Residents of Cancer Alley have spent decades fighting lethal pollution. Now they're being ravaged by a new killer

Surrounded by petrochemical plants, Louisiana has some of the highest per capita death rates from Covid-19 in the US

A gas flare from the Shell Chemical LP petroleum refinery lights up the sky in Norco, Louisiana. (Getty Images)

An 80-mile corridor in Louisiana has among the highest risks of cancer in the US, with dozens of petrochemical plants stretching along the Mississippi River and into communities breathing in an aggressive list of pollutants.

To the residents who have tirelessly fought against the multi-billion dollar industries hovering on their skylines, lit up with flares burning off excess gasses and filling the air with smog, the seven-parish stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is known as Cancer Alley.

The coronavirus crisis has raised fears of increased risks of illness and death for thousands of people living in their shadow, many of whom are black and from lower-income families.

More than 200 of the state's deaths caused by the Covid-19 disease are within the largely rural parishes between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

The New Orleans metropolitan area, encompassing more than a million people in the city's neighbouring Jefferson and St Tammany parishes, has reported nearly 400 deaths.

St John the Baptist Parish, which has no morgue or hospital let alone a respirator, has recorded at least 48 coronavirus-linked deaths in a population of just 46,000 people, one of the highest per capita death tolls not just in the state but in the entire US.

Sharon Lavigne, wearing gloves and a face mask on the site of another planned petrochemical plant in St James Parish, called on elected officials to "put people before product and pollution" as the community braces for more death.

Seven of the top 10 US Census tracts with the highest cancer risks are in Louisiana, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Six are in St John the Baptist Parish, and another is in neighbouring St Charles Parish.

Taiwanese plastics manufacturer Formosa is the latest company to enter the area, with plans to build a multi-billion dollar complex in St James Parish, neighbouring St John the Baptist to the west.

The EPA estimates the facility could more than double the amount of pollutants in the area, making it one of the largest emitters of carcinogenic ethylene oxide.

"Black people are dying," said Ms Lavigne, the founder of community action group RISE St James. "We're already being polluted by 12 different industries and refineries. They want to build a $9.4 bn industry right across from where I'm standing. ... They don't care if we're already polluted. They want to pollute us even more."

Reeling from the economic fallout and toxic hangover from the BP oil disaster in 2010, along with the trauma and ongoing recovery from hurricanes Katrina and Rita and a decade of storms and flooding that followed, residents are wielding their collective power against international companies operating in areas where the median income is as low as $17,000.

Meanwhile, the EPA under Donald Trump's administration plans to relax its rules and halt enforcement efforts against polluters as the nation battles the coronavirus, while vulnerable communities like those in St John the Baptist and St James continue to push back against powerful industries as their funeral homes and neighbourhoods are overwhelmed during the pandemic.

"We don't need you and we don't want you in St James," Ms Lavigne said. "How can you build while we're suffering with coronavirus?"

When Louisiana first reported the demographics of its coronavirus-related deaths, officials found that black residents accounted for roughly 70 per cent of the state's deaths, though black residents make up only 30 per cent of the state's population.

"That deserves more attention," Governor John Bel Edwards said at a press briefing. "We'll have to dig into that and see what we can do to slow that trend down."

The racial disparities in the state's health — rooted in systemic racism and a historic lack of public health support for the state's poorest residents — are especially acute in the mostly black parishes in its industrial corridors.

Through the 20th century, companies built chemical plants outside densely populated urban areas along the Mississippi River corridor's then-recently built oil and gas shipping lanes, landing in majority black parishes that were largely invisible to the industries and the government that supported them as the state emerged as a crucial tool for Big Oil.

As offshore drilling brought the promise of lucrative jobs to coastal communities, residents living among refineries and factories believed better-paying jobs would be made available to them.

Over the decades, communities began organising against industrial giants after reports of significant health issues, from cancers to miscarriages, though companies and state health officials have disputed those findings.

