The website for the Sunshine Project, the optimistically named plastics plant that’s slated to be built on the grounds of an old plantation in St. James, Louisiana, is very sunny indeed. A series of stock photos on the front page shows the various products that will be made at the facility, which would be the largest of its kind in the United States: shopping bags, N95 respirators, car paneling, playground equipment, gutters, downspouts, and much more.
Formosa Plastics, the Taiwanese company behind Sunshine, promises $9.4 billion in investment, and 1,200 jobs at the finished plant. And in a still-sunny FAQ, in response to a question about emissions, Sunshine notes that the property is located “more than one mile” from St. James’ Fifth Ward Elementary School — which reads as if Formosa believes that to be a sufficient distance between Sunshine, which is permitted to emit 800 tons of toxic air pollution annually, and a grade school that is 99% Black.
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Since plans for Sunshine were first announced in 2018, there has been rabid local opposition to the factory, which would see yet another petrochemical facility built along the stretch of the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley. When the state issued permits for Sunshine, it was not only allowed to emit those 800 tons of pollution — which would include cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and ethylene oxide — but also 13.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses too, the equivalent of 3.5 coal-fired power plants.
The EPA urged Louisiana to relocate a nearby elementary school after monitors detected high levels of the chemical at the school.
But in 2022, a lawsuit from local environmental groups succeeded in getting those permits vacated after Formosa “failed to demonstrate that its emissions would not ‘cause or contribute to’ violations of the federal air standards,” as Reuters reported. Late last week, however, a Louisiana appeals court judge reinstated those permits.
Sunshine Project, plans for which include 16 different facilities spread across a 2,400-acre campus, would be adding to an already infamously polluted area. For example, just down the river in St. John the Baptist Parish, a synthetic rubber factory owned by Denka Performance Elastomer holds the distinction of being the only plant permitted to emit chloroprene, a byproduct of manufacturing neoprene that’s linked to cancer and other health problems. In 2022, the EPA urged Louisiana to relocate a nearby elementary school after monitors detected high levels of the chemical at the school — which, like the school in St. James, is just a mile away from the plant.
Granted, that is a different chemical coming from a different plant, but estimates of the pollution exposure to areas one mile from the Sunshine site is by no means minor: a 2019 Propublica investigation found that Sunshine’s chemical emissions could “more than triple” the chemical exposure in St. James.
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“Living next to Formosa Plastics, with the perpetual risk to our health, livelihood, security and hard-earned property is beyond our imagination,” Sharon Lavigne, Founder & Director of RISE St. James, one of the groups that initially sued over the air permits, said in a statement. “Formosa Plastics would wipe the 5th district of St. James off the map, adding to the number of historically black communities that have become extinct due to the intrusion of petrochemical industries.”
While Formosa does have its permits again, there are still both legal and regulatory hurdles that it will need to clear before construction can begin. Lavigne and others say they will appeal the ruling, and are willing to take it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. The Army Corps of Engineers is also requiring a lengthy environmental impact statement to “review areas of concern, particularly those with environmental justice implications,” Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army Jaime Pinkham said in a 2021 memo.
That process — which will not only have to contend with the chemical exposures to majority Black communities like St. James, as well as the plantation history of the Sunshine site, which includes an unmarked burial ground for people who were enslaved there — could take years to complete. Which means that Sunshine won’t be coming to St. James Parish anytime soon — if at all.