'Environmental injustice in St. John the Baptist Parish has created a public health emergency,' said an Earthjustice attorney representing two local groups that filed a civil rights complaint against a pair of Louisiana state agencies.
"Louisiana has failed to protect fenceline communities, including St. John residents, from the harms of highly polluting facilities," said one local advocate.A pair of local advocacy groups in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, submitted a civil rights
to the U.S. EPA on Thursday, accusing two state agencies of failing to protect residents of the low-income and predominantly Black jurisdiction from toxic air.According to the complaint—filed by Earthjustice and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on behalf of Concerned Citizens of St.
LDEQ and LDH have violated that prohibition, the complaint says, because their regulatory failures have subjected residents of St. John the Baptist Parish, a majority Black parish, to disproportionate air pollution and related harms. "Environmental injustice in St. John the Baptist Parish has created a public health emergency," Earthjustice attorney Deena Tumehin a statement."This predominantly Black community suffers disproportionate exposure to toxic air pollution and, as a result, the highest cancer risk from air pollution in the nation. EPA must protect the civil rights of St. John's Black residents and ensure that federal funds are not used to discriminate on the basis of race.
"It is unacceptable that we've been ignored for so long," said Hampton,"and so now we're asking the EPA to step in to protect our civil rights, including to have equal protection from environmental harm, and to ensure that our right to breathe clean air is finally enforced."—an 85-mile corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that has long been dominated by the petrochemical industry—St.
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