(Louisiana Illuminator) — The city of St. Gabriel has zero major fast food chain restaurants, pharmacies or laundromats. But there are nearly a dozen chemical facilities within city limits and at least 30 within a 10 mile radius.
“We have bad smells here at night,” said Reginald Grace, 72, a retired counselor and lifelong resident. “Like a rotten egg, like chlorine.”
The air on a regular day in St. Gabriel is acrid — but many residents seem not to notice anymore. Grace has spent the last 10 years organizing residents against the growing chemical industry. The city is located in Louisiana’s infamous “Cancer Alley” — an 85-mile stretch of land between Baton Rouge and New Orleans home to over 200 industrial facilities along the Mississippi River, where the risk of cancer from industrial air pollution is the highest in the nation.
In the past few years, Grace said several of his neighbors have been diagnosed with or died of cancer. His wife of 41 years, Rhonda, had breast cancer, ovarian cancer and leukemia, which she died of in 2023, despite having no known family history of any of the three, Grace said. He added that he is in remission from prostate cancer.
St. Gabriel is home to the Syngenta agrochemical facility, which repackages a popular but highly toxic farming pesticide known as paraquat under the brand name Gramoxone before it is distributed to other states. The plant is owned by the Chinese company SinoChem Holdings Ltd.
A report released in October by Coming Clean, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network warned of the dangers of paraquat exposure. Banned in over 70 countries, it remains one of the most commonly used chemicals by farmers in the United States for weed management — with the largest point of entry in the last eight years being the Port of New Orleans, according to Jim Vallete, a contributing researcher to the report.
The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns that inhaling paraquat can cause lung damage. Some research shows that exposure to the chemical is associated with Parkinson’s disease, including a 2020 Louisiana State University study that concluded there was a greater risk of the disease in areas where pesticides, including paraquat, were used. There is currently litigation in Illinois federal court involving over 5,000 people suing Syngenta for alleged development of Parkinson’s from exposure to paraquat.
An Environmental Protection Agency memo from 2017 noted that the chemical is so toxic that “one sip can kill.” The same memo said even minimal contact can cause serious injury to the eyes and skin.
The paraquat report includes several statements from farm workers across the country who have allegedly suffered harmful health impacts from exposure to the pesticide. Paraquat has also been linked to cancer and childhood leukemia, the report finds. From production to distribution to application, the report concludes that factory workers, port workers and farm laborers are all at risk of unsafe exposure.
Syngenta declined Verite News’ request to comment on its factory’s health and environmental safety regulations as well as the use of paraquat in Louisiana farming. The facility’s parent company’s home country, China, banned the domestic use of paraquat in 2016.
Human Rights Watch reported last year that Cancer Alley residents commonly suffer from respiratory issues, including asthma, chronic coughs and sinus infections. Migraines, miscarriages and dementia are also common complaints among St. Gabriel residents, according to Grace.
He added that he and other local activists — many of whom said they appreciate the close-knit community, childhood memories and laidback feel of the town — are not asking for all of the plants to close down. They just want stricter monitoring of the impact on the environment.
“I’m not advocating cutting the plants out,” Grace said. “I know they’ve invested a lot of money into it, but what are you going to do, put money over safety?”
St. Gabriel incorporated as a city in 1994 partially to have more of a say against the growing chemical industry. The population decreased from a peak of 7,500 in 2020 but is once again growing as of 2022 according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Grace said the area has become popular with retirees from Baton Rouge looking for peace and quiet. Today, the population of roughly 6,800 must travel to the neighboring cities of Baton Rouge or Gonzales for jobs and many basic necessities such as medical care and fresh groceries.
“There’s nothing in this community. It’s a city, but there are no amenities,” Grace said. “People who grew up here, the children, don’t stay.”
Following the publication of the paraquat report last month, Verite News reporters visited St. Gabriel and the surrounding area to speak with residents about their ongoing efforts to minimize the harmful effects of living in an industrial hotspot.
Leroy Conish, 69, owns and operates a farm in Vacherie, downriver from St. Gabriel in St. James Parish. He’s aware that his farm is located in Cancer Alley and said he’s never used a product containing paraquat and aims to gradually eliminate the use of synthetic chemicals on his fields.
“We don’t really need to have the amount of chemicals that we use, because we can go back to farming the way our grandfathers and great-grandfathers used to farm,” Conish said.
Of the 10 acres Conish currently farms, roughly one acre contains no chemicals at all. Conish said once he learns how to make his model cost-effective, he wants to help bring about a farming revolution that helps low-income families in the area learn to sustain themselves in a healthy way.
Conish grows plenty of okra, which he said has antioxidants that he believes fight cancer — especially important “being in an environment that is filled with cancer emissions coming from every direction,” he said. Medical research has yet to conclusively prove that antioxidants do prevent cancer.
Many of Cancer Alley’s chemical plants are located in or near poor and mostly Black neighborhoods. As a Black farmer, Conish added that he believes chemical plants in the area take advantage of the region’s poverty. He wants to see greater regulation of the plants.
“Chronic poverty is a vestige of slavery,” he said. “Without chronic poverty, they wouldn’t have the opportunity to take advantage of poor people and promise them jobs, and I use the word ‘promise’ loosely.”
In a statement to Verite News, David Cresson, president and CEO of the Louisiana Chemical Association, called paraquat “a vital chemical to our farmers.”
