Cancer Alley

The Struggle Against Industrial Expansion In Cancer Alley

September 10, 2026 Kennith RaShaun Woods II, Inequality.org. Strategize! Cancer Alley, health, Legal System, Louisiana, pollution

Residents of Cancer Alley are deeply familiar with disease and death. Many of them, especially the region’s Black communities, have witnessed their loved ones suffer from asthma, diabetes and cancer. They have watched them die. Sprawling chemical plants spewing waste into the air sit just down the street. The smell of toxins never quite goes away. This region is the 85-mile corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. This stretch of southern Louisiana contains nine parishes that sit along the Mississippi River. There are around 200 gas and chemical plants in Cancer Alley, and most of these plants were built on or near former plantations.

Louisiana Weakened Community Air Monitoring As Industry Pushed Back

July 27, 2026 Ruth Milka, NationofChange. Educate! Cancer Alley, Corporatism, Fossil Fuels, health, Louisiana, pollution

In Louisiana’s petrochemical belt, some of the people most exposed to toxic air have the least information about what they are breathing. A new investigation by the nonprofit newsroom Floodlight, produced in partnership with The Guardian and with contributions from the Louisiana Illuminator, finds that the state’s public air monitors are frequently located miles from major industrial polluters and fail to test for some of the most dangerous chemicals released along the corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. That stretch of roughly 85 miles, widely known as “Cancer Alley,” is home to dozens of refineries and chemical plants and to many predominantly Black communities.

Big Oil Knew It Was Wrecking Louisiana’s Coast

March 17, 2026 Emily Sanders, DeSmog. Educate! Big Oil, Cancer Alley, Fossil Fuels, health, Louisiana

Scott Eustis is doing what he can to keep Louisiana afloat. As a veteran wetland and fisheries researcher and lifelong resident, he says he is sure of what caused the damage to the state’s delicate marshlands and drowning coast: the oil drilling that employed his grandfather decades prior. “My granddad worked for these companies,” said Eustis. “If he were still alive, he would tell you, straight up: They owe us the land.” For a century, oil companies dredged canals through coastal wetlands, dissecting marshes to get to and from wells, and dumped toxic wastewater into marshes and unlined earthen pits. Those wells, canals, pits, and leftover pollution were largely abandoned.

Civil Rights Case Probes Racism Behind Cancer Alley Pollution

March 16, 2026 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. Resist! Cancer Alley, Environmental racism, Fossil Fuels, Legal System

A major environmental justice case tying slavery’s legacy to Cancer Alley reached a new phase after a judge rejected defendants’ motion to dismiss last month. The lawsuit centers on claims that St. James Parish in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, where many industrial sites are located on former plantations where people were enslaved, violated the U.S. Constitution by pushing polluting industry into Black communities. “In their complaint, Plaintiffs tell the story of how plantations gave way to industrial facilities that now endanger black residents’ health, negatively impact their quality of life, and desecrate the unmarked cemeteries of their ancestors,” District Judge Carl Barbier wrote.

The Need For Climate And Environmental Internationalism

January 16, 2026 Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! Cancer Alley, climate crisis, Environment, Global South, International Solidarity, People's Centered Human Rights

References to the so-called Global South too often primarily connotes the idea of Latin American and Caribbean nations to the geographic south of the United States, as well as African Union nations and a select few in the Middle East, including the Republic of Yemen. While this notion is a factual articulation of the “Global South” parlance, it also carries an Anglo-centric lens that doesn’t consider the fact that the “Global South” is both a preposition and a position in the larger social order of racial capitalism. The Global South is a position in the sense that there are myriad examples that vindicate the assertion of author and scholar Robert L. Allen that Black America is a semi-colony or what he refers to as domestic colonialism.

A History Of Success Drives The Ongoing Struggle To Clean Up Cancer Alley

December 17, 2024 Sue Inches, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! Cancer Alley, Environment, Fossil Fuels, health, Louisiana

Two days after the election, I left on a research trip to Mississippi and Louisiana. I joined four others from my church in Yarmouth, Maine. Our purpose was to witness and learn about the struggle for civil and environmental rights in a region known as “Cancer Alley.” This 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi — between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — is home to 150 petrochemical plants, all along the river. It is also home to many working-class people, a majority of them Black. The first thing you notice are the huge refineries. Tall smokestacks spew toxic chemicals and methane flares light up the sky. The scale of industrialization is hard to imagine — there are miles and miles of factories and chemical plants.

Black Residents In Cancer Alley Try A Last Legal Defense Against Pollution

October 16, 2024 Lylla Younes, Next City. Resist! Black America, Cancer Alley, Environmental Justice, Louisiana, pollution, Public Health, zoning

On the banks of the lower Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana, on sprawling tracts of land that break up the vast wetlands, hulking petrochemical complexes light the sky day and night. They piled up over the past half century, built by fossil fuel giants like Nucor and Occidental. In that time, they replaced farmland with concrete and steel, and threaded the levees with pipelines that carry natural gas from as far away as West Texas. When the plants came, the lush landscape of this part of south Louisiana deteriorated. “The pecans are dry. They don’t yield like they used to,” said Gail Lebouf, a longtime resident of the region.

