Louisianans are recognized for braving natural disasters and persevering against tough odds. In the age of climate change, resiliency won’t be enough. But holding industry accountable, coupled with decisive action, might be.
Essay by Jonathan Olivier | Photos by Camille Lenain
September 21, 2021
In the wake of so much disaster, Louisianans are forced to be resilient. By now, it’s built into our cultural psyche. In tough times, we rescue neighbors from rooftops, find valuables in the rubble, comfort those who have lost everything. Not long after it was safe to go outside after Hurricane Ida, my fellow Louisianans were delivering gas for generators, water and food for families, money to people in need.
Then, we wait. We wait for the next disaster. We wait for the inevitable loss of life. Eventually, we go back to being resilient while industry continues to pollute and our coast continues to vanish. It’s a cycle that is recurring with greater frequency: Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005; the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill; the 2016 floods that left thousands homeless; Hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020, which decimated Lake Charles; Hurricane Ida in August. The next one is coming, and we’re waiting.
But the truth is, Louisianans are tired of being resilient.
Resiliency is only necessary because of disaster. The frequency and scale of disaster experienced is only possible because of industry preying on Louisianans — Black people, Native Americans, and French-speaking Creole and Cajun people, in particular. And industry has been preying on us for decades.
In tough times, we rescue neighbors from rooftops, find valuables in the rubble, comfort those who have lost everything. Not long after it was safe to go outside after Hurricane Ida, my fellow Louisianans were delivering gas for generators, water and food for families, money to people in need.
I grew up in Cancer Alley. I remember looking at the petrochemical plants adjacent to the Mississippi River on the drive to middle school. Lights glistened in the early morning atop high metal poles like skyscrapers. On some days, clouds poured out of those stacks and hung in the sky. On others, the wind filled the air with an odor that reminded me of cotton candy.
My parents still live in Cancer Alley, and when I visit them in West Baton Rouge Parish, I see those chemical plants still belching clouds and odd smells into the atmosphere, the result of a chemical cocktail. The plants not far from my childhood home — with names like Dow Chemical and Formosa Plastics — hug the Mississippi River by the dozens down to the coast and give Cancer Alley its name.
This region has the most toxic air in the United States. This mostly affects working-class communities and majority-Black towns in a blatant display of environmental racism and classism. The risk of cancer here is 95% higher than in other parts of the United States, not from smoking, but from breathing the air.
These Cancer Alley statistics became inescapably palpable when my mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. Her death was all I could think of. After radiation, she survived and is currently in remission. Before and since then, neighbors, friends, co-workers, and classmates have gotten similar diagnoses. They died. The youngest was 27.
Oil refineries and flooded farmland in Convent, Louisiana. Since Hurricane Ida struck, the U.S. Coast Guard has received more than 2,000 reports of chemical and oil spills.
Days after Hurricane Ida struck the heart of Louisiana’s chemical corridor, reports trickled in of plants that were releasing noxious chemicals harmful to human health, like anhydrous ammonia, ethylene dichloride, and propylene. Ida’s winds caused power outages that disabled many monitoring sites, which made it even harder to decipher who was polluting what chemicals and in what volume. Apocalyptic images show stacks ablaze, filling the sky with black smoke as plants burned off gases.
The chemical plants aren’t the only concern — petroleum thrives in Cancer Alley. Louisiana’s economy is built on big oil, drilled along the coast and refined at 17 inland plants that supply 18% of the United States’ oil, but it comes at the expense of the people and the planet’s health. Hurricane Ida’s eyewall passed by ExxonMobil, Shell Chemical, and Valero Energy refineries. Near Phillips 66’s Alliance oil refinery in Belle Chasse, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is finding birds soaked in oil, the result of a nearby spill. It’s just one of many — the U.S. Coast Guard has received more than 2,000 reports of chemical and oil spills since Ida struck.
These dangers of industry — long known by the people who suffer from them — are now on display through climate change for everyone to see.
Decades prior, the industry dug navigation canals through the Louisiana marsh to gain access to petroleum, allowing saltwater into interior wetlands. This encouraged coastal erosion. With the Mississippi River contained by levees, marshes stopped receiving freshwater and sediment to replenish the losses. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost 2,000 square miles of coast, an area the size of Delaware, and scientists predict another 1,000 square miles will vanish by 2050.
When I was an environmental reporter in Houma in 2015, I traveled to bayou communities in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes where people spent their days shrimping and living by the tide’s rhythms. I heard stories about pastureland turning into open water. I drove south past the skeletons of live oak trees, once occupying high ridges, that had been consumed by the sea. I walked on the disappearing sliver of Isle de Jean Charles, where Native Americans, some of the nation’s first climate refugees, told me that they were afraid of losing their homes to the encroaching water. Their neighbors already had.
Donny Verdin, a member of the United Houma Nation who lives in Galliano, Louisiana, has watched land disappear since he was a boy. Although his house was left standing, he’ll be working for months to fix the damage caused by Hurricane Ida and faults climate change for ushering in stronger, more destructive storms.
Donny Verdin, a member of the United Houma Nation who lives in Galliano, has watched land disappear since he was a boy. Now 41, he has lost track of the islands that have disappeared. In recent years, the marsh surrounding his home has become almost unrecognizable.
He evacuated to Texas before Ida’s arrival. Upon returning home, he found that nearly every other house had been obliterated. Although his house remains, he’ll be working for months to fix the damage caused by Ida. Members of his community are separated and displaced. They have no electricity. Their water runs yellow and is undrinkable. He fears that people might never come back.
Verdin faults climate change for ushering in stronger, more destructive storms. He blames industry for its shortsightedness. And for many in his community, it’s clear to see that coastal erosion has allowed these storms to reach their doorsteps like never before.
