The Sunshine Project is a 14-facility chemical manufacturing complex proposed for construction in St. James Parish, Louisiana, USA. It presents a textbook case of environmental racism. The Sunshine Project would be built on a 2,500 acre site that is mostly sugar cane fields located directly adjacent to a residential area and one mile from an elementary school that serves an almost entirely Black student population.  People in our
community are already dying at a rate 50 times higher than the national average, in large part due to pollution.

The proposed project would make this situation far worse, doubling toxic emissions in St. James Parish and across “Cancer Alley”, an 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.   Black neighborhoods such as our own.

In 2020, Rise St. James and a number of other organizations filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to suspend its permit for Formosa Plastics’ proposed plant. The permit was suspended in November of that year, and in August 2021 USACE announced that it will now require a full Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed
Sunshine Project, with a mandate to “thoroughly review” its environmental justice implications. This is an important chance to challenge a project that would damage our wetlands, harm the climate, and have severe health impacts, as well as highlighting failures to properly evaluate and protect the burial sites of enslaved people discovered on the
property.

We are now requesting Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards to stand with the residents, their health, clean air, clean water, productive soil, and living in reciprocity with the nonhuman environment.