A state judge last week rejected an attempt to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a community group that seeks to block a $400 million grain elevator project in St. John the Baptist Parish whose zoning was the product of “illegality and corruption.”
Judge J. Sterling Snowdy of the 40th Judicial District Court dismissed arguments put forward by Greenfield Louisiana LLC, which has drawn up plans for a grain elevator project in the Wallace area that includes 54 grain silos and a conveyor structure that opponents say would be as tall as the Statue of Liberty.
The plaintiffs in the litigation are The Descendants Project, which advocates for the descendants of enslaved people who lived in the area, and its co-founders, Joy and Jo Banner. They are challenging a decades-old rezoning ordinance that gave the property in question an industrial designation.
In 1990, the parish council approved the industrial designation, and it has remained in effect even though the former parish president who spearheaded the zoning change served a prison term related to money laundering and extortion. A Taiwanese company initially wanted to use the rural land for an industrial facility, but it later pulled out of that project.
“The rezoning of the tract of land at issue here for heavy industrial use was done in 1990 as part of an illegal scheme that involved extortion, money-laundering and threats of legal action against neighboring residents to discourage their resistance to selling their property …” an amended legal complaint filed by the plaintiffs states.
Plaintiff Jo Banner told the Louisiana Record that pages of the land-use plan for that region remain missing and that the parish has a duty to be more transparent about information related to the grain elevator project.
“We just want data,” Banner said. “We’re not getting accurate information. … They’re just making hyperbolic statements.”.
The industrial site is in what environmentalists refer to as “Cancer Alley,” which has elevated health risks due to air pollution. A grain terminal would make air quality worse for nearby residents because grain dust often contains insect parts, rodent droppings and pesticides, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, whose attorneys helped to file the lawsuit.
Judge Snowdy’s April 28 opinion will help to clarify issues related to the site’s questionable zoning, according to Banner.
“Today was a win for our community, one that proves the strength of our case,” she said last week when the judge’s order was published.