EPA investment in Cancer Alley

Recently, EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced a $600,000 investment in air monitoring in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” an area with a heavy concentration of petroleum facilities. This is a big step in a direction that residents have been calling on for years — government action.

As I read this news, I thought back to when I was a young organizer with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. We worked with “fenceline” communities — those directly adjacent to industrial facilities. Residents would share binders filled with years’ worth of articles detailing refinery explosions and accidents or demonstrate how touching a residential surface would leave one’s finger covered in the black dust of petroleum coke.  

In the decade since, I’ve attempted to answer the question of why it is so hard for people to be involved in environmental decisions affecting their health. And so when I see news of such a significant investment, I can’t help but ask what the end result will be. What is the role of more data without strong accountability toward ensuring ongoing community involvement, especially of those who have been ignored for so long?

Fenceline communities are not only aware, but they live the consequences of the industrial era every day: The air doesn’t get cleaner as refineries self-report emissions and fly under the radar in our nation’s long reliance on, and reluctance to give up, petroleum and other fossil fuels. They’ve collected articles, tracked noxious smells, used an assortment of air monitors and partnered with researchers to document air quality. They’ve organized and continue to organize through it all.

This new EPA investment in monitoring infrastructure is a win for Cancer Alley residents, and environmental justice communities more broadly. It feels even more promising during a political moment when justice is being centered in a whole-of-government approach. But we will continue to do a disservice if we overlook what comes after the data is collected and observations have been made. 

Alongside the additional monitoring capacity and attention of regulators, EPA needs to ensure adequate places for feedback loops with communities in the process of accountability, and create mechanisms to begin repairing long-broken trust between communities and government. When people’s actual experiences have been denied, we must integrate processes from the outset that allow for participation in environmental governance. We need clear places of input for communities to not just understand, but use the information that will drive decisions, because we simply won’t find justice in the data alone.

Part of the announcement also cited Regan’s symbolic letter to DuPont and Denka, requesting them to consider community input and how they can repair the harm they have caused. Framed as a request, this does not yet go far enough in addressing industrial facilities that have long controlled the cards. These requests must be accompanied with stronger provisions (though Justice Department involvement is noted, there is no additional information available) — for instance, through the incorporation of models such as citizen advisory boards, or the required establishment of health centers to ensure there are ways for people to remediate conditions resulting from poor environmental quality. 

The EPA is admirably doubling down on air monitoring, conducting surprise inspections at facilities and addressing the cozy relationships between industry and enforcement. A great start but not quite enough. They also have to self-examine how politics and behaviors allowed for this malfeasance to occur in the first place. 

Shiny, metallic monitoring objects — and the data they collect — are not silver bullets of justice.

We must couple more data and tech with addressing the other shortfalls in agency inaction. The problematic reporting and monitoring workflows that have detracted from the mission of agencies like EPA need transformation. This must include actively identifying how residents, who have been calling foul on these facilities for decades, will play a critical role in ensuring EPA follow-through on justice for their communities.

I’m excited about a whole-of-government approach to justice, and specifically to environmental justice for communities who have doggedly worked toward it. That is why, while we engage the tools of data and tech, I implore us — data collectors, residents, EPA itself — to look more deeply and ensure that first, there is room for ongoing community involvement, second, that “requests” to facilities are given the backbone needed to ensure results, and finally, that EPA is willing to internally assess their own practices and behaviors. This is how we will truly see justice for communities who have so pointedly been required to work within these broken systems. 

Shannon Dosemagen is a Shuttleworth Foundation fellow directing the Open Environmental Data Project in New Orleans. Dosemagen was a member of the, now defunct, National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT) when it drafted reports to EPA in 2016 and 2018 on community monitoring.