A new wave of industrial plants is coming to Louisiana. Residents say there are new concerns too.

Darrell Peters recalled how, as a boy, he would gather crawfish from the back swamps behind his neighborhood off River Road in St. Rose.

But Peters said he has watched industry and pollution encroach on his small community over the past half-century, and the birds, bugs, crawfish and other creatures have seemed to go away.

It’s one of the reasons that Peters, 67, told state regulators they should deny an important permit for St. Charles Clean Fuels’ $4.5 billion blue ammonia plant and be forced to locate to a more remote area.

“Anything in the ground comes up. Anything that goes up, comes down. It’s a bad impact on the neighborhood and the environment,” he said.

Louisiana’s pursuit of industrial and petrochemical plants for jobs and economic development has long drawn serious health and other concerns from residents, particularly those in low-income and Black neighborhoods who say they have shouldered an unfair burden when it comes to pollution.

But the proposed St. Charles plant is part of a new wave of industrialization being ushered in by the demand for cleaner fuels and fewer emissions that contribute to climate change.

While the companies involved promote improvements in technology and the employment of carbon capture methods, residents say such projects are raising their own set of concerns — and they worry that state and local officials are not listening. Backers of such projects, meanwhile, argue that plants like the one being proposed for St. Charles represent a huge investment and constitute a leap forward in industrial development.  

Proposed for 238 acres of mostly swamp between Airline Highway and the International-Matex Tank Terminals on the Mississippi River, the ammonia production plant would be located in an area where neighbors have had regular complaints about smells and health problems from the IMTT chemical and petroleum storage complex.

Gradually edging over the years to the back property lines of homes along the tight streets of the small community, IMTT tanks are visible through the backyard fences, trees and shrubs along St. Rose’s Fourth Street.

To rear of IMTT, the St. Charles Clean Fuels facility would produce up to 8,800 tons per day of ammonia and use controversial carbon sequestration to virtually eliminate its carbon emissions, the company says.

The liquid ammonia would be stored in refrigerated tanks at the next-door IMTT until the cooled gas is ready for shipment from IMTT’s river terminal or potentially by rail to domestic fertilizer plants, company officials say in regulatory papers.

IMTT officials have said their operations meet regulatory emissions limits but they are investing $1.6 million in new odor and emissions controls to go beyond what’s required. The company also has procedures in place to hear from and meet with residents when their are new odor concerns. 

IMTT’s storage operation is expected to play a critical role in the shift to industrial decarbonization, company officials have said, by increasing St. Rose’s storage of renewable and transition fuels. The company has invested $420 million since 2021 toward that end with more expected in the future. 

‘Significant step forward’

Though the plant would use natural gas for feedstock, St. Charles Clean Fuels will use trademarked technology that would reduce toxic ammonia emissions by half versus older technology, permit papers say. It also plans to cut some carbon emissions even before underground storage by using hydrogen pulled from the natural gas to fuel some processes.

Combusted hydrogen emits no carbon into the air but does emit water and also nitrogen oxides, highly regulated hazardous pollutants, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 

The company says its required air analysis shows pollutions levels wouldn’t exceed federal and state levels for long-term exposure and don’t even require a “major” state air permit.

During a recent hearing, the state Department of Energy and Natural Resources took comments for a coastal use permit, which is focused on local hydrology and whether land in the coastal zone, particularly wetlands, should be destroyed and filled with earth and rock.

The plant would destroy 183 acres of cypress and hardwood forest swamps, but the two-and-a-half-hour public hearing at the St. Charles Parish Library in Destrehan was as much over carbon sequestration and the pollution burden in the majority Black areas of St. Rose and Elkinsville, a historic freetown founded by former slaves, as it was about coastal land use and flood risk. 

The St. Charles project, however, has support from local legislators, regional economic development officials and a variety of groups that support the area’s already robust industrial sector.

