In the heart of the US Gulf Coast chemicals belt, southern Louisiana is known colloquially as Cancer Alley for its above-proportion incidence of the disease. On taking office as EPA administrator in 20201, Michael Regan made it his goal to investigate the reasons for the region’s poor public health record.

In presenting his plans in autumn 2022, the administrator said he was “delivering on President Biden’s commitment to elevate these critical issues to the highest levels of the government.”

But in signaling the end of the campaign in a court filing this week, the agency and the Justice Department sought to suggest that its efforts to protect vulnerable communities — by ordering emissions cuts and improvements to waste treatment — had been successful,

Among other things, the EPA probe planned to look at the role played by Louisiana’s Department of Health and Department of Environmental Quality, which Regan believed was dragging its feet on regulating the coastal chemical production complexes owned mostly by Asian chemical giants receiving state investment aid.

The EPA investigation was also focused on whether the state had failed to offer proper assistance to Black residents on how to reduce exposure to pollution, among other things from a facility in LaPlace, Louisiana, owned by Japanese neoprene producer Denka Performance Elastomer,a joint venture between Japanese giants Denka and Mitsui.

Last autumn, the EPA ordered Denka to “significantly reduce” chloroprene emissions at the facility that makes feedstock for the rubber portfolio, but was seen to be unhappy by the lack of support from the state.

In February this year. A lawsuit against Denka by local citizens blaming the company for toxic emissions, was dismissed by a federal district court judge in New Orleans.

The US environment watchdog also was reviewing the state’s permitting practices for chemical plants in St. John the Baptist and St. James parishes, including a controversial $9.4 billion complex proposed by Formosa Plastics, which has never gotten off the ground due to consistently disputes over antipollution standards rules as well as unclear financing.

More than Formosa, Louisiana officials put up strong defenses against federal government “interference” in the Gulf’s industrial infrastructure.  State attorney general Jeff Landry, a Republican candidate for governor, recently filed a federal lawsuit claiming the EPA does not have the power to regulate state actions under the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, as Regan had maintained.

For at least six years, the EPA’s jurisdiction has been repeatedly challenged nationwide by state authorities appealing to the US Supreme Court. Its regulatory efforts have been stymied on a local level in particular by judges appointed by former president Donald Trump, whose administration enjoyed some success in diminishing the EPA’s footprint.

Over the past year, the highest US court has ruled against the agency’s authority to protect wetlands and enforce emissions standards, and because of the widespread opposition in the conservative Gulf states, commentators on the EPA’s about-face said it looked as if the federal government did not hold the best cards in Louisiana.

Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist