Shuttered EPA investigation could’ve brought ‘meaningful reform’ in Cancer Alley, documents show

By HALLE PARKER, WWNO, New Orleans Public Radio

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Environmental advocates and residents of the Louisiana chemical corridor known as Cancer Alley have spent decades calling for change in the way industrial activity is regulated there. They were heartened last year by the early findings of an Environmental Protection Agency investigation into Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality. EPA was examining whether permits had been granted for companies to build and pollute in a way that disproportionately hurts Black communities — and the EPA found signs that it had. The EPA and the Louisiana environmental agency spent months negotiating an agreement that would have fundamentally changed the state’s air pollution permitting program. New reporting by New Orleans Public Radio details how those talks fell apart without an agreement.