The top agenda item at IMTT’s private, Oct. 23 meeting with its St. Rose Community Advisory Panel will be the company’s funding of four new air quality monitors in the neighborhood, according to Richard Rainey, an IMTT spokesperson.
IMTT, a bulk chemical storage company in St. Rose, announced in a Sept. 19 press release that it signed an agreement with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network to participate in the non-profit’s air monitoring project. In 2023, LEAN received funding from the Environmental Protection Agency to expand air quality data and air quality literacy in the parishes bordering the Mississippi River.
The particulars of the agreement were not discussed with the St. Rose Community Advisory Panel beforehand. But the company said it will reach out to community members to provide more information and gather further input now that the agreement is in place.
Residents have long complained about smells and emissions coming from the industrial facility, and the company’s community advisory panel told IMTT that air monitoring was a top priority for residents after the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality removed the air monitor it had in St. Rose without plans to replace it.
Part of the agreement that IMTT signed with LEAN says that network partners must share all data collected through LEAN’s website in real time, according to Marylee Orr, executive director of LEAN.
“One of our promises was if we did this project everything would be very transparent,” Orr said. “The community really wants the data to empower them to have a conversation with a facility if there are problems. If they have this data, they can go sit down and talk with [the industrial facility].”
But Kimberly Terrell, a research scientist at Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, said IMTT has multiple layers of protection from anyone using the air monitor data against them.
For starters, she said, the air monitors that IMTT will fund are not regulatory grade, or gold standard, monitors.
The solar-powered monitors, which are made by the London-based company AQMesh, can monitor multiple air pollutants at a low cost, according to the company’s website. But because these monitors are community air monitors, they cannot be used by themselves as evidence of violations of environmental laws or permit conditions. On May 23, Gov. Jeff Landry signed the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act limiting the legal power of community air monitors.
“Ultimately you always want gold standard monitoring,” Terrell said. “But there are ways that non-gold standard equipment can be used to indicate that a facility is causing a problem.”
Terrell said community monitors can pick up large spikes in pollution, for example.
Rainey, the IMTT spokesperson, said the air monitors that IMTT will fund will give residents a better sense of the quality of the air closer to their homes, giving them accurate data to make informed decisions.
“IMTT is committed to working with LEAN and its partners to ensure the Community Air Monitoring Network provides high-quality data and information,” Rainey said in a statement.
He also said IMTT’s monitors will provide residents with air quality data independently of any specific project of IMTT or its partners. The St. Rose monitors will not measure ammonia, he said.
IMTT’s partnership with St. Charles Clean Fuels, which has proposed the development of a $4.6 billion reduced-carbon ammonia plant in St. Rose, has been met with opposition in St. Charles Parish. Over 150 people attended a Sept. 26 air permit hearing for the facility to protest the facility’s development, according to the Louisiana Illuminator.
“The oldest play in the play book is to set up a monitor but don’t measure the pollutants of concern,” Terrell said.