Projects

One of the first and largest schemes of its kind, in early 2025 Air Products proposed to build a new ammonia plant along with a 24” CO2 pipeline and injection site in Lake Maurepas, in order to capitalize on carbon capture and sequestration tax credits. This is one of the first projects of its kind to undergo regulatory review by the key permitting officials, and while initially not much was understood about the massive scale of the project, that has begun to change thanks to a committed network of organizers mobilizing a ground campaign to alert the public on the various hazards and damaging outcomes of this huge proposal.

In 2014, St James approved a land use plan to encourage further industrial development exclusively in the 4th and 5th districts of the parish, which so happens to be where a significant majority of black families live. These black residents can trace their roots back to their enslaved antebellum ancestors who cleared the plantation grounds and worked the sugar cane fields. The fight for equal protection under the law continues long after the end of the Civil War, with a major civil rights lawsuit brought against the parish for engaging in selective protection using modern land use regulations, to protect residential areas for majority white residential areas of the parish, while steering new heavy industry into the majority black areas of the parish.

In spite of significant community opposition, the local government sought to rezone land for heavy industry right next to an existing community of Wallace. The zoning ordinance text required a 2000ft distance requirement, to protect areas with a minimum residential density of 1 du/acre. The parish or the industrial applicant submitted an interpretation of residential density that made no sense, and would allow the applicant to disregard the requirement.

Air Products is pursuing state and federal permits to allow construction of a gigantic carbon sequestration facility within Lake Maurepas, an vital estuary, wildlife sanctuary and recreational boating paradise in southeastern Louisiana. The proposed pipeline and well facility sprawls like a spiderweb over the entirety of the lake bed, disturbing underwater sediment into the water column, and creating a visual blight and hazard upon the lake’s surface. Air Products’ proposal would operate a continuous high-pressure carbon dioxide injection one mile deep below the lake bed for 25 years, which comes with a high-degree of operational risks of leaks due to carbon dioxide’s high degree of molecular reactivity. In addition to those risks, the ecologic risks of long term storage in perpetuity cannot be guaranteed, and would likely fail due to geologic instability and seismic slip faults, and the corrosive effect of carbon dioxide upon pipeline casings, risking acidification of the entire estuary.

The 2014 Land Use Plan has paved the way for massive industrial development of St James Parish, drastically changing the future for thousands of residents living in these historic communities in central Louisiana. The Parish government adopted a land use plan that would steer new heavy industry into the 4th and 5th districts, both majority black, and with high rates of poverty. Simultaneously, the plan sought to create a safe enclave for residential growth within the majority white affluent area of District 3. The parish also closed public schools as a part of this plan, further starving the 4th and 5th districts of vital community centers - the imbalance impacts of this plan are outrageous and there was a general lack of awareness or media attention around the issue.

With the race to seize lucrative federal tax credits on, Exxon proposed to build a new CO2 pipeline spur to the Nucor steel plant in St James to connect to their existing CCS network. Exxon is one of major players in the development of CCS infrastructure in Louisiana and Texas, and they are moving aggressively to secure local permit approvals before a growing awareness of the risks becomes widespread. The pipeline in St James is particularly dangerous because it will operate under very high pressure, and run right through a commercial and residential area along the Sunshine bridge, which also happens to be the primary connection and escape route from the west to the eastern bank of the Mississippi River

Ascension parish leaders developed a plan to industrialize a rural, predominantly black area of the parish, dubbed RiverPlex Mega Park in economic-development speak. The plan would site major new ammonia production plants, and also a just-recently announced Hyundai steel mill, all to be located directly on top of a sleepy area of the Mississippi river that has been under sugarcane cultivation for over 150 years. This radical transformation is staggering in its scope and size, and has left residents grappling for answers on who to organize a mammoth coalition of business interests, with the full backing of the state, the feds and also the parish government.