When land erodes, a natural hurricane buffer disappears. Without marsh to weaken a system, storm surges swell inland and slam into unprotected communities at full strength. Hurricanes are stronger and unprecedented in their frequency. Ida was only a weather disturbance three days before it intensified into a major Category 4 storm that decimated entire sections of southeast Louisiana. Towns like Larose, Galliano, Chauvin, and Grand Isle were nearly leveled.
This sort of rapid hurricane strengthening is possible due to a warmer world and a warmer ocean, made possible by climate change, made possible by fossil fuels, made possible by industry, made possible by politicians.
An oil refinery along Cancer Alley. This region has the most toxic air in the United States, a situation that disproportionately affects working-class communities and majority-Black towns.
Holding Industry Accountable
This isn’t only about cancer or coastal erosion or hurricanes. This is about culpability.
For far too long, people have had to pay for industries’ shortsightedness and disregard for their actions. After each disaster, the burden falls on ordinary folks — to rebuild, to pay the costs, to grieve, to wait.
People waited over the course of Ida’s landfall to see if New Orleans’ upgraded levee and pump system would hold — it worked just fine. But there were thousands of people in south Louisiana who didn’t have the prestige or federal funding that New Orleans had to encircle their communities with barriers. Nearly two weeks after Ida’s landfall, some parts of Plaquemines Parish south of the city were still flooded.
A similar defense project, the Morganza-to-the-Gulf Hurricane Protection System, has been in the works to protect a quarter-million people in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Although the 98-mile system of locks, levees, and floodgates was approved by Congress in 2007, the federal government failed to fund it for years. Through local funds, levee district officials spent nearly $1 billion to start construction on the project.
As a reporter in Houma six years ago, I covered levee district meetings where discussions centered on the Morganza project. There was a constant urgency in people’s voices. You could tell they were frightened — something had to be done before it was too late. Just seven months before Ida struck, local politicians finally secured $12.5 million in federal funds to go to the project. The federal government has long promised $2 billion. It was too little, too late: The parishes that would’ve been protected by the project were devastated by Ida.
The logic behind taxpayers — those affected most by disaster — paying for a problem they didn’t create seems absurd. There has been recent action to attempt to hold industry accountable instead. Several coastal parishes have filed 42 lawsuits against 200 fossil fuel companies blaming them for coastal land loss. Although coastal parishes want these cases tried in state court with local judges, last month the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that some of the lawsuits should instead be examined in federal court. While it’s been reported as a blow to the parishes, it’s still notable that this sort of legislation is in the public sphere, notes Anne Rolfes, director of the environmental organization Louisiana Bucket Brigade.
“Lawsuits are good, because those can result in damages that [industry] has to pay,” she said. “The only language that they understand is money.”
Anne Rolfes stands in front of land owned by Formosa Plastics. Rolfes is the founding director of Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an environmental justice organization working with communities whose air quality is impacted by nearby oil refineries and chemical plants.
Last month, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland introduced the Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, which would require big oil to fork up money to address climate change measures. According to Van Hollen’s statement, this would produce $500 billion over 10 years.
Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has built more than 300 miles of levees, constructed 60 miles of barrier islands, and secured more than $20 billion to help implement its master plan designed to mitigate the damage from coastal erosion and sea-level rise since 2007.
In 2020, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards created a Climate Initiatives Task Force to help achieve a goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Julie Rosenzweig, a Louisiana-based environmental lawyer and activist, thinks tackling carbon emissions, as well as coastal erosion, will create a more robust Louisiana. “We can build all the levees we want,” she said. “But we’ll have to keep building them higher and higher. These efforts are going to get us further in solving problems.”
Ordinary folks have also stepped up to fill in the gaps. Louis Michot of the Lost Bayou Ramblers is collecting funds to equip homes impacted by the storm with solar panels. Two organizations in New Orleans — Feed the Second Line and Glass Half Full NOLA — are fundraising to equip restaurants with batteries and solar panels to avoid the issues that arose from mass power outages after Ida.
These initiatives won’t bring anyone’s home back. But it’s clear that Louisiana and the nation are beginning to reckon with past decisions — on race, on the economy, on climate. President Joe Biden has ambitious plans to tackle climate change, and he often mentions the urgency to act before it’s too late. In his September 7 speech, as he toured hurricane damage in the Northeast, he said, “Sometimes my mother used to say out of everything bad, something good will come if you look hard enough for it.”
I used to think this sort of statement meant Louisiana would rebuild and, the next time, folks would be ready. But now, in an age where resiliency isn’t enough, accountability might be the answer. Perhaps this statement better refers to finally demanding that those who enabled this mess — not ordinary Louisianans — should pick up the pieces.
And maybe, in this new reality we’re all living in, we might have the courage to point out exploitation, forgo resiliency, and embrace accountability. Then have hope that it will work.
Here is a list of Lousiana organizations that could put your donations to good use:
Jonathan Olivier is a journalist from Louisiana who has covered the outdoors, environment and culture in English and French for publications like Outside, L’Actualité, and The Bitter Southerner. He's working on a book that examines contemporary south Louisiana culture, exploring what it means to continue distinct linguistic and regional traditions after decades of Americanization.
Camille Lenain, a French-Algerian documentary photographer, grew up in Paris and studied photography at L’Ecole Supérieure des Arts in Brussels, Belgium. After relocating to New Orleans in 2013, she taught in French immersion school and played trumpet in town for a few years until she started freelancing as a photographer and filmmaker. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Offbeat Magazine, Antigravity Magazine, Spotify, and at the New Orleans Photo Alliance. Lenain is a member of Women Photograph and Diversify Photo; she divides her time between France and Louisiana.
