April XX, 2021

Dear XX,

On behalf of RISE St. James and XX organizations from around the world, we write to express our concern about Formosa Plastics’ chemical manufacturing complex proposed for construction in St. James Parish, Louisiana, USA.

We call on you to end any and all business relationships you may have with Formosa Plastics Corporation and its affiliates, in particular Formosa Petrochemicals Corporation, Formosa Plastics Corporation, and FG LA LLC, which is building the Sunshine Project in St. James, Louisiana. Specifically, we ask that you:
     * Publicly commit to not financing the Sunshine project or related projects

Also, given Formosa Plastics’ track record of being a “serial environmental offender,” we urge that you:
     * Divest from Formosa Plastics Corporation (TPE 1301) and Formosa Petrochemical Corporation (TPE 6505)
     * Sell and refrain from underwriting or buying bonds issued by Formosa Plastics Corporation, Formosa Petrochemical Corporation, Formosa Plastics Group, and other related Formosa affiliates
     * Cease all underwriting or asset management activities for Formosa Plastics equities and debt

In light of your institution’s stated commitment to corporate social responsibility, financing and/or ownership of Formosa Plastics, particularly its Sunshine Project, would undermine this commitment.  

We Can’t Breathe: Formosa Plastics’ ‘Sunshine Project’ exacerbates environmental racism

RISE St. James is a grassroots faith-based environmental justice community organization, founded and led by Black women in St James Parish’s 5th District in Louisiana, USA. Tired of bearing the awful decades-long health burden from discriminatory siting of toxic petrochemical facilities in their neighborhoods, they formed RISE St. James to oppose Formosa Plastics’ proposed $12 billion “Sunshine Project”, a 14-plant petrochemical complex  on land that is mostly sugar cane fields located directly adjacent to a residential area of the 5th District and one mile from an elementary school that serves an almost entirely Black student population. We are fighting to protect ourselves from Formosa Plastics’ disastrous environmental and human-rights record in the United States and around the world. Given your institution’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, financing and/or ownership of Formosa Plastics, particularly its Sunshine Project, would undermine this commitment.  

The Sunshine Project presents an unnecessary burden for our already-polluted community: a textbook case of environmental racism. The 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is predominantly inhabited by historic Black neighborhoods, including ours in St. James Parish. This corridor is already sited with so many toxic petrochemical facilities that it is widely known as ‘Cancer Alley’ across the United States. According to data from the U.S. EPA’s Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) database, the Cancer Hazard of facilities in St. James Parish has increased by nearly 800% over the last decade (2007 – 2018).In March 2021 United Nations human rights experts raised serious concerns over further industrialization of Cancer Alley and called for an end to environmental racism in the 85 mile area, specifically citing concern over Formosa Plastics’ proposed petrochemical complex.The experts found the industrialization of the lower Missippippi has polluted the land and water and subjected primarily African American residents to adverse health effects;  "This form of environmental racism poses serious and disproportionate threats to the enjoyment of several human rights of its largely African American residents, including the right to equality and non-discrimination, the right to life, the right to health, right to an adequate standard of living and cultural rights”. Calls to reject Formosa Plastics’ St. James project have since extended to the U.S. Congress: Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) wrote a scathing letter to the Biden Administration, asserting that “Allowing the Formosa plastics complex to continue would cause irreparable harm to the Black community members of St. James Parish, destroy the environment, and set back your goals of achieving an equitable and just transition,” emphatically concluding that “Mr. President, the time to end this project is now.”

 In the 10-mile radius around our community alone, there are twelve toxic petrochemical facilities. Each year, Formosa Plastics’ petrochemical complex would be permitted to  emit an additional 86,000 kilograms (or 189,700 pounds) of benzene,1,3-butadiene, acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, and ethylene oxide – all known carcinogens – as well as 13.6 million tons of CO2e (greenhouse gases). All this toxic pollution will be released within one mile of our elementary school, along with churches and residential neighborhoods. Formosa Plastics’ proposed project “pollutes too much for Taiwan,” so they are targeting Cancer Alley.
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Formosa Plastics’ plan to construct a facility that would double or triple the toxic levels of cancer-causing pollutants in communities in St. James Parish represents a stunning, potentially devastating increase in our community’s environmental burden. In addition to elevating residents’ risk of cancer, asthma, and other serious diseases, this increase in toxic air pollution places residents at a higher risk from respiratory infections including a higher risk of death from COVID-19., Study after study has demonstrated inextricable links between air pollution exposure and COVID-19 death rates., As of July 2020, three out of Louisiana’s five parishes with the highest COVID-19 death rates were located in Cancer Alley, including St. James Parish, with averages up to 3.8x the state’s median. Our community simply cannot afford more air pollution - our survival depends on it.

Formosa Plastics is a “Serial Offender”

In the company’s 65 year history, Formosa Plastics has totaled over $650 million in fines and penalties across nearly a dozen sites worldwide - averaging $10 million per year in fines to address environmental and worker safety violations. Explosions have occurred at multiple facilities, and Formosa Plastics Group or its direct subsidiaries have been tagged by various authorities as a “serial offender,” a state’s “biggest polluter,” and the entity responsible for “the worst environmental disaster” in a country’s history. High profile disasters have caused at least two dozen deaths,,, dozens more injuries, and tens of thousands of disrupted lives and livelihoods from evacuations, shelter in place orders, and long-lasting damage to ecosystems that communities depend on.

