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Web posted September 22, 1997

Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff

Earlier this month Environmental Protection Agency czar Carol Browner invoked, for the first time ever, the principle of ``environmental racism'' to block construction of a $700 million petrochemical plant in mostly-black Convent, La.

News accounts largely reflected Browner's contention that the Japanese-owned plant was locating in the low-income community because minority residents didn't have the ``political clout'' to stop it. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

The real problem is that Convent lacked the political clout to bring the plant (and scores of high-paying jobs) into the community. They were trumped by Greenpeace and other media-savvy environmental zealots flocking to Convent and claiming to speak for the people there.

In a remarkable follow-up piece in The Wall Street Journal, Scripps Howard writer Henry Payne explains the bitterness felt by residents, not only against Greenpeace elitists but know-it-alls such as the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Joseph Lowry who also spoke out against the plant.

``They blatantly ignored the opinions of all the local elected African-American officials,'' complained one prominent resident to Payne. These weren't just a group of dumb local yokels, either, as Greenpeace propagandists would have you believe.

Local officials and residents visited a chemical plant owned by the same Japanese firm in Freeport, Texas, a prosperous, mostly-white community near Houston. That was when they decided it was safe and sensible to bring some of that prosperity to Convent.

Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality -- charged with enforcing EPA regulations -- issued air quality permits in May, after ensuring the company's plan met all federal and state standards.

That's when, say Convent residents, ``groups such as Greenpeace descended on (us) like a plague of locusts.'' Complained one letter to the editor, ``We find the exploitive use of the color of our skin and our socio-economic condition sickening and insulting.''

Fortunately for Convent, Browner didn't write finis to the plant's construction. She only held it up until more studies are held. So Convent still has a fighting chance to develop its economy -- but residents also know with Washington's environmental, regulatory and civil rights zealots allied against them, they're in an awful uphill struggle.

It is stories like this which make the case that despite all the talk about decentralizing power out of Washington to states and localities, there is still much work to be done.