This story was originally published by Louisiana Illuminator
Communities around Louisiana, in a bid to get more information about the environmental and health impacts of industrial pollution, are taking data collection into their own hands — despite a law restricting how their research findings can be used to enforce state regulations.
The practice is called community, citizen or participatory science, and it involves data collected from non-scientists that’s passed along to researchers who use their expertise to study and understand what they mean. From air quality to fisheries impacts, the grassroots-gathered information has the potential to inform the public about impacts of nearby industry.
“Our challenge for really a couple decades has been: How can we get something that can empower the communities to be able to speak for themselves, about the issues, with data?” said Marylee Orr, executive director of Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
The Louisiana-based nonprofit, long involved with community air monitoring projects, recently posted on its website an interactive air monitoring dashboard. The site gives continuous updates from air quality sensors placed at four locations along the Mississippi River in the heavily industrialized corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The dashboard also lists locations and readings from Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality monitors.
The system, funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, uses stationary air quality sensors to measure spikes in air pollutant levels. Toxic emissions such as sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide and volatile organic compounds can be detected, recorded and displayed on the online dashboard, providing neighboring communities with information about potential health risks.
Similar efforts to get hard numbers for air and water quality concerns are also happening in Cameron Parish, where community air monitoring and water quality research partnerships are expanding. The area is the site of three liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals, and six more LNG facilities are either under construction or in the planning stages.
Environmental groups, including the Habitat Recovery Project and For a Better Bayou, have been working to secure funding for air quality monitoring equipment and underwater sound research in an attempt to find the source of air pollution and fisheries disruptions in the region.
“Stories hold weight, and science and data holds weight,” Habitat Recovery Project director Alyssa Portaro. “When we put these two things together, it really gives a robust picture of what’s going on.”
Fishermen and advocates alike suspect air quality and fisheries problems in Cameron have ties to the nearby LNG facilities but have no independent data to back up their suspicions. The environmental groups received grants to buy monitoring equipment and hire fishermen to collect data and partner with scientists for research projects.
“Nobody knows exactly what’s going on out here,” said Sky Leger, a fisherman who works along Cameron Parish’s coast. He and his girlfriend, restaurant worker Karri Hooper, recently got involved with community science monitoring, in part, to help track whether noise from boat traffic and LNG facility construction is impacting adjacent fishing grounds.
Around the country, scientific communities have seen growing acceptance of data collection in partnership with non-scientists.
“There’s been increasing recognition of the power of these types of projects to collect really useful data,” said Bradley Allf, a postdoctoral research associate at Colorado State University who uses participatory science to study urban ecology and conservation.
Allf studied the concept of citizen science data collection for his doctoral thesis, saying the research technique has grown in popularity as well as acceptance within the scientific community over recent decades.
“There was some hesitation around whether we can really trust data collected by people who haven’t necessarily been trained in science,” Allf said. “I don’t think that’s very true anymore.”
Despite its expanding acceptance, the struggle to increase transparency around industry’s environmental impact in Louisiana with community-gathered data faces legal hurdles.
The Louisiana Legislature approved a law in 2024 enacting strict qualitative standards for community air monitoring programs in order to be considered valid data that state regulators could use for oversight or enforcement.
Air-monitoring equipment and analysis must use the most current EPA-approved techniques, and data must be analyzed at labs the Louisiana Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program certifies, according to the legislation dubbed the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act.
Environmental groups argue these standards, which can be costly, prices them out of being able to do research. The cost for the state’s preferred monitoring equipment runs up to $500,000 dollars, said former EPA official Larry Starfield, an adviser to Orr’s monitoring dashboard project
“That’s not something that is accessible,” said Misha Mayeur with the Habitat Recovery Project.
The equipment her group intends to buy with current grant proceeds costs around $20,000, cheaper than the regulatory monitors that cost more than their entire annual budget to buy.
The sensors the Louisiana Environmental Action Network uses for its stationary air monitoring in Southeast Louisiana, like those in Cameron Parish, aren’t up to the standards for regulatory enforcement in the 2024 state law. The regulatory monitors required in Louisiana to allege pollution violations cost around $500,000 dollars, said former EPA official Larry Starfield.
Even if the data can’t be used to enforce air quality standards for Louisiana, Orr said there’s still value in community awareness that could prompt change.
“If the data suggest a problem, it’s an opportunity for communities to invite companies to investigate their concerns,” said Orr.
Starfield said he hopes keeping the community informed could offer a way to let industry prove its willingness to cooperate and improve air quality.
“Many of the workers live in the community. Why wouldn’t you want to have a good relationship?” he said.
President and CEO of the Louisiana Chemical Association and Louisiana Chemical Industry Alliance president David Cresson responded to the launch of LEAN’s dashboard in a statement emailed to the Illuminator, saying the association was reviewing LEAN’s data and methodology.
“We hope to continue to work with LEAN to identify the areas of impact as indicated by their data, and if the specific source can be verified, take practical steps to remediate the issue,” Cresson said in a statement from the association.
And if industry chooses not to cooperate, Starfield said data can help encourage state and federal entities to get involved.
“The idea is to engage Louisiana [Department of Environmental Quality] and EPA in a situation where there’s a feeling that there’s a problem here, we’re seeing a pattern,” he said. “Certainly bringing in EPA and bringing in LDEQ and asking them to investigate … that’s absolutely a good thing.”
Fishermen in Cameron used their collective voice to engage state enforcement in August when they brought to light impacts to oysters, crabs and fish from dredging spills near the site where Venture Global’s CP2 LNG facility is being built.
Venture Global initially claimed there were no sediment spills or harmed fisheries. But at the urging of fishermen, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries sent a biologist to study the area, and the official later confirmed oysters had been killed.
“The only thing that they’re going off of is by the reports of the people that Venture Global hired,” Leger said. “But we have the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries coming out here and checking the oysters … and they are saying that there is very much so a problem with sediment being on top of those oysters in the lake.”
Portaro said this example is a strong argument for informing the community, as well as involving scientists, in documenting air and water quality issues in places like Cameron Parish.
“The fishermen were able to verify that, document it; then Fish and Wildlife came out and said, ‘Yeah, there is mud in the lake,’” said Portaro. “Sometimes the biologists on the job need the community keeping an eye on them, a well-informed community.”