Darrell Peters remembered catching crawfish as a boy in the marsh behind his neighborhood along River Road in St. Rose.
But Peters said he has watched as industry and pollution have invaded his small community over the past half-century, causing birds, bugs, crayfish and other creatures to seemingly disappear.
That’s one of the reasons Peters, 67, said state officials should deny a key permit for St. Charles Clean Fuels’ $4.5 billion blue ammonia plant and force it to relocate to a more remote location.
“Anything that’s in the ground comes up. Anything that goes up comes down. It’s bad for the neighborhoods and the environment,” he said.
Louisiana has been building industrial and petrochemical plants to create jobs and develop the economy, but they have long raised serious health and other concerns from residents, particularly low-income and black communities, who say they bear an unfair burden when it comes to pollution.
But the proposed St. Charles plant is part of a new wave of industrialization brought about by calls for cleaner fuels and reducing emissions that contribute to climate change.
While the companies involved are pushing for improved technology and carbon capture methods, residents say the projects are raising concerns and worry state and local officials aren’t listening. Meanwhile, supporters of the projects say plants like the one proposed for St. Charles would be huge investments and a leap forward for industrial development.
The ammonia plant is proposed to be built on 238 acres of mostly swamp land between Airline Highway and the International Matex Tank Terminal on the Mississippi River, in an area where neighbors regularly complain about odors and health hazards from the IMTT chemical and petroleum storage facility.
Over the years, the IMTT tanks have inched closer and closer to the rear property lines of homes along the small community’s narrow streets, becoming visible through backyard fences, trees and shrubs along St. Rose Fourth Street.
The St. Charles Clean Fuels facility behind IMTT will produce up to 8,800 tonnes of ammonia per day and achieve virtually zero carbon emissions using a controversial carbon sequestration method, the company said.
The liquid ammonia will be stored in refrigerated tanks at IMTT next door until the cooled gas is ready to be shipped from IMTT’s river terminal or transported by rail to fertilizer plants across the country, company officials said in regulatory documents.
IMTT officials said their operation meets regulated emissions standards but has invested $1.6 million in odor and emission controls beyond what is required. The company also has procedures in place to hear from and meet with residents if new odor concerns arise.
IMTT’s storage operations are expected to play a key role in the industry’s transition to decarbonization by increasing storage of renewable and transitional fuels in St. Rose, company executives said. The company has invested $420 million since 2021 to this end, with more planned for the future.
“A major step forward”
The plant will use natural gas as a feedstock, but St. Charles Clean Fuels plans to use a proprietary technology that cuts toxic ammonia emissions in half compared to conventional techniques, permit documents state. It also plans to use hydrogen extracted from natural gas to fuel some of the process, reducing some carbon emissions even before it goes underground.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, burning hydrogen doesn’t emit carbon into the atmosphere, but it does emit water and nitrogen oxides, a hazardous pollutant that is highly regulated.
The company said a requested air analysis found that contaminant levels from long-term exposure would not exceed federal and state standards and that a state “large-scale” air permit would not be required.
At a recent public hearing, the state Department of Energy and Natural Resources heard comments on the Coastal Zone Use Permit, which focuses on local hydrology and whether coastal land, particularly wetlands, should be destroyed and filled with soil and rock.
The plant would destroy 183 acres of cypress and hardwood forest swamp, but the 2 1/2-hour public hearing at the St. Charles Parish Library in Destrehan also addressed coastal land use and flood risks, as well as carbon sequestration and the pollution load on the majority-black neighborhoods of St. Rose and Elkinsville, historic free towns founded by former slaves.
But the St. Charles project has the backing of local lawmakers, regional economic development officials and a variety of groups that support the area’s already thriving industrial sector.
“This project not only represents a significant financial investment in the region, but also a major step forward toward sustainable industrial development in Louisiana,” said Desiree Lemoine, a Baton Rouge lobbyist and campaign manager for the industry advocacy group Louisiana Makes.
“Saint Rose is an ideal location for this project because it has great infrastructure, elected officials and small business owners who are committed to economic growth and protecting the environment.”
The complex is expected to create 1,056 construction jobs and 216 full-time jobs at the peak of its four-year construction period, with average annual salaries of nearly $92,600.
The company estimates it could generate $185 million in local and state tax revenues during construction and, after favorable property tax exemptions, generate nearly $46 million in total tax revenues in its first year of operation in 2028.
St. Charles City Councilman Willie Comradell, in written comments to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said he supports the plant, saying the petrochemical industry gave him an opportunity 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 area and our parish,” he wrote.
“Wrong place, wrong time”
Beyond the local economy, St. Charles Clean Fuels is part of billions of dollars of new investment proposed for the river corridor, seeking to capitalize on the movement toward decarbonizing industrial production around the world.
CF Industries, which owns North America’s largest fertilizer plant upstream near Donaldsonville, has been pursuing three different partners over the past two years to build a large-scale blue ammonia plant. Two other companies are also looking to build blue ammonia and blue hydrogen plants in Ascension Parish.
Ammonia, long used in fertilizer production, is increasingly being looked at as a way to provide molecular hydrogen as a carbon-free source of industrial fuel, experts say.
In Louisiana, former Governor John Bel Edwards announced a goal to sharply reduce carbon emissions by 2050 to combat global warming. Louisiana State University estimates that two-thirds of the state’s carbon emissions come from industry.
But Greg Upton, executive director of the Louisiana State University Center for Energy Studies, explained in an interview that other factors are also at play.
Federal tax credits are available to encourage carbon sequestration and hydrogen production, while in overseas markets, companies are facing carbon taxes and trying to find less carbon-dense products to reduce those taxes, Upton explained.
Upton added that Louisiana industries want to keep their products competitive and are “looking to get the most carbon reduction possible relative to cost.”
In the case of St. Charles and other blue ammonia plants, the proposed solution is sequestration, which would allow them to continue using fossil fuels and pipe emissions underground, sometimes miles away.
The gas would be pumped in a compressed, semi-liquid state up to 10,000 feet underground, according to the permit application. Proponents say overlying layers of shale and other rocks are believed to prevent the buoyant, climate-changing gas from leaking back through fractures into shallow aquifers and the surface.
But those proposals, including Air Products’ plan to inject carbon dioxide beneath Lake Maurepas, have drawn criticism and suspicion.
Environmental groups and others say the technology is unproven for long-term storage, that leaking carbon dioxide could damage drinking water aquifers and promote fossil fuel burn for decades.
In Louisiana, none of the dozens of sequestration proposals that are in various stages of review by the DENR have been approved, according to the DENR.
St. Charles Clean Fuels said in permit documents that it would sequester the equivalent of the annual emissions from 1 million cars, but did not disclose which company would transport the carbon dioxide, where the pipeline would be located or where the gas would be stored.
At the permit hearing, Sierra Club senior organizer Darryl Malek Wiley argued that the company’s application was incomplete without that information, saying he questioned the company’s claim of 99% carbon capture based on the effectiveness of other large-scale operations.
He added that the operation involves storing flammable ammonia and hydrogen near the St. Rose with little buffering, ostensibly as clean fuel for Europe and China.
“We feel this is the wrong plant, built in the wrong place at the wrong time and this is technology that puts the communities of St. Rose and Elkinsville at risk,” he said.
St. Charles Clean Fuels officials attended Thursday’s hearing but did not speak or answer questions from reporters afterward. They also did not respond to emailed questions.