There she learned the scope and history of environmental racism. She is ready for the next round in the fight to stop the plastics complex. She recently had a cancer scare of her own, but she can’t see giving up, even after this week’s permit approvals for Formosa. But that changed after she went to a school board meeting in the fall of 2015 to support a friend who she felt was being unfairly fired. Her daughter had told her red birds signify change. Wanhua ended up withdrawing its application, citing changes in its project's scope. Last year, Lavigne went to Washington, D.C. to attend a Congressional Convening on Environmental Justice on June 26. Sharon Lavigne at her house in St. James Parish, Louisiana, less than two miles from where Formosa plants to build a plastics and petrochemical facility. members’ attitudes that stopping the latest industrial development was impossible. Main image: Sharon Lavigne on her property in St. James, less than two miles from the proposed site of Formosa’s plastics manufacturing complex. Cayette, a retired industry worker who lives nearby, led the way from his wheelchair. Most of us might not know what to call the small bits of plastic, but we know what to call it when we see these pieces — pollution. After that, Lavigne started having trouble sleeping, and her moods fluctuated from depression to rage. The event gave Lavigne a sense of power. When companies do have a problem and alert LDEQ, the agency doesn’t notify surrounding residents about any pollution releases in real time, so they have no way of knowing if a release nearby might affect them. Rumours that former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore is being considered as a potential candidate to chair the BBC have been met with condemnation over the... By Julie Dermansky • Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - 20:34. 306 talking about this. Sharon Lavigne at a protest in front of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality on December 10, 2019. That transformation is poised to worsen tenfold as more petrochemical companies build mega-plastic manufacturing plants, dwarfing the facilities already polluting the region known to industry as the Petrochemical Corridor, and to locals as Cancer Alley. Not long after the 2018 march, Lavigne grew frustrated with some H.E.L.P.

Triumph Baptist Church. That was when she started attending parish council meetings and permit hearings for additional plants seeking permission to build in St. James’ 4th and 5th districts. Despite Wanhua’s retreat, stopping Formosa continues to be an uphill battle, especially with this week’s permit approvals. The preacher vowed to include the plight of Cancer Alley residents in the Poor People’s Campaign platform, which is a modern revival of a project by Martin Luther King, Jr. Barber said he plans to challenge all of the Democratic presidential candidates to visit Cancer Alley, and stated that if they don’t, they have no business running for president. Mayho, a retired custodial worker, desperately wanted to move away after learning that the pollution was impacting her health. She describes her childhood as idyllic, spending much of her time outdoors playing with her siblings and the other kids in the neighborhood, fishing, picking blackberries, and going to church every Sunday. Now more often than not, she leads meetings and protests, at ease with a microphone, or a megaphone, in hand, demanding clean air. Lavigne was never involved in local politics. “We can stop them with God on our side.” And though she wasn’t alone in her desire to stay, she felt alone in her belief that, with God’s help, the community could stop more polluting industry from coming. “I’m so sad that Geraldine never got to move,” Lavigne told me as we walked away. It was December 23, not 22. She told the group how she loved St. James, and how wrong it was that the government was allowing industry to poison the community. Credit: All photos by Julie Dermansky for DeSmog, Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science, Clearing the PR pollution that clouds climate science, "Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. She also showed me a couple of suitcases and boxes that she kept packed by her door in case she needed to get out fast or was able to find enough money to afford moving out.

“I can’t imagine myself living anywhere else,” she told me. It used to be known for its bucolic landscape lined with sugarcane fields, former slave plantations, and churches, but over the last 50 years, it has been transforming into an industrial wasteland. More than 300 people turned up, and most of those speakers opposed the plant. District 5’s population of about 5,000 is 86 percent African-American in an area equally steeped in impact from institutionalized racism and the growing climate crisis.

Early the next morning, July 27, Geraldine Mayho died of complications from a stroke. The nurdles, used to make plastic goods and sometimes found polluting the environment, were collected by Diane Wilson and others near a Formosa plant in Point Comfort, Texas, that discharged the pellets into waterways. “If you don’t look for a problem, you won’t find it,” said Wilma Subra, a chemist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), an advocacy group based in Baton Rouge that has been working with community members in many Cancer Alley communities. He was the first to announce the project in an April 2018 press release welcoming Formosa to Louisiana, thanking the company for bringing needed jobs and revenue. Lavigne was infuriated that this happened without her knowledge. September 10th, 2020 Chief Butch Browning, State Fire Marshal Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal 8181 Independence Blvd. meetings that foreign-owned chemical plants were seeking permits to build in Districts 4 and 5, including Formosa’s plastics complex, developments that would greatly impact the quality of her life. I made a presentation to the Council in January calling attention to Formosa Plastics’ false assertion that it had reconfigured its site…, September 15, 2020 St. James Parish Council 5800 Hwy. There, members of Rise St. James, the Louisiana Bucket Bridge, and the Center for Biological Diversity called on the state regulator to deny Formosa the air permits it granted this week.
There, she made the connection between industrial pollution and potential health impacts. “Like that makes it all right for them to build their plant.” No one is going to use a park close to the sprawling plastics facility if it is built, she contends. Louisiana’s coastal wetlands’ land-loss rate is already more than a football field’s worth of land every hour. Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70806 Courtney Phillips, Secretary Louisiana Department of Health P.O…. This report was produced as part of ivoh’s Restorative Narrative Fellowship. Across the street from the cemetery where Mayho was buried stand endless oil storage tanks. Lavigne with members of the Coalition Against Death Alley (CADA) on the steps of the State Capitol on June 3, 2019, at the end of a five day protest event.

Full of joy, Lavigne felt warmth in her heart as she marched with more than a hundred people past oil storage tanks that can leak volatile organic compounds including benzene, a known human carcinogen. Aside from added pollution, the truck traffic alone would destroy what little peace and quiet she still has left on her land. James is full.”. She points to the legacy of Jim Crow laws that lingered in south Louisiana for the community’s lack of faith that they can stop Formosa. She felt like the regulators and politicians weren’t listening as she and other St. James residents bared their hearts. So not only will any new petrochemical plants add toxic emissions to Lavigne’s air, but the plants themselves will be poised to wreak environmental destruction if there is a failure in the levee system or an extreme rain event swamps them.
Lavigne with her brother, Milton Cayette, Jr. at his home in St. James. “I love my home and I’m too old to start over.”.

Lavigne spoke at the funeral, praising Mayho’s commitment to fighting against the chemical companies that want to come into their community. The project was endorsed by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards before the community even knew about it.

The petrochemical and plastics industry accounts for about seven percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the International Energy Agency reported in 2013. She believes that she is answering God’s call to protect her neighborhood and save the planet. She hopes that this development could help sway politicians to stop the project’s growing momentum. (Humanitarian Enterprise of Loving People), who spoke about the pollution already plaguing the community. She speaks of him with pride and told me that sometimes she feels as if she is channeling him when speaking truth to power. But in her adolescence, her father’s activism and current events made her fearful. “God has a plan for us,” Lavigne told me he would often remind her while she was growing up. After doing everything she could to raise awareness about why Formosa shouldn’t build its plastics plant in St. James, she is baffled by the state’s decision. meetings and became a member. Dear Lord, you gave me this land — this home — do you want me to leave?”. Her father, Milton Cayette, Sr., was a sugarcane farmer, and her mother was a homemaker, always on hand to care for her and her five siblings.


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