A community air monitor for a is expected to be operational in the days ahead after local activists raised concerns over what they said was a delay in installing it.
The monitor is meant to keep track of certain pollutants in part of what activists label 鈥淐ancer Alley,鈥 the area along the Mississippi River between 香港六和开奖历史记录 and New Orleans that is home to a high concentration of petrochemical plants.
The trailer-sized mobile monitor for the parish鈥檚 5th District was made possible through a federal grant awarded in 2022, but was only installed in recent weeks, activists say. It is not yet operational, but the state Department of Environmental Quality says it is aiming to have it running by the end of the month.
It is currently calibrating the equipment and plans to hold an 鈥渙pen house鈥 to explain to residents how to access the data and other details, it says. The data will be available on the DEQ鈥檚 webpage, said spokesperson Chance Townsend.
Community activists from RISE St. James have expressed concerns, pointing to what it says was an initial timeline that aimed to have the monitor operational in November 2023. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which provided the grant, says it does not have concerns at this point.
The DEQ is 鈥渇ollowing the workplan they submitted, so EPA has no concerns at this time. The monitoring occurring in these projects is not monitoring that EPA directed the grantees to conduct,鈥 EPA spokesperson Joe Robledo said.
The DEQ did not respond to additional questions on the timeframe.
The monitor, installed in a resident鈥檚 yard, will check for a range of pollutants, though RISE says they will not include chloroprene and ethylene oxide, two chemicals linked to cancer that are particular concerns in the wider region. A Formosa plastics facility proposed for the area would produce ethylene oxide, while the Denka plant downriver in St. John the Baptist Parish produces chloroprene. A recently approved has tightened restrictions on those two pollutants with the aim of reducing cancer risks.
The grant amounting to more than $900,000 announced in November 2022 paid for the St. James monitor and another in the Alexandria-Pineville area, designed to check for pollutants related to two wood-treating facilities. The DEQ has not responded to a question on the status of the Alexandria-Pineville monitor.
St. James activists have also been concerned over what they described as a lack of communications from the DEQ on the monitor.
鈥淎lthough RISE St. James Louisiana is listed as a 鈥榩roposed project partner鈥 on this grant, and this monitor is placed in the yard of a RISE member, LDEQ has not communicated with us once about the community鈥檚 needs, questions and ideas for the project,鈥 Caitlion Hunter, RISE鈥檚 research and policy coordinator, said in a statement. 鈥淲ere we just name-dropped to give a false sense of community involvement?鈥
