Louisiana’s Cancer Alley: the black towns inside America’s most polluted corridor

Black Communities Pay the Price

Between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, an 85-mile corridor of petrochemical plants has earned a grim nickname: Cancer Alley.

More than 200 facilities line the Mississippi River here, processing about 25% of all petrochemical products made in the United States.

The communities wedged between these smokestacks and tank farms are predominantly Black and low-income, many descended from the enslaved people who once worked sugar plantations on this same land.

And the health data tells a devastating story.

700 Times the National Average

In some neighborhoods near the Denka plant in Reserve, Louisiana, residents face cancer risks from air pollution that are 700 times higher than the national average. The EPA has documented these numbers for years.

Reserve sits in St. John the Baptist Parish, where the air carries chloroprene, benzene, ethylene oxide, and dozens of other toxic chemicals.

Residents describe rotten egg smells at night, acrid air that burns their throats, and funeral after funeral in their tight-knit communities.

200 Industrial Plants in 85 Miles

The industrial corridor stretches from the outskirts of New Orleans to the edge of Baton Rouge, following the curves of the Mississippi River.

Refineries, chemical plants, and plastics manufacturers cluster along the banks, drawn by easy access to shipping and water.

Companies like Shell, ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, and Denka operate here.

The region accounts for a quarter of all U.S. petrochemical production, making it one of the largest concentrations of such facilities in the Western Hemisphere.

The Denka Plant Situation

In Reserve, the Denka Performance Elastomer plant produces neoprene, the synthetic rubber used in wetsuits, laptop sleeves, and automotive parts.

The facility emits 99% of all chloroprene pollution in the United States. The EPA classifies chloroprene as a likely human carcinogen.

Air monitoring near the plant has recorded chloroprene levels up to 15 times higher than the agency considers safe for long-term exposure.

Denka says it has reduced emissions by 85% since 2014, but monitors still show readings well above EPA thresholds.

Fifth Ward Elementary Closes

For years, Fifth Ward Elementary School sat just 450 feet from the Denka plant.

The student body was predominantly Black, with children as young as four attending classes in a census tract with the highest cancer risk from air pollution in the country.

In November 2024, the St.John the Baptist Parish school board voted to shut down the school and relocate its 300 students.

The EPA had recommended the closure two years earlier, warning that children face heightened vulnerability to chloroprene exposure.

Black Districts Get the Plants

The pattern in St. James Parish tells the story clearly.

Since 1958, at least 20 of 24 petrochemical plants have been built in the 4th and 5th Districts, both majority-Black areas.

No new industrial facility has been permitted in the predominantly white parts of the parish in over 46 years.

A 2014 land use plan officially zoned the Black districts as future industrial areas. Many residents say they were never informed of the change that would shape their futures.

Graves Under the Factory Site

In 2018, archaeologists discovered unmarked graves on land that Formosa Plastics had purchased for a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex in St.James Parish.

The site was once Buena Vista Plantation, and researchers believe enslaved people are buried there. Historical records show that plantation owners even mortgaged the bodies of deceased enslaved people as assets.

Residents fought in court just to visit the gravesite on Juneteenth 2020. A new lawsuit filed in 2025 argues that Formosa’s control over the cemetery violates the 13th Amendment.

Sharon Lavigne Fights Back

Sharon Lavigne was a special education teacher for nearly 40 years before she became an environmental justice activist.

In 2018, when she learned that Formosa Plastics planned to build a massive complex two miles from her home in St. James Parish, she founded RISE St.James.

Her group helped block a $1.25 billion plastics plant and has delayed the Formosa project through legal challenges.

In 2021, Lavigne won the Goldman Environmental Prize, often called the green Nobel Prize, for her work protecting her community.

Appeals Court Victory in 2025

In April 2025, residents won a major legal breakthrough.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals revived a discrimination lawsuit filed by RISE St.James, Inclusive Louisiana, and Mount Triumph Baptist Church against St. James Parish.

The lawsuit alleges decades of environmental racism in zoning decisions that steered polluting industries into Black neighborhoods.

A lower court had dismissed the case, but the appeals court reversed that decision. In October 2025, the Supreme Court declined to hear the parish’s appeal, clearing the way for the case to proceed.

Trump Drops the Denka Case

In March 2025, the Trump administration voluntarily dropped a federal lawsuit against Denka that the Biden administration had filed two years earlier.

The original lawsuit alleged that the plant posed an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health.

The Department of Justice linked the dismissal to ending federal DEI initiatives, including environmental justice programs. Community leaders called it a betrayal.

Robert Taylor, an 84-year-old Reserve resident who has lost multiple family members to cancer, said the decision showed the administration does not care about Black residents in Cancer Alley.

Toxic Tours Through the Corridor

Environmental justice groups now offer what they call toxic tours through Cancer Alley. These are not bus rides for curious outsiders to gawk at poverty.

They are community-led efforts to document conditions and raise awareness about what residents breathe every day.

Visitors see the smokestacks, smell the chemical odors, and hear stories from families who have buried loved ones.

Former Vice President Al Gore visited in 2025 and helped launch a new pollution tracking tool that visualizes how particulate matter spreads from facilities into nearby homes.

The Fight Moves to Court

With the discrimination lawsuit now moving forward in federal court, Cancer Alley residents are seeking a moratorium on new petrochemical plants in majority-Black districts.

The case could set a precedent for environmental justice communities across the country. Gail LeBoeuf, a co-founder of Inclusive Louisiana, has lived in St.James Parish her whole life. Her grandmother is buried on land now owned by Shell.

She has watched the pecans dry up, the fig trees stop producing, and her neighbors get sick. The lawsuit, she says, is about finishing a fight that started long before she was born.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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