“Farmers around the world have moved to adopt no-till farming, but this is only possible because herbicides like paraquat are used to control weeds while keeping soil undisturbed,” Cresson wrote. “It remains a widely utilized herbicide due to its fast-acting control of resistant weeds, compatibility with conservation tillage, and lack of residual soil activity.”
Herbicides are a type of pesticide that target weeds and unwanted vegetation.
Cresson added that U.S. regulatory agencies have reviewed scientific studies on the links between paraquat use and Parkinson’s disease and have not found a causal relationship. He did not address why 70 countries have banned the pesticide for health and safety reasons.
Jan Drinkwater, 77, moved to East Iberville, just outside of St. Gabriel, more than 40 years ago. A breast cancer survivor, she said she was not informed of the air pollution in the area beforehand and wishes the agrochemical industry was better regulated.
“We have terrible odors from time to time,” she said. “This is current and frequent. … Why can’t they put that on the news?”
Drinkwater said as a resident, she should be made aware of what she is breathing. She added that despite the health risks, she still enjoys many enrichment activities at the St. Gabriel senior center and does not mind the lack of businesses in the city.
“I didn’t really move here for restaurants,” she said. “I wish it could remain rural … I would never want to go anywhere else.”
Melvin Craige, 75, has known Grace since childhood. Previously the director of St. Gabriel’s community center, Craige said he’s seen how the chemical industry contributes to the community by making investments such as refurbishing the community center’s weight room.
“When I was a director, they did all of the equipment and everything in the community center. They did a heck of a lot of programming,” he said.
But Craige said he is also aware of scientific research pointing to links between the industry and medical problems facing residents.
“We just buried one of my cousins here Saturday who died of cancer,” he said.
Craige said he would like to see the community and the industry cooperate even more to monitor emissions to ensure better health conditions for the people of St. Gabriel.
One forum that the community and the industrial sector use to communicate on employment opportunities, safety and environmental concerns and industry expansion is the local community advisory panel. The East Iberville Community Advisory Panel has existed since at least the 1990s, and it currently meets every other month on Syngenta property, according to advisory panel members who spoke with Verite News.
Alex Robertson, 56, who has lived in St. Gabriel since his childhood, has been attending the panel’s meetings for about a year.
“We always sit back and complain, and we say what somebody is not doing, but the question is, ‘What are you doing?’” Robertson asked.
Robertson said he worked at the Koura plant in St. Gabriel for 30 years. Now retired, he remains a youth pastor at the Iberville Christian Center. He said his professional success is a testament to the industry providing well-paying jobs. He also said chemicals produced in the city contribute to everyday products Americans use to make their lives better.
But a recent Tulane University study showed Black Louisiana residents live in areas most affected by industrial pollution, yet make up the smallest portion of the industry’s workforce. Iberville Parish, where St. Gabriel is located, was shown to be home to the third largest share of the highest-paying manufacturing jobs in the state — but people of color were underrepresented among these positions.
Robertson joins the advisory panel’s meetings as a volunteer and liaises with the St. Gabriel City Council at public meetings on matters pertaining to the industry. He said he believes in the importance of the industry being a “good steward” to the community, by providing more high-paying jobs to local residents and offering educational opportunities — such as having plant engineers tutor kids at the local schools.
Good stewards should also not pollute the city, he said, and if they do, they should be upfront about it with the community.
In addition to helping lead Citizens for a Better St. Gabriel, a local advocacy group, Grace sits on the board of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), an environmental not-for-profit.
Grace said one of his biggest wins against the chemical industry was in 2017, when he and Citizens for a Better St. Gabriel members successfully fought against Adsorbent Solutions, a local carbon reactivation plant that had sought to expand its operations.
“We told the council, if y’all do this, you’re killing your own people,” Grace said.
The St. Gabriel city council voted unanimously against the proposed expansion in April 2017. Adsorbent Solutions closed down its facility shortly after the vote.
Marylee Orr, founder and executive director of LEAN, has worked with St. Gabriel residents to advocate for cleaner air since the 1980s. In 2023, LEAN installed air quality monitors along the Mississippi River, but was unable to do so in St. Gabriel.
“We tried, we waited, we went through all the right authorities,” she said. “But the experience with St. Gabriel was that the public entities did not want the stationary monitor on their property.”
Orr said LEAN plans to expand the air monitoring project and has not given up on installing sensors in St. Gabriel.
Lionel Johnson has been St. Gabriel’s mayor since 2011. Despite multiple requests, he did not schedule an interview to talk about public health, the economy and the proliferation of chemical facilities.
“He’s a coward,” Grace said. “He doesn’t mix well with people, but he’s highly educated, and he talks at people instead of talking to them.”
Grace’s son Kyle ran against Johnson in the last mayoral election in 2023, losing by only a slim margin. Kyle Grace’s platform centered on bringing more businesses to St. Gabriel, while Johnson focused on expanding city services.
Reginald Grace said he finds that much of the city has become “complacent” to the harmful health effects of the chemical industry.
“A lot of people are not educated to the fact that they can demand more,” he said. “They’re just trying to live from day to day.”
Grace said despite the health risks, he has remained in St. Gabriel all these years because of his family’s ties to the area and the difficulties of starting over somewhere new.
“I hope I live a few more good years,” he said. “Whatever damage has been done, it’s been done.”
Although the chemical industry has only grown in St. Gabriel, Grace said he urges the younger generation not to pack up and leave or cease their advocacy efforts.
“We’re trying to help the young people understand they have to get involved, they have to be educated and they have to work toward self-improvement,” he said. “The fight is not over with.”
This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