The Air In Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ Is Even Worse Than Expected

June 22, 2024 Naveena Sadasivam, DeSmog. Educate! Cancer, Cancer Alley, EPA, Health Care, Human Rights, Louisiana, pollution

Since the 1980s, the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that connects New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been known as “Cancer Alley.” The name stems from the fact that the area’s residents have a 95 percent greater chance of developing cancer than the average American. A big reason for this is the concentration of industrial facilities along the corridor — particularly petrochemical manufacturing plants, many of which emit ethylene oxide, an extremely potent toxin that is considered a carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency and has been linked to breast and lung cancers.

EPA’s New Rule Aims To Cut Toxic Emissions

April 15, 2024 Julie Dermansky, DeSmog. Resist! Air Pollution, Cancer Alley, Environment, EPA

Leaders in the fight for clean air from Louisiana’s Cancer Alley joined the Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator Michael Regan on April 9 in Washington, D.C., for the announcement of a new rule governing air toxics-spewing chemical plants. The rule is intended to prevent cancer in surrounding low-income and minority communities. The announcement represents a milestone for environmental justice in communities historically overburdened by air-toxics pollution. But a growing number of proposed industrial projects threaten to further pollute the mostly low-income Black neighborhoods along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Fighting Industrial Development In Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’

July 18, 2023 Daja E. Henry, In These Times. Resist! Black America, Cancer Alley, Environmental Justice, History, Louisiana

Wallace, Louisiana - There are only a handful of homes situated on Alexis Court, but there are a whole lot of memories. At one end of the short street, facing the Mississippi River, is Fee-Fo-Lay Café, run by twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner. The Fifolet, according to local lore, is a spirit that haunts the swamps and guards the treasures of pirate Jean Lafitte. Growing up, the Banner sisters heard a variation of the myth from their grandmother, and the café bears its name as an homage to their grandparents’ stories. Inside, the walls hold the stories and pictures of at least four generations. Many of their family members live around Fee-Fo-Lay — the family has been in the town of Wallace since its beginnings.

LDEQ Draft Permit Rattles Neighbors Of Hazardous Waste Disposal Site

March 29, 2023 Frances Madeson, The Real News Network. Educate! Cancer Alley, Environment, Incineration, Louisiana, Waste

Sliska Larry read the proposed operating permit for the expanded Clean Harbors hazardous waste disposal site, less than 2 miles from her home, with her 9-year-old grandson at her side. She instinctively pulled him closer, as if to shield him, as she absorbed its details. “It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Larry said. The preliminary draft permit, which the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality issued last week, allows Clean Harbors to continue the open burning and open detonation of materials for at least another eight months. The facility disposes of outdated munitions from several military bases, including the shuttered National Guard training site at Camp Minden, and old fireworks from Disney World.

Black Residents Of Cancer Alley Sue Local Government

March 22, 2023 Sara Sneath, DeSmog. Resist! Cancer Alley, Environmental Justice, Legal System, Louisiana

A discrimination lawsuit filed Tuesday in the Eastern District of Louisiana alleges that the St. James Parish Council steered polluting facilities into Black neighborhoods along the Mississippi River. As a result, Black residents there are forced to breathe in more pollution and face a higher risk of related health problems, according to the suit filed by Inclusive Louisiana, Mount Triumph Baptist Church, and RISE St. James. “We’re being ignored and we have to do whatever we have to do to stop it,” said Myrtle Felton, a lifelong resident of St. James Parish and co-founder of Inclusive Louisiana, a community group focused on environmental injustices.

Cancer Alley Activists Hold DC Funeral March; ‘Declare Climate Emergency’

October 26, 2022 Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. Resist! Cancer Alley, climate crisis, Environment, Joe Biden, Louisiana

Cancer Alley, Louisiana - Environmental justice activists from "Cancer Alley" on Monday held a funeral procession in Washington, D.C. to remember victims—overwhelmingly Black people—killed by petrochemical industry pollution and to demand that U.S. President Joe Biden declare a climate emergency and do more to stop deadly fossil fuel projects. Activists led by the frontline action group RISE St. James held a second-line march—the procession, replete with brass band musicians and parasol-toting dancers, that rallies behind relatives of the deceased in a traditional New Orleans funeral—to the White House, where they held large photos of dead cancer victims and pleaded with Biden to take action to protect their lives and their environment.

Louisiana Court Strikes Blow To Formosa’s Giant Plastics Plant

September 18, 2022 Lylla Younes, Grist. Resist! Cancer Alley, Louisiana, Plastics, Victory

Louisiana - A years-long battle to stop the chemical company Formosa from building a massive petrochemical complex along the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana swung in favor of residents on Wednesday when a state district judge withdrew the air permits that the company needs to operate. The Taiwan-based chemical giant first announced its plans to build the $9.4 billion petrochemical complex on a sprawling 2,400-acre site in St. James Parish in April 2018. If approved, the so-called “Sunshine Project” would have been one of the largest and most expensive industrial projects in the state’s history. Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, celebrated it as a boon for economic development that would bring 1,200 new jobs to the region. But the project encountered swift opposition from the local community.

Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ Residents In Clean Air Fight

July 7, 2022 Seiji Yamashita, ABC. Resist! Air Pollution, Cancer Alley, Environment, Louisiana

Louisiana - Along a winding stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the sugar cane fields that have surrounded small neighborhoods for generations have been gradually replaced by smokestacks and chemical flares. Residents have protested the industrial plants for years, saying the facilities affect their health. Now, several companies and the State of Louisiana are proposing new industrial facilities that they say will be carbon neutral through a process called carbon capture. But after years of industrialization, many local residents and environmental activists are skeptical of the proposals.

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