The US’ most polluted region is battling the country’s biggest plastics plant
The new Formosa Petrochemical factory would not only worsen pollution in a heavily polluted town, but also contribute considerably to greenhouse emissions
Named the Sunshine Project, the planned plastics manufacturing complex, a project of the Taiwan-based Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) through its subsidiary FG LA LLC, has become a focal point in the fight against industrial pollution in Saint James parish and the surrounding region.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality in January granted the Sunshine Project a final set of permits, allowing construction of the complex’s 14 separate plants to begin.
Saint James parish neighbors Saint John the Baptist parish, home to the most toxic air in the US. Local campaigners such as LeBoeuf have been saying for years that the cocktail of new pollutants — including the cancer-causing compounds ethylene oxide, styrene and benzene — creates an intolerable risk to local health.
In District 5 of Saint James parish — 26,700 hectares of land — there are eight industrial plants operating, and the new project is to occupy 931 of those hectares.
The Sunshine Project would not only be a major contributor to local toxic pollution, but would also be a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The department has permitted Formosa to release an astonishing 13.6 million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year, the equivalent of three-and-a-half coal-fired power stations....
Many of the projects are to produce plastics — a sector that the research firm IHS Markit forecasts is to expand an average of 3.5 to 4 percent per year through 2035.
This boom in plastics manufacturing is fueled by cheap oil and gas released by hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking.
The fracking sector is planning 157 new or expanded plants and more drilling over the next five years, a report released by the Environmental Integrity Project said.
These projects are to release up to 205.93 million tonnes of additional greenhouse gases by the end of 2025 — a 30 percent increase from the sector’s footprint in 2018.
Oil companies are banking on plastics growth for when oil demand in the transportation industry peaks, said Steven Eric Feit, an attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law’s Climate and Energy Program.
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The discovery of fracking — a method of injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure to release oil and gas — vastly expanded the supply available to drillers. In turn, oil and gas prices plummeted.
Fracking has also made it cheaper to make plastics, which come from a by-product of the extracted gas.
Experts have said that the rapid boom in plastics production has been overlooked as the lower-emitting gas has allowed the US to phase out coal plants, at a benefit to the environment.
“Industry is saying this is good because we’re replacing coal, but they don’t talk about what else they’re doing with it — which is making plastic and chemicals,” Environmental Integrity Project director of research Courtney Bernhardt said.
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