an area of Louisiana known as "Cancer Alley," an 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans constituting mainly low-income and African American communities and a high concentration of refineries and chemical and petrochemical plants.
The environmental groups first filed suit in January, saying the Corps had failed to analyze the project's impacts on area waterways in violation of the CWA and RHA, as well as wrongly concluded that the project wasn't "water-dependent," the complaint says. They also say the agency flouted the NHPA by glossing over the fact the facility would be built on the site of two 19th-century sugar plantations that contain cemeteries of enslaved people, the complaint says.
Formosa, a Taiwanese plastic maker, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Army Corps said the agency couldn't comment on pending litigation.
The environmental groups are represented by Catherine Kilduff, Emily Jeffers, Lauren Packard and Julie Teel Simmonds of the Center for Biological Diversity.
The Army Corps is represented by Jacqueline M. Leonard and Andrew D. Knudsen of the U.S. Department of Justice's Environment and Natural Resources Division.
Formosa is represented by Alexander N. Breckinridge and Michael Drew of Jones Walker LLP and William S. Scherman and David Debold of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
--Additional reporting by Keith Goldberg. Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.
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