St. James Parish industry

Industry along the Mississippi River in St. James Parish on Thursday, March 28, 2019. 

The New Orleans City Council expressed unanimous opposition Thursday to the planned Formosa Plastics plant in St. James Parish, raising concerns about how the $9.4 billion complex would affect the health and environment of nearby residents and those of the council's constituents 65 miles downriver.

Louisiana and St. James officials have approved the company's plans to build the plant at Welcome, on the west bank near the Sunshine Bridge. The New Orleans resolution won't prevent its construction, but council members said they felt compelled to weigh in on the issue.

“What happens upstream is going to reach us down here,” said council member Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who sponsored the resolution. “The plant might be in St. James, but the environmental effects have the potential to spread over a much larger area.”

The Formosa plant has been opposed by some environmental groups, including RISE St. James and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. About 100 people from both New Orleans and St. James opposed to the Formosa project wrote in to the City Council.

The issue also plays into the larger debate over industrial plants in the River Parishes, an area that some environment and health advocates call "Cancer Alley." Industry advocates say the state's tumor registry doesn’t show any clear cluster of cancer in the chemical corridor, and state officials tout that as evidence that the plants pose no unusual health risk.

Formosa had urged the City Council to scrap the resolution, and a spokesperson for the company said earlier this week that the project had already gone through a “rigorous environmental and operating permitting process and will also comply with multiple laws, regulation and permits designed to protect public health.”

The history of environmental threats from plastics, and particularly Formosa, was front and center in the resolution. Palmer said that when a spill from the CMA CGM Bianca cargo ship dumped 743 million plastic pellets known as nurdles into the Mississippi River near Napoleon Avenue over the summer, it was left to volunteers to clean up afterward.

Council member Cyndi Nguyen said her relatives in Vietnam were significantly affected when a Formosa steel plant there discharged toxic chemicals into the ocean in 2016, killing large numbers of fish and other marine life.

Threats to Louisiana seafood have been raised about the St. James plant, with several restaurant and hospitality groups focusing on the dangers that the plant could pose to the local industry.

“We cannot allow the promise of economic development to negatively affect the livelihood of our residents,” Nguyen said.