(The Center Square) – Koch Industries and St. James Parish are hoping to take residents and opponents of a plant expansion to the Louisiana Supreme Court, according to records obtained by The Center Square.
In a now consolidated case, Koch and St. James are petitioning the state’s high court to overturn a 5th Circuit decision that put a stop to a planned pipeline and plant upgrade that Koch hoped to build. The St. James Parish Planning Commission unanimously approved the project over two years ago and litigation was soon filed.
Parish attorneys say the project is different from many other controversial industrial proposals because it is located in a designated industrial area “far removed from residences” and tied to a relatively clean operation. Methanol plants “are about as clean as you can get,” and “relatively benign” compared to other facilities in the parish.
The expansion being sought by Koch, partly built and already operating, would raise methanol output by 25% and boost air emissions by more than 50% in a region already considered burdened by industrial pollution.
Koch officials say the project is an “optimization and oxygen backup” plan, and modest compared to other industrial expansions.
The work involves tweaking equipment efficiency and installing new backup oxygen supplies to boost capacity by about 20%. Most of the improvements are within the footprint of the existing plant, with the only external piece being a short pipeline connecting the facility to an existing ethane line running just south of the plant.
Koch says emissions remain small and the Department of Environmental Quality found no air quality standards would be violated. Heavy metals like nickel, chromium, lead, mercury are now included in the permit. Residents say they are new emissions, but in fact they’ve always existed in trace amounts from burning fuel. Monitoring is different.
Koch says the expansion improves reliability and reduces shutdowns, which are when the facility produces the most emissions.
In another lawsuit, plaintiffs say the parish “discriminates against them by directing hazardous industrial facility development towards majority-Black districts and Black churches, where their members and congregants live.”
Those suing the parish include RISE St. James, Inclusive Louisiana and the Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, all represented by the Tulane University Environmental Law Clinic. Each of them are involved in both cases against the parish.
Lawsuits are costing the parish north of $400,000, according to the St. James News Examiner. But that figure does not include the litigation costs for the case being taken to the state Supreme Court, which means that figure could be significantly larger.
The $400,000 figure includes the discrimination case and a third lawsuit claiming the parish violated open meeting laws.
The plaintiffs have cause for concern.
St. James is in the heart of Louisiana’s “cancer alley” and cancer rates are among the highest in the state. Figures from the National Cancer Institute show St. James has an age-adjusted cancer incidence rate of 168.9 cases per 100,000 residents, significantly higher than most parishes in the state. That places it near the top of Louisiana’s rankings, despite its relatively small population.
The case against the Koch expansion was first brought to trial court where opposition to the pipeline was swiftly defeated, with the 23rd Judicial District Court ruling unanimously in favor of Koch and St. James. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled differently, saying that the parish wrongly applied a lower level of scrutiny to the project, calling its approval “arbitrary and capricious.”
In its application to the Supreme Court, St. James is arguing the 5th Circuit “failed to apply this statutorily mandated differential standard of review” and instead conducted a “de novo review” of the parish’s land use plan. Parish attorneys said the appellate panel “disagreed with the reasonable determinations of local authorities about the meaning and application of the plan to this project.”