Coronavirus patients in areas exposed to high levels of air pollution are more likely to die from Covid-19 infection than people who live in areas with cleaner air, according to a recent report from Harvard University.

The report offers the first major piece of evidence linking long-term exposure to pollution and death from the latest virus outbreak.

Harvard's TH Chan School of Public Health found that higher levels of microscopic toxins found in the air, known as particulate matter, were linked with higher death rates from Covid-19.

St John the Baptist has the highest risk of cancer from air pollution in the US, which residents point to chloroprene emissions from Denka Performance Elastomer's neoprene plant, according to a 2015 report from the EPA.

The risk of cancer in St John is nearly 50 times higher than in other parts of the US.

Its rate of coronavirus-related deaths has once again put the community under a national microscope, as it outpaces New York for the highest per capita death rate in the US.

"Disasters have a way for revealing the cracks," said Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a 20-year-old environmental health and justice watchdog.

The group has joined Concerned Citizens of St John and several other environmental organisations and community groups to pressure both the plants and the government to hold the industry accountable and protect the health of the generations to follow.

"With all we know about past disasters and injustice, that they would not only let that happen but actively work to do so, it's shocking," Ms Rolfes told The Independent. "If you don't have a government that's not only actively interested in helping people but also investigating cancer clusters and investigating particulate matter, this is only going to get much worse."

The senior leadership of a community group fighting the Denka plant is now in their eighties, seeing many of their friends and family get sick from Covid-19.

Robert Taylor, who founded Concerns Citizens of St John in 2016 following reports that the parish had been exposed to dangerous levels of chloroprene, lives within a mile of the plant that produces the chemical.

In 2015, DuPont sold its longtime plant in LaPlace to Denka, which produces neoprene by synthesising chloroprene, a synthetic rubber used for medical and military equipment, cell phone cases and other materials.

By then, the facility had emitted chloroprene in the parish for more than five decades.

The EPA released its 2011 National Air Toxics Assessment in 2015 showing that St John residents had higher risks of two types of cancer. In 2018, the plant finished installing equipment to lower its emissions, which Denka claims have been reduced by 85 per cent compared to levels from 2014. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality has disputed those claims.

In a statement to The Independent, Denka spokesperson Jim Harris said that the facility's operations "do not have any impact on health outcomes or Covid-19 sensitivity."

He said: "In this critical time, it is important to look to our state and federal health officials for guidance. Health data suggests pre-existing illnesses including diabetes, hypertension and obesity to be linked to Covid-19 impacts. [Denka's] operations are in no way related to these illnesses and health data show no negative health impacts resulting from [Denka's] operations."

But residents fear exposure to facilities in their own backyards puts them at greater risk of serious illness from the novel coronavirus outbreak.

"We are suffering at rates worse than anywhere else in the country," Mr Taylor said. "Our people have been compromised terribly ... As black people we are disproportionately suffering from the ravages of this coronavirus ... It's frightening. My heart is so heavy."

Outside the St John the Baptist government complex in LaPlace on 11 April, demonstrators in surgical masks and bandannas demanded officials "shut it down" before conditions get worse.

On 10 April, Governor Edwards announced a task force to "leverage research capabilities and intellectual brain power in a collective effort" to address health disparities in the state, but Louisiana residents on the frontlines of environmental racism have long known what's needed.

Without government intervention, unmitigated toxic exposure in vulnerable areas "looks like carnage and it looks like genocide," Ms Rolfes said. "I do not use that word lightly at all."

Mr Taylor said quarantine guidelines have forced many people to die alone, without the comfort of their families or "men of the cloth" at their side.

The government has "denied the right for a decent burial" and has denied residents "going about our business", he said, "but they do not deny this chemical plant to continue this onslaught."

"What is it going to take for people to stand up to this?" he said. "We need the support of the people. If the people stand with us, the government is going to have to listen."