Contact: [email protected]
St. James Parish Council broke own rules to okay expansion into protected wetlands, court finds in Louisiana environmental justice case
May 15, 2025, Gretna, LA – Yesterday, a five-judge panel of the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal ruled 3-2 that St. James Parish violated its own rules when it approved a planned expansion of Koch Methanol in the majority-Black 5th District. The expansion was challenged by parish resident Beverly Alexander, Mount Triumph Baptist Church, and the grassroots organizations Inclusive Louisiana and RISE St. James.
Located in the heart of the area known as Cancer Alley, the 5th District is home to a particularly heavy concentration of petrochemical plants due to the decades-old pattern of steering hazardous industry into majority-Black areas. In a separate case, Mount Triumph, Inclusive, and RISE have brought a federal lawsuit against the parish seeking a moratorium on new petrochemical facilities in the 4th and 5th Districts on grounds that its discriminatory land use practices violate the constitutional rights of residents. The parish granted the Koch request to allow expansion of the methanol plant shortly after the filing of the federal lawsuit.
“We are thankful and grateful that the judges saw that the St James Parish government makes up laws that are contradictory,” said Gail LeBoeuf, co-founder of Inclusive Louisiana. “We the people prevail, proving some laws and decisions are meant to be contested.”
“We are ever grateful that the judges ruled that the Parish government did not follow their own laws,” said Barbara Washington, Inclusive co-founder. “This is a big win for us all. We can't give up in our fight for justice! We continue to persevere! With God all things are possible!”
The original owner of the methanol facility was Yuhuang Chemical Industries (YCI). In 2015, the St. James Parish Planning Commission approved its application to place it directly on top of the local high school, where RISE founder Sharon Lavigne was teaching at the time. The approval violated the parish’s land use plan because the property was in an area designated for residential growth and because it was within two miles of – in fact, on top of – a school.
“I would like to thank God first and thank the judges for listening to us,” said Pastor Harry Joseph of Mount Triumph Baptist Church. “The Parish needs to give the people what they deserve – clear air and water.”
After buying the school and demolishing the building to make room for the methanol plant, YCI sold it to Koch Methanol, a subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate owned by Charles Koch, famed billionaire backer of right-wing causes. The proposed expansion includes a pipeline that would run through protected wetlands, which are not designated for industrial use.
“St. James Parish’s land use decisions have overburdened majority-Black districts for decades, landing the Fifth District in the 95th to 100th percentile nationwide for cancer risk from exposure to toxic air,” said Astha Sharma Pokharel, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the plaintiffs along with the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. “The message from the court is clear: the Parish cannot violate its own rules to approve requests by companies who want to build even more industrial projects here. Especially here, when this company has a track record of violating limits on harmful emissions.”
Expansion of the methanol plant would increase the threat it poses to the health of residents, who already face a high risk of cancer and other illnesses from all the petrochemical plants in the 5th District. The Parish failed to consider the significant increase in harmful pollutants that the expansion would involve, though its own rules require it to do so. According to the Center for Disease Control, repeated exposure to methanol vapor “may cause birth defects of the central nervous system” and “inflammation of the eye (conjunctivitis), recurrent headaches, giddiness, insomnia, stomach disturbances, and visual failure.”
For more, see the Center for Constitutional Rights case page.
For further information, visit the groups’ websites:
The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. Since 1966, the Center for Constitutional Rights has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism, gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach. Learn more at ccrjustice.org.