Judge Keeps Cancer Alley Polluting

By FRANK LINGO

A section of Louisiana between New Orleans and Baton Rouge with around 200 oil refineries and chemical plants is known as Cancer Alley. A January 2024 report from Human Rights Watch entitled “We’re Dying Here: The Fight for Life in a Louisiana Fossil Fuel Sacrifice Zone.” documents how Cancer Alley residents face elevated risks of reproductive and infant health harms, as well as cancer and respiratory ailments from extreme pollution by the petrochemical industry.

It’s environmental racism because the area’s Black citizens bear a disproportionate amount of the health hazards. The report states that for decades the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. EPA have both failed to curtail the severe harm occurring there and to enforce safety standards upon the polluters. The 1.5 million residents have cancer risks up to seven times the USA’s national average, according to a March 2024 article in British newspaper The Daily Mail.

So, is there any relief in sight? No, it’s getting worse.

According to CleanTechnica.com, a Trump-appointed federal judge has issued a permanent injunction against the EPA which had attempted to reduce the pollution based on a provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bars racial discrimination by any organizations that receive federal funding.

The EPA’s investigation focused on the Fifth Ward elementary school which is located only 100 yards from an industrial plant that emits chloroprene, a suspected carcinogen released when making synthetic rubber. Patrice Simmons, a litigator for the nonprofit Earthjustice, said, “Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to pollute Black and Brown communities for generations, only to now have one court give it a permanent free pass to abandon its responsibilities.”

Unfortunately, there is little chance for reversal of that ruling because the Trump-lopsided Supreme Court already ruled earlier this summer to limit the power of federal agencies like the EPA and the FDA to enforce standards of health and safety. The Supremes apparently place corporate profit above the public good.

What to do when federal judgeships, including the Supreme Court, are lifetime appointments? Why not pack the Court with more justices? There is no law against it and in the distant past there were different numbers of justices.

Kermit Roosevelt, constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and great, great grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, spent seven months on President Biden’s Supreme Court Commission. In a 2021 Time magazine article, Professor Roosevelt argued that “We are witnessing a minority takeover of our democracy” and “Court expansion may be the only thing that will save our democracy for the next generation.”

Until we do something to change the arrangement we have, Americans are in dire danger of losing our ability to protect the planet and retain our reproductive rights. Doing nothing is not an option.

Frank Lingo, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is a former columnist for the Kansas City Star and author of the novel “Earth Vote.” Email: lingofrank@gmail.com. See his website: Greenbeat.world

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2024

Populist.com