When a hurricane is projected to pass over southeast Louisiana, Sharon Lavigne goes through a familiar mental checklist. 

Does she have enough food, water and kerosene for her oil lamp to get through a prolonged loss of water and electricity? Are her neighbors in St. James Parish prepared for the storm? 

But Lavigne, founder of the environmental justice group Rise St. James, also thinks about how the industrial facilities where she lives spew carbon emissions that contribute to climate change, which in turn is making hurricanes stronger and more likely to intensify rapidly.

“All [of] this industry is causing more climate change,” Lavigne told Verite News on Sept. 12, the day after Hurricane Francine hit Louisiana. “That’s why we have more storms, more tornadoes, more intense hurricanes.”

When a storm is threatening to make landfall in Louisiana, Lavigne and other Black environmental justice leaders around the state see the dual threats of hurricanes and the industries that pollute their communities while making climate change worse.

Parishes like St. James and St. John the Baptist — part of the industrial corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge often called Cancer Alley —  are ranked among the most climate-vulnerable areas in the United States, according to The U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index, which was released by Texas A&M University and the Environmental Defense Fund. And parts of both parishes have among the highest rates of cancer risk in Louisiana, according to research from Tulane University.

Jo Banner, co-founder and co-executive director of the environmental and historical preservation group The Descendants Project, told Verite News that those threats are constantly on her mind. 

“It’s also a place where you have multiple plants that are releasing the greenhouse gasses that’s causing all of this,” said Banner, who lives in St. John the Baptist Parish.

Jo Banner, co-founder and co-executive director of The Descendants Project, stands in front of sugar cane fields that border organization her property owns in Vacherie, Louisiana on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. Credit: Drew Costley / Verite News

Roishetta Ozane founded and directs Vessel Project of Louisiana, a Lake Charles-based environmental justice mutual aid group. Ozane uses hurricane season as an educational opportunity for residents of Calcasieu Parish, in southwest Louisiana, where she lives.

Throughout hurricane season, the Vessel Project has handed out hurricane preparedness kits to parish residents. Those kits include flyers with information about the connection between fossil fuels, climate change and hurricanes.

Calcasieu Parish has been devastated by extreme weather in recent years. In 2020, the area was hit first by Hurricane Laura — one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall in the country — and then, weeks later, by Hurricane Delta. The following winter, as residents were still attempting to recover from the brutal hurricane season, the area experienced a major winter storm and deep freeze

When Ozane starts talking about the impact of the fossil fuel industry on hurricanes and disaster resilience as a storm is about to hit Calcasieu, “people’s ears open and they listen,” she said.

“Because now the weatherman just said that the storm surge is gonna come to a particular area, I tell people to think about what’s in that area,” she said. An example she referenced was Driftwood LNG, a liquefied natural gas terminal currently under construction in Calcasieu. The project is projected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to result in the permanent loss of hundreds of acres of wetlands, which otherwise would serve as protection from storm surges.

“I try to paint a picture for people so they can clearly see. Like if this man-made building is what’s standing in the way between us and a hurricane, that hurricane is going to come further inland,” she said. “But if there were wetlands there that were able to break that hurricane up and pull it apart, it wouldn’t be able to come further inland and destroy our homes, lives and property.”

Environmental justice leaders who spoke to Verite News said they aren’t the only ones in their community thinking about the connection between carbon dioxide emissions, climate change and hurricanes. They all said that they hear the same concerns from their neighbors while they are preparing for hurricane season. 

“People pay attention and they’re having these conversations,” Ozane said. “But during these storms, disasters and crises is when people actually connect the dots and they’re ready to do something.”

In the days leading up to Francine’s landfall, the storm was projected to pass over Calcasieu Parish, but it ended up moving east and the parish got less than an inch of rain, according to the National Weather Service.

Still, in St. James Parish, Francine flooded roadways and homes, caused wind damage to homes and businesses and downed trees and power lines, leaving  10-12 inches of rain in parts of the area, parish president Pete Dufresne told WWL the day after the storm. Other than street flooding and downed power lines, there was minimal damage from the storm in St. John. Thousands of homes lost power in both parishes.

The wind knocked Lavigne’s mailbox off of its post in St. James, uprooting yard signs and blowing them across her yard. 

The signs are printed with slogans such as  “WE LIVE ON DEATH ROW,” which aim to express opposition to the expansion of petrochemical facilities. Rise St. James is currently fighting to prevent Formosa Plastics from building a 2,400-acre industrial site in the parish, saying that it would cause widespread violations of the Environment Protection Agency’s air quality standards.

“If we cut down on all these industries, we can go back to the way it was before the storms got so intense,” Lavigne said.

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Veteran journalist Drew Costley (they/them/theirs) first joined Verite News to cover a variety of topics with a focus on health, climate and environmental inequity. Before coming to Verite, they reported...