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orphan cat 9/14<div>
</div><div>=</div><div>Restricting RepresentationNew laws are hardly the only method Louisiana elected officials have used to stifle residents’ opposition to industry.In 1997, former Gov. Mike Foster pressured the Louisiana Supreme Court to trim the sails of student law clinics after the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic helped St. James Parish residents fight a polyvinyl chloride plant the chemical giant Shintech wanted to build in Convent.Foster badly wanted to see the Shintech plant built. He mocked the plant’s two most vocal opponents, Emelda West and Pat Melancon of Convent, as “a bunch of housewives.”Calls to Shintech seeking comment were not returned.Former Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster pushed for Tulane University to be defunded after students in the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic helped Convent residents challenge air and water permits for a proposed polyvinyl chloride plant. (Bryan S. Berteaux/The Times-Picayune)In addition to challenging Shintech’s air and water permits, Convent residents — with the help of Tulane — filed a complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claiming the state violated the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act when it approved the project.The complaint became the first key test of an executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1994 that aimed to address the fact that communities of color bore a disproportionate burden of pollution.Foster was apoplectic. He encouraged Tulane alumni and business leaders to reconsider their financial support for the university.Several industry lobbying groups, meanwhile, urged the Louisiana Supreme Court, which oversees student law practice in the state, to investigate the law clinic.Student law practice allows legal novices to gain hands-on experience, while providing legal assistance to those who would not otherwise have access.The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state’s most powerful business lobby, had recently helped three pro-business justices win seats on the Supreme Court. The chief justice, Pascal Calogero, was up for election the following year.At LABI’s urging, the court began investigating the Tulane clinic in 1997. As the election heated up, Calogero — and all but one justice — voted to restrict student law assistance. The new rules banned the representation of any community organization affiliated with a national organization — like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club or the NAACP and prohibited students and supervising lawyers from initiating contact with potential clients.The new rules also placed limits on how much residents could earn and still receive student representation. A family of three, for example, could not get assistance if they made more than $13,650 annually.The head of the Association of American Law Schools called the new requirements “the most restrictive student practice rule in the nation.”Emelda West, of the St. James Citizens for Jobs and the Environment, speaks in front of the Governor’s Mansion during a protest against the governor’s threats against the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic in 1997. (Tim Mueller/The Advocate)Ironically, the new rules — which have since been relaxed some — came too late to save Shintech’s plant. The company announced in 1998 it had scratched its plan, opting instead for a much smaller facility in Iberville Parish.
The Tulane clinic has continued to garner the ire of industry over the last two decades. In 2010, Adley introduced another bill aimed at stopping the clinic from going after chemical plants. It would have yanked state funding from Tulane if its law clinic sued a government agency. As the bill was introduced, Dan Borné, then head of Louisiana Chemical Association, said: “My board acted on taking an aggressive approach toward the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. This is part of that approach.”
But Adley’s bill to defund Tulane was ill-timed. One month earlier, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Lawmakers were concerned that if the bill passed, residents affected by the spill wouldn’t be able to get legal assistance from Tulane. The bill failed.
Lisa Jordan, director of the clinic, co-wrote the civil rights petition to the EPA on behalf of Convent residents two decades ago. Even though the case put a crimp on the clinic, she’s proud of taking on the fight. “It was hard, and it had a really good result for the clients,” she said. “And because it told me this is such important work, even when you don’t necessarily succeed ... to give people a legal voice that they otherwise couldn’t have had.”
Monique Harden, of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice who co-wrote the civil rights petition, said the repeated assaults on the clinic exemplify how Louisiana officials tend to react to environmental uprisings.
“There is this systemwide hostility to people fighting back,” Harden said. “They want to cut support. But not just cut support, cut your remedy.”</div><div>Jim Hightower: Can ‘powerless nobodies’ fight the corporate powers?