Financiers have begun to recognize Formosa Plastics’ horrifying track record and taken appropriate action to exclude constituent companies from its portfolios. In August 2020, Norway’s $1 trillion Sovereign Wealth Fund announced exclusions for two Formosa Plastics subsidiaries, citing an "unacceptable risk for violation of human rights." Also in August 2020, Storebrand Asset Management added two Formosa Plastic subsidiaries to its exclusion list as part of its broader effort to divest from companies contributing to the climate crisis.
Formosa Plastics plans to build on top of the gravesites of our formerly enslaved ancestors
In 2019 our community discovered that on the site where Formosa Plastics plans to build its facility are burial sites of our enslaved ancestors. What’s worse, Formosa Plastics knew about the grave sites while seeking land use approval from the St. James Parish Council, but chose to withhold this crucial information from state and municipal decision makers and our local community. Formosa Plastics’ proposed chemical complex does not only pose further severe health problems for us and our descendants, but now threatens to destroy newly discovered spiritual links to our ancestral history.

The March 2021 letter from the UN Human Rights experts also made this important connection of a long history of anti-Black racism in the United States. As the residents of St. James Parish fight to protect their community it is not simply enough to cancel the permits for Formosa Plastics.“The African American descendants of the enslaved people who once worked the land are today the primary victims of deadly environmental pollution that these petrochemical plants in their neighbourhoods have caused," they said. "We call on the United States and St. James Parish to recognise and pay reparations for the centuries of harm to Afro-descendants rooted in slavery and colonialism.”

Formosa Plastics will accelerate climate catastrophe

Formosa Plastics’  planned Sunshine Project is among the most climate-polluting facilities ever proposed in the United States. If built, Formosa Plastics’ Sunshine Project would release 13,628,091 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (CO2e) per year - roughly equivalent to annual emissions of 3 coal-fired power plants. This super-polluting project does not belong in a climate-safe world and certainly not in Louisianawhere accelerating coastal erosion (Louisiana has lost approximately 25% of its land mass from 1932-2016), sea level rise, and strengthening hurricanes are already creating some of the United States’ first climate refugees.
Formosa Plastics is unnecessarily risky and will be built in a vulnerable floodplain

Hurricane Katrina was a monumental environmental disaster that is quickly becoming a marker of what is understood to be the new normal for the local Gulf Coast’s notoriously destructive hurricane season. 2020 set a new record for the most active hurricane season in recorded history.  The rising intensity of seasonal storms poses elevated risks to Formosa Plastics’ proposed project site, which is located in a natural floodplain. Forty percent of St. James Parish is classified as ‘wetlands’, made up of marshes and swamps. Major flooding in St. James in 2016 caused significant damage; throughout Louisiana, 40,000 homes were destroyed and 13 people died. Siting massive toxic petrochemical facilities in the area poses enormous public health and environmental risk. Recent storm-induced industrial disasters affirm the gravity of these risks, such as the 2020 Biolab fire in Westlake, Louisiana during Hurricane Laura and the 2017 Arkema explosions near Houston during Hurricane Harvey. Given Formosa Plastics’ very poor record of managing its facilities in Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Texas, we are very concerned that the development of Formosa Plastics’  enormous plastics facility in the path of regular massive seasonal weather events is a disaster waiting to happen. We would face the destruction and pollution, while Formosa Plastics shareholders would bear the financial losses. It’s a lose-lose situation.
Formosa Plastics’ proposed St. James petrochemical complex also presents a considerable financial risk to investors. Substantial local and national opposition, ballooning construction costs, volatility in plastics markets, permit suspensions, and additional significant legal hurdles have put the future of this project in jeopardy.  

Formosa Plastics is not welcome here!

Lastly, and very importantly, for the reasons we note in this letter, Formosa Plastics is not welcome by the local people of St. James. We want a different future. We want clean air, water and soil. It is incumbent on any responsible corporation to listen to our community and cease all business relationships with Formosa Plastics Group and its constituent entities, to avoid any association with the severe and unjust impacts its operations would have on us. Ending your relationship with Formosa Plastics is also in line with your corporate responsibility to respect human rights, outlined in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which apply to businesses holding even a small financial interest in a company.
Our community comes from a long line of people who have bravely stood up for themselves to ensure their survival. Today, we are called again by our faith and conviction to protect ourselves and the future of our community. We will prevail as we have always done. Just last year, we joined with others to successfully ensure the cancellation of a toxic petrochemical facility planned by the Chinese company Wanhua. We are not afraid to stand up and organize to bring about a brighter future, where we have clean air, water and soil for ourselves and our children. Our ancestors would expect nothing less.

For all the reasons we note in this letter this financially risky, environmentally destructive and socially harmful project should not move forward. We hope to soon see your public commitment to end all financial relationships with Formosa Plastics Group and all its subsidiaries. We are available to meet to discuss this request, and provide more information about any of the aforementioned issues. Breaking ties with Formosa Plastics is the right financial decision to avoid unneeded risk from a bad project proposed by an irresponsible company. And, most importantly, your action to cut ties with Formosa Plastics is the right decision for us, the people who will live with the impact of your decision.

Sincerely,

Sharon Lavigne
Founder and President, RISE St. James

With support from: