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shintech Chronology and Documents
The available documents pertain to the Shintech permitting process. Documents for the environmental justice case and the St. James SIP revision may be added later.

Fact Sheet containing public statements by State officials favoring Shintech over the citizens. Read

October-November 1996
The St. James Citizens for Jobs and the Environment ask LEAN for help.

Data sheet for TELC (Tulane Environmental Law Clinic). Read
Letter to Bob Kuehn about Shintech and MACT. Read
Analysis of Shintech's Part 70, Title V permit for Tulane. Read
Update report on Shintech for Bob Kuehn at Tulane. Read

November-December 1996
Tulane takes the case.
Public hearing held on Dec. 7.

Letter to Governor Foster about Shintech in preperation for a meeting with him. Read
LEAN writes a letter to Clarice Gaylord of the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice asking for help. Read
Draft public comments. Read
Memo to Tulane about vinyl chloride (VCM) emissions in Louisiana. Read
LEAN writes another letter to Clarice Gaylord of the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice asking for help. Read

January 1997
Clarice Gaylord of the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice writes LEAN telling us that we have an Environmental Justice case.

May 1997
Public petitions submitted.
DEQ illegally issues permits to Shintech.
DEQ, Shintech and the EPA form and support an anti-environmental justice group in St. James Parish.

LEAN's public petition over the Shintech permits. Read
Status report on the Shintech permits. Read
Letter to Carol Browner concerning Shintech's illegally issued permits. Read
Second letter to Carol Browner concerning the Shintech permits. Read
Second public petition concerning the Shintech permits. Read

August 1997
Meeting with new EPA Region 6 staff about petitions.

September 1997
Carol Browner responds to petitions and:
1) Approves the petitions finding 49 problems with the permits.
2) Splits the EJ issues from the permitting issues.
3) Makes DEQ start the permitting process over.

EPA Response to the Petitions. Read

December 1997
Everything starts over and another public hearing is held.

Read

Strategy letter concerning the second set of public comments. Read

January 1998
The process takes its strangest turn at this point, when:
1. In the last week of the public comment period the EPA meets with DEQ and possibly Shintech telling them the EPA is not happy with the proposed permits.
2. DEQ conveys this to Shintech giving them the specific problems the EPA still has.
3. Shintech then submits what DEQ and Shintech called public comments asking the DEQ to amend the permits.
4. DEQ prepares to amend the permits in the last week of the public comment period.
5. We protest and an extension to the public comment period is given.

EPA, DEQ and Shintech can't reach an agreement on the new permits. The permit process stalls and has yet to be resolved. This effectively ended Shintech's attempts to site the facility in St. James Parish and the second set of final permits was never issued.

The struggle then moved from the permits to the EJ issues, where the EPA was using the Shintech case as the first EJ test case. Tulane and LEAN also continued fighting the removal of St. James Parish from the Baton Rouge ozone nonattainment area.

LEAN's public comments for the second public comment period. Read

February 1998
EPA issues the "Interim Guidance for Investigating Title VI Complaints".
EPA issues the first set of draft demographic data which presented the results from a statistical anaylsis of demographics near industrial facilities in the Louisiana chemical corridor. For more information on the draft demographics go here.
Congress and business see serious ramifications and get involved.

August 1998
Louisiana Supreme Court changes rules regarding Law Clinics.

September 1998
Shintech proposes to leave St. James Parish.