Hope abounded three years ago when EPA Administrator Michael Regan swept through areas like Louisiana’s petrochemical corridor often dubbed “Cancer Alley” with a pledge to finally address pollution’s inequitable toll on people of color and the disadvantaged.
The message from those communities was clear, Regan said at the conclusion of his “Journey to Justice” tour: “We must do better — from the local level to the federal level.”
The aftermath, however, has been a lesson in the limits to that quest, particularly in curbing dangerous air pollution, some say.
While the Biden administration “has made some real positive steps as far as helping us,” Robert Taylor, founder of a local Louisiana advocacy group, said in an interview, “we’re not where we need to be.”
