GONZALES — The last Saturday in April started like many others for Ashanti White at her home in Pelican Point subdivision — warm and sunny.
Then the sky turned red.
“I was shocked the dust was so thick and coming so far,” White said. “We normally go to Rouses on Saturday mornings. But when that happened, we had to stay inside the whole day.”
Residents in this corner of Ascension Parish have grown used to the red dust storms, but this one was the worst in White’s memory. The particles flew heavily for four to five hours that day, she said.
Other residents interviewed described the scene as “apocalyptic” and “like on Mars.” On windy days like these, students at nearby Sorrento Primary School sometimes have to stay inside because the dust is so thick.
The red dust is a substance called bauxite, which in particulate form is dangerous. Medical experts say it can get deep into the lungs, slip into the bloodstream and affect both the lungs and heart.
The bauxite in question comes from LAlumina, a shuttered plant adjacent to Pelican Point that processes bauxite ores to produce alumina, a precursor to aluminum. The facility, which closed in 2020 due to low alumina prices, dumped its waste products into five large ponds across 500 acres on the facility. If sprinklers on the site fail to keep the dust down, it easily becomes airborne on windy days.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and Ascension Parish have agreed to share responsibility of the cleanup, with LAlumina ostensibly covering the cost, with LDEQ Secretary Aurelia Skipwith Giacometto and Ascension Parish President Clint Cointment signing a memorandum of understanding Monday.
Giacometto said it will cost between $13 million to $18 million to permanently remedy the situation. LDEQ and Ascension Parish will tap into the $5 million balance of a trust fund LAlumina was required to set up when it took over operations at the site.
As for the remaining $8 million to $13 million, Giacometto said the company is “responsible for the cleanup measures” and that plans are “in progress” when asked whether LAlumina was involved in the agreement between LDEQ and Ascension Parish.
Neighbors have expressed some optimism officials can find a solution to the problem. But for now, their best defense against the bauxite is to avoid exposure.
Staying indoors isn’t always enough, however. White’s two sons, ages 10 and 6, started the school year at Sorrento Primary, just down the road from the LAlumina facility, on Aug. 8. Her boys each missed 20 days of school last year due to their respiratory issues, she said.
“It’s not normal for them to be unwell,” White said. “I don’t know what it is that’s causing my kids to get sick, but it’s becoming very costly for me to keep having to pay a copay and take off of work just to get a doctor’s note for them to be excused for the respiratory issues that they are facing.”
White said she is considering moving because of the health risk.
“I just don’t want to chance it with the dust at all,” she said. “It’s nothing here worth me gambling with my kids’ health or my health.”
‘It’s like clockwork’
Public health experts agree that chronic exposure to particulate matter is more likely to affect people with heart or lung diseases, children and older adults by exacerbating allergies and respiratory issues.
LSU environmental science professor Slawo Lomnicki compares bauxite to asbestos, noting the small size of both substances – and not their chemical makeup – causes lung damage. Lomnicki leads the LSU Superfund Research Program, which studies air pollution and contaminants called environmentally persistent free radicals. He also serves as a scientific adviser to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, a nonprofit that attempts to address health, safety and quality of life concerns.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concurs with medical findings that indicate particulate matter from substances such as bauxite poses health risks. Issues include increased incidents of respiratory symptoms, such as irritation of the airways, coughing, difficulty breathing, decreased lung function, aggravated asthma, irregular heartbeat and nonfatal heart attacks, according to EPA’s website.
Residents from Pelican Point and Pelican Crossing, another subdivision near the LAlumina site, confirmed many of these health issues in their households.
Amber Taylor’s family has lived in Pelican Point since 2022, and she has seen a correlation between her 8-year-old son Kash’s medical issues and windy weather conditions. During the April dust storm, his nose bled for over an hour, she said.
It wasn’t the first time he’d experienced symptoms, according to his mother.
“Ever since we moved here two years ago, we’re always sick,” Taylor said. “Each time I get a wind advisory, Kash flares up. It’s like clockwork.”
Taylor said when her children spend time outside, they often experience nosebleeds, rashes, itchiness and swollen eyes. Even when Kash wasn’t outside, he would still have a reaction.
“His eyes swelled up in the house,” Taylor said. “He wasn’t even playing outside. We left the house twice in one day to get in and out of the vehicle, and his eyes looked bloodshot.”
Keeping the dust down
Of the five ponds on LAlumina’s property, three have substantial water to keep the dust wet. Two others are essentially large mounds of red dirt where most of the dust originates.
Levees that reach 32-feet high fence in the red mud lakes so the 500-acre site isn’t visible from the road.
Several large neighborhoods with more than 1,000 homes — mostly young families with children who attend Sorrento Primary School — surround the subdivision.
Pelican Crossing subdivision backs right up to the mud lakes, while Pelican Point subdivision is across Highway 44, just half a mile from the ponds.
According to an April 2022 LDEQ incident report, a Sorrento Primary teacher claimed that the red dust was “so thick that we couldn’t even see the trees in the open field behind us.” Students complained of coughing and burning eyes, so they were rushed inside.
Last school year, Sorrento Primary experienced two days where the red dust was so bad that the students were kept inside, according to LDEQ reports.
“These measures were implemented out of an abundance of caution to ensure the health and safety of everyone on our campus,” Ascension Parish School Board spokeswoman Jackie Tisdell said in an email.
In addition to impacting their health, the dust is a constant nuisance for residents, often staining their cars, houses and pets red.
Pelican Crossing resident Charlie Casto has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years and said the dust has never been this bad.
“You work hard for the things you spend your money on, and it’s essentially ruined,” Casto said. “If it’s bad, we don’t allow our kids outside to play, or when we have guests over we can’t even go outside because the dust is so bad.”
The dust is more than just a light coating on furniture; residents often have to pressure wash their homes and driveways each time the bauxite reaches their homes.
“We keep a bucket of water at the back door because our feet are stained red,” Casto said. “If you’re outside and you sit in a chair because you think it’s clean, you get up and next thing you know, your clothes are red. Even if you wipe it or rinse it off, it still gets tracked inside.”
Residential developments in the area are relatively new compared with the alumina plant.
The facility was built in the late 1950s by Ormet Corp., which operated an aluminum manufacturing facility in Ohio that’s now on the EPA’s Superfund site list for abandoned hazardous materials.
The plant has changed hands multiple times, most recently in 2019 when LAIumina purchased it.
LAlumina is a subsidiary of Arthur Metals, a company alumina traders Matt Lucke and Zach Mayer founded. Neither Lucke nor Mayer could be reached for comment.
The plant was shut down for good in 2020, despite LAlumina receiving a $7.5 million Paycheck Protection Program loan during the COVID-19 pandemic that was later forgiven.
LAlumina also settled two different lawsuits with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality in 2020 and 2021 for previous environmental violations from 2016 to 2019, paying a total of $250,000 in fines to the state.
Before it closed, the facility’s solid waste permit from LDEQ required LAlumina to maintain sprinklers on its bauxite ponds to keep the dust wet. The sprinklers have not always been effective, however. LDEQ first noted that LAlumina had several broken sprinklers in July 2021, and a compliance order to fix the sprinklers was issued the following year only after residents complained about the dust, according to a WBRZ-TV report.
Large facilities that require LDEQ permits to operate are required to have a closure plan and a financial assurance trust fund to pay for any needed remediation work should the business shut down. LDEQ approved LAlumina’s use of nearly $600,000 from the trust fund to fix the sprinklers, despite not being part of the closure plan.
The LDEQ compliance order issued in June 2022 outlined the plan for new sprinklers to be installed by Nov. 30, 2022. Despite this, LDEQ’s correspondence with LAlumina found on the department’s records database shows that installation of the new sprinklers did not begin until March 2023. During construction, pipes in the sprinkler system were found to be corroded and needed replacement, according to LALumina Plant Manager Aaron Templet. But that would be expensive, and the sprinkler system is not a long-term solution, Templet said in an email.
The closure plan outlines how the red mud ponds, upon closure of the facility, would be capped with dirt and grass would be planted over it. According to the plan, this process would take more than a year to complete with a one-time cost of nearly $1 million. Over a monitoring period of 30 years, the total cost was projected to be $6.6 million — far less than the price tag Giacometto provided Monday.
‘Not a simple, quick-fix problem’
Skepticism is warranted regarding whether LAlumina has the financial wherewithal to cover the cost of permanently sealing the bauxite ponds.
The facility’s trust remained underfunded for years until October 2020 when LAlumina increased it to $6.3 million, according to LDEQ records. Last month, the department informed LALumina it violated its solid waste permit by underfunding the trust and not providing closure plan cost estimates for 2023 and 2024.
Despite operations shutting down in August 2020, the closure trust fund was accessed until July 2022, nearly a year and a half after the money was originally provided and several years after neighbors filed more than two dozen complaints about the bauxite dust.
“This has been a problem that has existed for decades,” Cointment said Monday. “It is not a simple, quick-fix problem. This is going to be a long-term fix and solution to the red dust issue.”
Ascension Parish has been hauling dirt to the site over the past few months and at a cost of $220,000 as of June.
Residents like Casto, in her red-dust-covered home in Pelican Crossing, are finally feeling optimistic about the future of the bauxite ponds.
“This is the most effort we’ve seen since this problem started so I’m cautiously hopeful for now,” Casto said.
