The air in Ascension Parish is already saturated with the pungent odor of ammonia, a scent reminiscent of strong cleaning products or even cat urine.
The odor emanates from the world’s largest ammonia plant, CF Industries’ Donaldsonville Complex. Of the nation’s counties, Ascension Parish is one of the most polluted.
The complex rivals a small city, stretching 1,400 acres along the west bank of the Mississippi River. The drive along Louisiana Highway 18, which hugs the levee, is crisscrossed by suspended pipelines that lead from the deepwater vessel port to the ammonia production facility.
Now, the company has joined with many corporate partners to expand its capacity, in a way that could truly turn Ascension Parish into Ammonia Parish, further sickening neighboring communities, residents and environmental advocates fear.
The industry buildout also threatens the parish’s last rural community, the village of Modeste, which sits just upriver from Donaldsonville.
CF Industries in Donaldsonville releases more point-source air pollution – emissions from one identifiable source – than any other industrial plant in the country, according to Environmental Protection Agency records. That’s about 7.8 million pounds of air emissions released on parish residents, including the students at Donaldsonville Primary School, which stands just one mile away, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade report notes.
Ammonia is a naturally occurring substance important to life, providing nitrogen to plants and animals. But CF Industries drives the mass production of ammonia fertilizer for agriculture. And commercial agriculture has created a cycle that has led Midwestern farmers to rely on chemical fertilizers, which destroy microbes that play a vital role in keeping soil healthy.
Ammonia created in Louisiana and used for crops in the Midwest often returns home.
When it rains, the nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer leach off fields into the Mississippi River, which carries the chemicals back to Louisiana and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico, spurring an annual summer “dead zone” of low-to-no oxygen that can kill fish and sea life.
This year’s “dead zone” is forecast to be average, killing bottom-dwelling creatures across an area roughly three times the size of Delaware.
Ammonia’s fine particulates harm lungs and devastate health
As ammonia is released into the air, it forms fine particulate pollution that can increase the risk of heart disease, cancer and stroke.
“We have an overwhelming body of scientific evidence that shows these very, very tiny particles, when they’re breathed in, they stay deep in your lungs, they don’t come out, and they cause harm,” said Mike Belliveau, director of Bend the Curve, a nonprofit think tank promoting safer alternatives to petrochemicals and plastics.
Ammonia is made by industrially combining hydrogen and nitrogen. Air pollution from ammonia production threatens the health and safety of residents in Ascension Parish, especially in the majority-Black community of Donaldsonville, nearest to the CF facility. Over several years, long-term exposure to very low levels of ammonia can cause breathing problems, such as respiratory-tract irritation, cough, asthma and lung scarring.
Now, residents seem worried that, with ammonia production slated to quadruple, Ascension Parish residents will be exposed to a marked increase.
CF Industries is partnering with multiple Japanese companies and ExxonMobil to build a $4 billion “blue” ammonia plant within a mile of Modeste. While so-called “blue” production is being marketed as an improvement that cuts carbon dioxide emissions, critics note that potential emissions reductions rely on the use of unproven carbon-capture technology, which sends greenhouse gas emissions underground to be stored.
The Blue Point Complex planned for the RiverPlex MegaPark on the west bank of Ascension Parish is expected to become operational by 2029. Hyundai Motor Group also plans to build a $5.8 billion steel manufacturing plant in the RiverPlex MegaPark.
1PointFive, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum named after the Paris Agreement target to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, will provide transportation by pipeline and underground sequestration of carbon dioxide for the complex. The planet-warming gas would be piped more than a mile underground at the Pelican Hub, which is being developed on more than 30,000 acres across Livingston and St. Helena Parishes.
At least one local leader sees CF Industries’ commitment to expansion in Ascension Parish as a win for the parish. “It’s a sign that our local economy is on the rise and that clean energy innovation is happening right here in our backyard,” said Kate MacArthur, president and CEO of the Ascension Parish Economic Development Corporation.
The land around the unincorporated community of Modeste had been zoned for agricultural use as a conservation district. But in 2015, the Ascension Parish Council expedited rezoning of the area for heavy industrial use by adopting an ordinance, the West Bank Industrial Overlay.
The Ascension Parish Economic Development Corporation identified roughly 17,000 acres of agricultural property to market as the largest contiguous undeveloped tract of land on the Mississippi River—and a location that could access both deepwater ports and the Union Pacific Railroad mainline.
Residents trying to protect Modeste, along with Ascension Parish’s rural character
In May, the Ascension Parish Council recommended a buyout plan for the estimated 210 to 230 residents who will be directly impacted by industrial construction at the RiverPlex MegaPark.
But some residents want the sugarcane fields to remain rural, under conservation zoning.
“Economic growth does not have to be a supersized industrial facility at the cost of our health and safety,” said Ashley Gaignard, founder and president of Rural Roots Louisiana, a community engagement organization in Donaldsonville.
Gaignard has watched her family suffer from cancer, asthma and low birth weight for generations. Her son, who attended the Donaldsonville Primary School, developed severe asthma to the point where a doctor told him not to go outside for recess. Gaignard, a breast cancer survivor whose mother also had breast cancer, is shocked by how many young women in her community have been forced under the knife for hysterectomies, due to cancer, she said.
Twila Collins had colon cancer and her mother had breast cancer. Her son died of an asthma attack at nine years old.
“Our community is suffering because we, the people of Modeste, were not included in the plans for our community,” said Collins, whose ancestors first arrived in the Modeste area in the 1800s. “You’re destroying a whole community that’s family. It’s like we’re getting stabbed in the heart. We have to fight and protect Modeste as a people.”
Modeste’s remaining agricultural fields now abut the RiverPlex MegaPark site, where ExxonMobil and other investors are planning to build Ascension Clean Energy, a $7.5 billion chemical plant with an air permit projected to release 142 tons of ammonia yearly. Though the new plant will add more ammonia production to an area already overburdened with emissions, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality approved the individual permits without considering the cumulative impacts, Belliveau said.
In Donaldsonville, CF Industries has already reported three large tanks containing up to 60 million pounds of ammonia, Belliveau said.
The dangers cannot be overstated, he said. If one of those tanks were to rupture, a release lasting just 10 minutes would form a ground-hugging, pungent, toxic gas cloud that could travel for 7.8 miles, endangering the 23,000 people living around the plant, he said.
In 2021, an ammonia leak led to the temporary closure of Donaldsonville Primary School and two highways leading into the city. No injuries were reported because the leak occurred early in the morning, before the children arrived at school.
Across the river in Darrow, Air Products has planned an $8 billion blue hydrogen manufacturing complex. In May, spending on the complex was delayed until the company could find equity partners to fund the ammonia loop and carbon-dioxide sequestration aspect of the plant.
Locals watch the industrial invasion and wonder what will be left for them, between sites crammed with smokestacks and ammonia tanks.
“We can either have the area obliterated by relentless industrial onslaught,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, “or we can not do that and actually develop a right-size economy that works for people and results in shared prosperity.”