“This project represents not just a substantial financial investment in the region but also a significant step forward in sustainable industrial development in Louisiana,” said Desiree Lemoine, a Baton Rouge lobbyist and campaign manager for the pro-industry Louisiana Makes advocacy group.

“St. Rose is an ideal location for the project due to its robust infrastructure along with elected officials and small business owners who are committed to economic growth and environmental stewardship.”

The complex would generate up 1,056 construction jobs during the peak of the four-year buildout and 216 permanent jobs, with average salaries of nearly $92,600 per year.

It would lead to $185 million in local and state tax revenue during construction and nearly $46 million in combined tax revenue in the first year of its operation in 2028, even after lucrative property tax exemptions, according to the company’s estimates.

In written comments to DENR, St. Charles Councilman Willie Comardelle said he supported the plant. The petrochemical industry gave him opportunities in his early 20s and a path to the upper middle class without a college education.

“I am a perfect example of why projects like this are important to this region and our parish,” he wrote.

‘Wrong place, wrong time’

Beyond the regional economics, St. Charles Clean Fuels is part of billions of dollars in new investment proposed for the river corridor and seeking to capitalize on the drive to decarbonize industrial production worldwide.

Over the past two years, CF Industries, which has North America’s largest fertilizer complex upriver near Donaldsonville, has been exploring three different partnerships for large-scale blue ammonia plants. Two other companies are looking at blue ammonia and blue hydrogen plants in Ascension Parish also.

Used for years for fertilizer production, ammonia is increasingly being seen as a way to deliver hydrogen molecules for a carbonless industrial fuel source, experts say.

In Louisiana, former Gov. John Bel Edwards announced goals to cut carbon emissions drastically by 2050 to fight global climate change. Industries emit two-thirds of the state’s carbon emissions, according to LSU estimates.

But, in an interview, Greg Upton, executive director of the LSU Center for Energy Studies, explained other factors are at play also.

Federal tax credits are being made available to spur carbon sequestration and hydrogen production. Meanwhile, in overseas markets, companies are facing carbon taxes and trying to find products with lower carbon density to cut that tax, Upton explained.

Upton added that Louisiana industries want to keep their products competitive and “are trying to get the most carbon emissions reduction for the cost.”

For the St. Charles and other blue ammonia plants, the answer being put forward is sequestration, allowing the continued use of fossil fuels and piping emissions underground at sites, sometimes miles away.

The gas would be pumped in a compressed, quasi-liquid state as much as 10,000 feet underground, permit requests show. Overlying layers of shale and other rock are thought to keep the buoyant, climate-changing gas from rising through fissures back into shallower aquifers and the surface, advocates say.

The proposals have drawn fire and suspicion, however, including Air Products’ plan to inject carbon dioxide under Lake Maurepas.

Environmental groups and others have claimed the technology is unproven as a long-term storage method, could harm drinking water aquifers with leaking carbon dioxide and would further the use of fossil fuels for potentially decades.

None of the few dozen sequestration proposals under various stages of review by DENR has been permitted in Louisiana, the agency says.

In permit papers, St. Charles Clean Fuels says it will sequester the equivalent of the annual emissions of 1 million cars but has not disclosed what company would transport its carbon dioxide, where delivery pipelines would run or where the gas would be stored.

During the permit hearing, Darryl Malek-Wiley, a senior organizer with the Sierra Club, argued without that information, the company’s application was incomplete. He said he doubted the company’s claims of 99% carbon capture based on the effectiveness of other large-scale operations. 

He added that the operation would involve keeping flammable ammonia and hydrogen near St. Rose with little buffer in the name of clean fuel for Europe and China.

“We feel that this is the wrong plant, at the wrong place, at the wrong time with technology that puts the community of St. Rose and Elkinsville at risk,” he said. 

St. Charles Clean Fuels officials were present for the hearing Thursday but did not speak and would not answer questions from a reporter afterward. There was also no response to questions sent by email.