Written by Jim Hightower December 21, 2019The many sparkling bays along the Texas coastline of the Gulf of Mexico have long provided both a working-class living and a valued lifestyle for generations of shrimpers, oysterers and other fishing families. People and seafood, however, are not the only creatures here, for such wildlife as alligators and snakes also call many of these interconnected waterways home. Yet, by necessity and experience, the hardy people of the water have figured out how to share the bays so all creatures can get along.But in the 1980s, a strange and invasive new critter entered Lavaca Bay, near the town of Port Comfort. Far from getting along, this species proceeded over the years to devour whole harvests of seafood, along with the livelihoods of local Gulf communities. This marauder was not some monster from the deep but a massive, 45,000-acre factory looming over Lavaca Bay. It is the Formosa Plastics Corporation, founded by the richest man in Taiwan.As its name implies, Formosa is not here for seafood. It is the world’s second largest fabricator of polyvinyl chloride, the tiny, highly toxic pebbles and powders used to make the gabillions of plastic bags, pipes, bottles, etc. that are choking the Earth. For decades, the Formosa plant has cavalierly been dumping trillions of these poisonous pebbles and tons of the polyvinyl powders into its wastewater — which end up in Lavaca Bay.That poisonous content then spreads to other bays, nearby waterways, the Gulf itself … and into the shrimp, oysters, fish and other creatures living there. The result has been species vanishing from these waters, creating economic and social devastation for families and port communities that rely on nature’s bounty.Wait, isn’t this against the law? Of course, but petrochemical behemoths like Formosa have corrupted the law, turning Texas lawmakers and environmental regulators into their puppets. When leaders won’t lead, The People must, and that’s exactly what’s happening in this case. A defiant, determined former fourth-generation shrimper named Diane Wilson, along with a scrappy environmental coalition on the Texas Gulf Coast, have just won the largest citizen environmental lawsuit in U.S. history, forcing Formosa to stop its gross contamination of the bay, the local economy and the law.It’s good to have a happy-ending story for the holidays — one that’s not sugar-plum sappy but genuinely uplifting.It “feels like justice,” said Wilson in early December when a federal district judge OK’d a $50 million pollution settlement against Formosa Plastics Corporation. Judge Kenneth Hoyt, a Ronald Reagan appointee, had previously ruled that the Taiwan plastics conglomerate was a “serial offender” whose violations of America’s Clean Water Act were “extensive, historical, and repetitive.” How the case got there is as important as his ruling.Wilson, the indefatigable local shrimper, had been trying for some 30 years to get state and national officials to stop Formosa from dumping poisonous plastic chemicals into the Lavaca Bay ecosystem. The corporation’s deliberate contamination was destroying seasonal seafood harvests upon which she and thousands of Gulf Coast fishing families relied. She was ignored by those in power and then ridiculed and then demonized. Yet this lady of the sea wouldn’t quit. She kept speaking out, mounted hunger strikes and even tried to sink her own beloved shrimp boat in the bay as a public protest.Nothing. But then, backed by a volunteer network of regional environmentalists and a savvy group of nonprofit legal service lawyers, Wilson filed the private citizens lawsuit in July 2017 that came to trial this spring in Judge Hoyt’s courtroom, finally producing an overdue measure of justice. The $50 million settlement doesn’t go to Wilson or the other plaintiffs but to projects that will revitalize local marine ecosystems and create a shrimping and oyster cooperative for local families. It also will pay for citizen-group monitoring of Formosa’s compliance with the judge’s orders for “zero discharge” of its plastic pollutants.Even more significant than the money that the Formosa settlement provides, this victory sets a major legal precedent to advance other citizen lawsuits against polluters, requiring that the polluters (not taxpayers) pay for their messes. Who needs Santa Clause when “We the People” can deliver such democratic gifts to ourselves?  For information on the details and impact of this remarkable people’s victory, go to the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid website.Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.</div><div>
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<a href="http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/19/congress-reforms-tsca/2/">http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/19/congress-reforms-tsca/2/</a>

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</div><div>pjt 21 recycles story?</div><div>
</div><div>In 1996, Shintech Inc. - a Japanese chemical company - wanted to build a $700 million facility in Convent, Louisiana to make the polyvinyl chloride that is used in building materials, upholstery and clothing. Shintech promised to hire hundreds of area residents for the construction of the plant and provide $500,000 in local job training. After the plant was built, it would employ 165 people with salaries beginning at $12 an hour - twice the average wage area residents made working in the region's sugar cane fields.Shintech was never able to build the plant in this poor, job-starved community. Despite strong local support among residents, politicians and the NAACP, EPA officials in Washington, D.C. - at the urging of environmentalists - denied Shintech a permit based on concerns about environmental justice.</div><div>==</div>